Presence detection for Samsung Galaxy phones (S8)

Configuration
1

I tried using just ping in HA for presence detection of my Galaxy S8 but it doesn’t work at all. It only responds to ping when it’s actively used and X minutes after that. Wifi settings on phone are default, no power save and Wifi is always on.

But, I have discovered that it always responds to arp requests.

So from my router, I can send a ping request. No response.
I check the arp table, it’s there.
I delete the arp for my phone.
I send a new ping request, no response.
I check the arp table, it’s there.

I will use this fact to see if I can create a reliable presence detection just using this and not having to setup MQTT etc.

2

I also tried with ping and nmap and different phones react differently, but it wasn’t very reliable. I now just leave bluetooth activated and it works very well.