15 ms·

Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

297 points by bokenator 10y ago

williadc 10y ago
John Gruber from Daring Fireball has already written his review: > “Next year it will work great” should be Bluetooth’s slogan. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bluetooth-5 http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bluetooth-5
- theGimp 10y ago
  That's just gratuitously negative and dismissive. Bluetooth 4 is actually not bad at all in my experience. Pairing is painless relative to old versions; sound quality is flawless; connections are quite reliable. The "strain" is to be expected around other devices since Bluetooth uses 2.4GHz, a very crowded band. I can't speak to the technical bits since I never looked at them, but my experience as a consumer has been positive. Sure, it doesn't have the same range as a WiFi router, but it also doesn't use 1.5-20 watts (My source: http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?type=11 http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?type=11)
  - kabdib 10y ago
    Depends on the devices. My car, for instance, has about a 50% chance of successfully hooking up to my iPhone. BT needs fewer features and better implementations. But apparently interop and reliability are not sexy enough for the BT standards folks to worry about. Can you imagine TCP/IP being in the same quality hole that Bluetooth is in?
    - theGimp 10y ago
      Right, I agree that it depends on the device. A Chevy model I don't recall had the stupidest bug where you sometimes couldn't pair unless you reset the car computer... by leaving the driver's door open for 5 minutes. I don't blame the Bluetooth standard though, messy as it might be. That's clearly terrible implementation on the car manufacturer's part.
      - kabdib 10y ago
        BT seems over-complicated, especially considering that it's quite often low-level (I really mean that organizationally) firmware engineers working on products that won't be updated after they ship. Given the types of products that are made with BT support, the hostile environments that they're developed within, and the common after-sales abandonment of support, BT should be a simpler protocol that is a LOT more resilient to implementation mistakes. But I don't think that anyone designs protocols to withstand institutional failure :-)
        com2kid 10y ago
        BT itself is not overly complicated. Bargain basement BT chips, which is what everyone ends up using to save pennies, are full of bugs that have to be worked around. Of the various BT stacks out there, only a few are actually good, and the good ones get to charge appropriate licensing fees, meaning that they aren't in wide use. When you combine randChip with randBtStack, the end result is not necessarily a quality product. The poor engineers who have to work with this combination end up resorting to sending reset commands to their chip in an attempt to get the damn thing working.
        gtirloni 10y ago
        It would be really interesting to have a list of good BT stacks and devices using them. That way maybe we could avoid the bad ones. As a consumer I have no idea which devices will actually work properly (and I assume Bluetooth as a whole sucks).
        Gibbon1 10y ago
        Fifteen years ago, looking at the Bluetooth spec my impression was the best way to implement it would have been to send the designers to the Siberia and then start over. The two issues I saw were Bluetooth is based on a frequency hopping radio using a dated low performance modulation scheme. The only nice thing you could say is potentially you can build really low power radio's using that design. However that brings up the second issues, a very complicated kitchen sink base band which requires a complex software stack and power hungry processor to support it. There goes your low power, out the window. (I think there were about 20 companies trying to design low power Bluetooth transceivers circa 2000-2003, most of them never could get the power low enough or a working stack) Hardware design issues aside, frequency hoppers have insurmountable quality of service issues for most applications. Professionally I don't think this is fixable. They would have been better off doing the following three things. 1. Define a low speed point to point oriented modulation scheme that can be supported by 802.11 radio front ends. Probably could have implemented this as a sub-band of some sort. 2. A direct sequence spread spectrum physical layer for USB. Advantage of that is the USB stack mostly works as USB had a 10 year head start and more resources than the Bluetooth alliance ever had, or will have. If one thinks a stack like USB is 'easy' consider Microsoft had to redesign theirs three or four times. 3. Dedicated DSSS wireless headphone spec. Seriously this was the original design goal and was totally achievable until the committee responsible for the spec lost their minds.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    > That's just gratuitously negative and dismissive That's the point. If you want a heavily opinionated summary that will likely inflame a fair portion of people, Gruber is your man.
  - gtirloni 10y ago
    > sound quality is flawless; I have a headset that supports Bluetooth 3 only and audio quality is bad (especially while making calls where it chooses the HFP profile which is the only one where the mic is available). I vouched to never again buy any Bluetooth audio devices. Are you saying Bluetooth 4 would actually solve my problem? Should I still have hope?
