In the 9.2 Release Notes of Google Play services I found the following:
Nearby
This release removes the requirement that clients use the Proximity Beacon API to manage their beacons. Nearby will now return parsed BLE advertisements directly, allowing clients to use their own solution to interpret those advertisements.
That sounds to me, as if I should be able to subscribe to Nearby Messages with Strategy.BLE_ONLY and get information about BLE beacons (which includes iBeacons) in the vicinity without "owning"/registering the beacons vie Proximity Beacon API.
Do I understand that correctly? Does anyone have a helpful link to a sample or other resources that might help implementing this feature?