    - gman99 10y ago
      >Are you saying Bluetooth 4 would actually solve my problem Make sure your headset and device (phone?) both support HFP1.6 or above (which supports wideband speech/HD voice) which makes the sound quality semi-decent
- underwater 10y ago
  If it were anyone else this would be flagged as blogspam. Sometimes he can bring insight, but these Tweet-like posts don't add anything to the conversation.
  - bokenator 10y ago
    who is he?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - underwater 10y ago
      John Gruber is an Apple fanboy who somehow makes a lot of money from his blog. And invented Markdown formatting.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Isn't this a problem with anything wireless in general? WiFi is also plagued with connection issues, inexplicable dropouts, and slowdowns. With Bluetooth in particular it seems like there are a lot of poor implementations (if it's rock solid or buggy seems to have to do with which two devices you're using ) - maybe they would benefit from a more stringent conformity licensing process.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
    But.... it's really not. The WiFi issues you describe affect some people who most likely have 1) bad routers 2) poorly configured routers 3) tons of interference 4) Bad ISPs 5) Other clients on the network I'm not saying that setting up a WiFI network well is super easy, and there are definitely lots of things that can impact WiFi connectivity, but for it's ubiquity, I'd say WiFi works very well. In my three story townhouse with fibre and a decent router in the basement, I have none of the problems you describe.
  - flamethroeaway 10y ago
    The stringent licensing is the reason why thunderbolt 3 is dead.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    I think there are two problems, one yes wireless is 'bad' You can think. 1. Reliable 2. Cheap 3. Low power Pick no more than two. Bluetooth was originally designed to be cheap and low power. The other problem is networking is complicated, and then throwing device API's on top of that makes it very hard to get right. USB had lots of issues originally. And once you leave standard devices like, keyboards, mice, and mass storage devices it gets iffy real quick. (Go scan through the libUSB mailing list archives sometime)
x5n1 10y ago
What does bluetooth not require support for multiple simultaneous devices. Have more than one device that won't let you connect more than one at a time.
- bokenator 10y ago
  I think it's a bandwidth issue. If I use bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and headphones at the same time, the mouse becomes very sluggish. It works totally fine if I turn off either the keyboard or the headphone.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I suspect that comes down to the protocol used. I had no problem connecting a keyboard and phone (as modem) to a N800 back in the day, while also playing music from the phone to a pair of bluetooth headphones. But that was if i used PAN For the data connection between N800 and phone. If i used DUN, either the music or the data would occasionally skip. And that may well be what gives Bluetooth its reputation. So many choices for the various OEMs in terms of protocols/profiles, on top of a more complex air interface (channel hopping). Given all of it, one may well be better off comparing Bluetooth to USB than wifi. As wifi is Ethernet over a single radio channel.
- Niksko 10y ago
  In theory, the Bluetooth protocol supports up to 7 devices connected simultaneously as slaves to one master device. However in practice, hardware support may be less than this.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piconet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piconet
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  The standard does support multiple simultaneous devices. Your hardware? Not always.
modeless 10y ago
I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.
- honkhonkpants 10y ago
  As a matter of fact "more range" is quite the opposite of what I want from Bluetooth. Do I really need to have 5000 keyboards within range of my computer at the office, instead of the 100 I already have? I definitely do not.
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    Headphones are the big benefactor here, for me at least. I can walk to the kitchen with my wireless headphones.
    - bokenator 10y ago
      I've found that microwave interferes very strongly with Bluetooth headphones
      - thomaskcr 10y ago
        And bodies. Had to move my laptop dock to the other side of my desk when I switched headphones from a pair that had the transmitter in the left ear to the right.
        icebraining 10y ago
        Sacks of water will do that :)
        digi_owl 10y ago
smegel 10y ago
But will it constantly fail to connect to devices it has been paired with a million times before? Don't know how I could live without that "feature".
danjayh 10y ago
For those who have given up on Engadget (I can't be the only one): http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-coming-next-week-with-2x-more-range-and-4x-better-speed/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-comi...
- bokenator 10y ago
  What's wrong with Engadget?
  - danjayh 10y ago
    I left when they kicked off a series on modern male masturbation devices by putting a graphic cartoon of a dude with his pants around his ankles using a fleshlight-like device on their front page. Some people (legitimately) use Engadget at work ... personally I used to read it while I ate lunch. Not cool. EDIT: Found it. Warning: totally NSFW NSFW -> https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/a-first-hand-quest-for-the-future-of-sex/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/a-first-hand-quest-for-t...
  - nameless912 10y ago
    It's 80% clickbaity bullshit and 20% mediocre gadget reviews. Long gone are the days when Engadget was a relevant source of tech journalism. On a tangentially related note, does anyone remember Engadget's apple-only sister site TUAW? That was a great outlet for a good long while until Engadget started to shit the bed a couple years ago.
voltagex_ 10y ago
I think a lot of the comments here could be attributed to the terrible Bluetooth software stacks that are around (Car head-decks, Android (all versions), Windows 8-10 default stacks). I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with speakers and mic won't work.
- klagermkii 10y ago
  At what number of terrible Bluetooth software stacks does one start wondering if there isn't something fundamentally wrong with the specification that makes it so incredibly hard to get right? It's been bad from day one with Widcomm and later Bluesoleil on Windows. Mac OS X for years had a Bluetooth where after a couple of hours of using the DUN profile it would need a reboot, on an otherwise nicely reliable operating system. Mice on Bluetooth have never worked as smoothly, reliably, or as well as just using a proprietary protocol like Logitech Unifying. It's not that I necessarily think it's an unsolvable problem, it's just that after a decade with so many multiple implementations that can't get it right I feel Bluetooth itself has to bear some responsibility.
  - x0x0 10y ago
    bluetooth is an extended public alpha I so can't wait for phones to drop 3.5mm jacks so playing music can become an infuriating ritual too
- gtirloni 10y ago
  I have the same issue with a Philips SHB7150 headset. Music will play okay using A2DP (with occasional stuttering and pitch changes) but all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality). So the device has what looks like a decent microphone that is completely destroyed by Bluetooth (where in the stack this happens, I don't know).
  - gman99 10y ago
    >all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality) While it's true that audio quality over HFP is a lot worse than A2DP, note that A2DP is designed for cases where latency is not an issue, you want stereo audio, and there is no microphone audio to carry the other way. (i.e., designed to listen to music) If you want low latency mono-audio to the headset + microphone audio back to the host, there is no choice except to use HFP. Note that if your headset (and your host device) supports HFP1.6, then it should support wideband speech/HD voice and the difference should not be so drastic.
x0ner 10y ago
Curious if these upgrades include any addressing security.
jamesrom 10y ago
Bluetooth is very easy to hate. It never ever just works: the pairing rituals, the flakiness. It's annoying. But in recent years it has become more and more invisible. You've probably used Bluetooth in the past 12 months without noticing. Invisibility is something that the Bluetooth SIG should strive for.
- jerluc 10y ago
  If anything, it would seem that (from these comments and from my own personal experiences) Bluetooth is actually not doing very well at being invisible at all.
- starky 10y ago
  I can think of one device where Bluetooth has been invisible, the Surface Pro 3 pen.
jtchang 10y ago
I want better range, more bandwidth, less power consumption, and smaller footprint. Oh and make it super reliable. One can dream...
tranv94 10y ago
Maybe I'm living in the past and haven't been informed, but is Bluetooth still unsecure?
- MohammadLee 10y ago
  Yes, it still is especially since 4.0, and this new update does not seem to do anything to improve it. BT sux.
  - drewbug 10y ago
    Care to elaborate?
- programmarchy 10y ago
  Bluetooth 4.0 and 4.1 had a broken key exchange that was vulnerable to both passive and active attacks [1]. This could be remedied by a custom in-band or out-of-band key exchange, but I think it was rare for device manufacturers to go to those lengths. The key exchange vulnerability was addressed in Bluetooth 4.2, which implements ECDH and is at least theoretically secure. [2] [1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop-program/presentation/ryan https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop-program/pr... [2] http://blog.bluetooth.com/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-bluetooth-security-in-bluetooth-4-2/ http://blog.bluetooth.com/everything-you-always-wanted-to-kn...
  - IshKebab 10y ago
    Except... that pairing in Bluetooth 4.2 is still broken. And they apparently even used an algorithm from Bluetooth 2 that was known to be broken. https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ Basically Passkey Entry is broken so eavesdroppers can trivially learn the PIN. You must use a dynamic PIN (not always possible). Oh and if you're thinking you can implement your own pairing method that is actually secure, via the Out-of-Band method, think again! Neither Android nor iOS support it.
    - 10y ago
BuckRogers 10y ago
The only reason I like Bluetooth at all is because the alternative is a bunch of USB receivers plugged into my NUC. But I have to admit that it seems to work pretty well on my iPhone while years ago on other phones I had a lot of disconnects. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point. I'd like to see more BT headsets for PC hit the market. The only ones I could find were from Turtle Beach.
- aphextron 10y ago
  >. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point. These are great but the real drawback that keeps me from going wireless is still the audio quality. Hopefully this upgrade will be the end of that.
  - BuckRogers 10y ago
    I'm concerned about Apple possibly removing the 3.5mm jack. Removing the ability to use a headset + charge my phone at the same time is going to be a killer. I may switch back to Android if that happens. I bought one of the very few 3.5mm cellphone headsets I could find (Voistek) for my wife and it works pretty well. We shouldn't be forced into choosing between wired up for charging or wired up for headset/headphones.
Niksko 10y ago
Working with Bluetooth on a project last year was a gigantic pain in the ass. Linux support was reasonably good, though with bizarre quirks and changes of tooling between libbluetooth versions. OSX was a total nightmare. The project is currently stalled because three days before I had to head off (I was doing all of the programming and troubleshooting on the software side) my collaborators decided to inform me that they would be using a different laptop to what they'd been using for the rest of the project, and when we tried our software with that version of OSX and hardware, it refused to work nicely. We eventually came up with a bizarre pairing ritual that involved removing devices, then quickly adding them, and in a specific order, and then that mysteriously stopped working and now I don't have access to hardware to fix it. Knowing what I now know, if I'd had my time again I would have recommended ESP8266 based boards instead of the LightBlue Beans we were using. Even though one of our requirements was low power usage (which we certainly got through Bluetooth 4), it probably would have been less hassle to just make the WiFi modem sleep for a period and then transmit in bursts.
- BillinghamJ 10y ago
  macOS/iOS support for Bluetooth is very good at the core API level but ultimately that means you must use Objective-C for at least a small part of your codebase.
- jerluc 10y ago
  Depending on how much data you need to transfer between the two devices, I'd highly recommend a pair of ZigBee radios for low-bandwidth (<250k), super-low-power applications. Specifically using a pair of XBee (series 1) radios in "transparent" mode, you get what looks like a serial device on either end. When used with a USB dongle, you can simply write your code to use basic ioctl ops on the USB device file, which works well across most POSIX platforms.
lewisl9029 10y ago
What I want from my wireless devices is not more range or speed, but total freedom from wires, especially for charging. I remember from an Intel demo from a while ago, where they showcased a number of peripherals using their inductive charging tech, where you can just dump them onto a large inductive charging pad along with your phone and tablet without having to fumble with plugging wires into each one. That's the killer feature for a wireless device, in my opinion.
mschuster91 10y ago
Ah great, a new BT version once again, when even the LAST standard isn't properly supported (and especially documented!!!) in BlueZ. Not to mention Windows (which usually comes with a next-to-useless stack, and every other stack costs $$$) or OS X...
coroutines 10y ago
I kind of want an 802.11z that does wifi over Bluetooth for sub-802.11a conditions. Am I weird?
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  IIRC there's already a spec for this, usually it's called something like PAN (Personal Area Network).
gambiting 10y ago
And hopefully we will get bluetooth audio that doesn't suck?
micheljansen 10y ago
That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another. It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental problems that nobody seems to worry too much about, apart from a small number of vendors (Apple did a decent job solving the pairing problem with the Apple TV: http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-like-bluetooth-ios-remote-setup/ http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-lik...). I realise it's pretty hard to beat the intuitive action of plugging physical cables into devices to connect two things, but if we really want to get rid of cables, things need to be easier.
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I have a set of headphones that I love using with my phone and several computers. It's such an annoyance to connect it from one to the other and it doesn't appear that ANYONE is even working on making this better anymore. There was that brief period where some bluetooth devices included NFC where you could take it to the device to pair which was actually interesting but it only happened to such few products I have no idea if it ultimately ended up being usable or not.
  - FroshKiller 10y ago
    I bought an August EP650 Bluetooth headset recently that has NFC pairing. The problem is that my phone is the only other device I own that also supports it.
  - josho 10y ago
    It strikes me as a software problem in the device, not a bluetooth limitation. For example, some devices that I have pair only to a single peer, while others have no problems switching between several, while another device is limited to two peers--requiring a reset if you want a third. I suggest that anyone buying a bluetooth device test out pairing between multiple devices and if the device makes you jump through hopes to switch between bluetooth peers then immediately return it.
zmmmmm 10y ago
So much negativity about bluetooth in these comments ... and yet I can happily say that bluetooth has really changed my life. Bluetooth headphones allow me to walk around and exercise without an annoying cord trailing the length of my body. And I can get to the office and sit down with my mouse and keyboard and just start typing without plugging anything at all in. While it certainly had early problems, I'm super happy with it these days and especially the increase in bandwidth will be very welcome.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Its because it is a complex combination of hardware and software protocols. With wifi you have a single channel, and basically ethernet. On top of that anything goes as far as software is concerned. With Bluetooth you have channel hopping radios, a pairing system for devices, and a bunch of profiles/protocols that define anything from basic serial data to encoding agnostic audio.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Bluetooth has made me feel happy about the existence of cords. Ahhhhhhh, I think to myself: it will definitely work, when I plug this thing into that other thing.
0898 10y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but how come the range is affected by the protocol? Wouldn't it be the aerial?
- IshKebab 10y ago
  It could be new modulation techniques. You can often transmit further if you lower your data rate.
- retSava 10y ago
  There are many things in a protocol specification that can affect range. Allowed transmission power, specifiying that compliant receivers should have X dBm sensitivity, data bit rate, channel frequencies, modulation, etc.
pknerd 10y ago
Wonder why it was not thought earlier? After BT we saw development in WiFi,GPS, RDID etc. Nobody thought that BT could help indoor for the shopping mall usecase present in the article. Now they are planning for late 2016, means it will only be available in new phones from 2017
mtgx 10y ago
With all the Bluetooth car hacking going on and with the emergence of "connected cars" and self-driving cars, you'd think they would've introduced some stronger security features for Bluetooth 5.0 as well.
tdkl 10y ago
Can't wait for nearby ads[1] to hit me from a far larger distance in the future. [1] https://developers.google.com/nearby/ https://developers.google.com/nearby/
- kevincox 10y ago
  Yeah... I think nearby is a really cool idea for many things, but I don't know if it is worth all of the notifications I will have to ignore from every billboard I walk by.
Unklejoe 10y ago
You know there's a problem when a majority of the comments (on a website filled with software engineers and other technologically inclined people) are all claiming that Bluetooth simply sucks in terms of usability. Imagine how hard it would be for someone like my parents to debug a Bluetooth pairing issue. I think they need to focus 100% of their efforts on addressing some of these issues which seem to have been a problem since the beginning. Bluetooth is “almost there” in my opinion. It’s incredibly convenient (when it works), and I can envision how great it will be once they work all the kinks out. It has been getting better and I’m confident it will keep improving. Let me just add another data point: I have a 2013 Android phone and a 2011 car. Luckily, the car supports playing audio through Bluetooth which is really cool when it works. However, every time I get into the car, there’s a 50/50 chance that BT audio will actually work. The phone always pairs with the car, but it seems like it doesn’t reliably “negotiate” the audio capability. Sometimes I can make a phone call which seems to reset the system and can cause it to start working, but other times I have to actually power cycle the phone. The other issue is that every once-in-a-while, there will be this spontaneous audible crackle. After the initial crackle occurs, there will be periodic crackles about once every 10 seconds from there on out. The only way to get it out of this state is to make a call or restart the phone. It seems almost like there’s some kind of memory leak in a buffer or something which causes it to eventually run dry and bounce off of being empty. These issues seem more software related and probably have nothing to do with the Bluetooth standard itself, but I won’t let that stop me from ranting.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  In my experience, if the implementation is wrong often enough that most people think the procotol/spec are to blame, than the protocol/spec are usually too complicated.
  - lotyrin 10y ago
    In my experience, no standard is too simple for someone to mess up implementing.
    - 10y ago
sly010 10y ago
Here is a device I would pay for: A USB dongle that somehow pairs to my Apple Keyboard and Touchpad and presents itself as a standard USB keyboard and mouse to the OS. I could plug said device to my cinema display's USB hub. This way both me and my wife could use the same workstation by simply plugging in the computer.
creativeembassy 10y ago
I could not care less. - 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it... - 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable. - 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.1: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.2: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 5.0: More range, more bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. I have the latest Apple "Magic" Trackpad, hooked up to a Mac Pro. At least once a day, latency will take a dive, or it will completely disconnect. I have to turn the trackpad on and off repeatedly, to see if it will finally re-pair by itself. No other recourse, you can't easily access bluetooth settings on a mac with only a keyboard. (Which I made sure to get with a USB plug, since my last bluetooth keyboard had the same issues.) I also have a Samsung Level BT headset, paired with a Samsung Note 5 phone. I can listen to Google Music or Player.fm for between 1 and 10 minutes until the headset will suddenly blast noise at full volume, and become unresponsive until I turn it off and back on again. Left my ears ringing on more than one occasion. I've replaced my "magic" keyboard with a USB one, and recently hooked the trackpad back up via USB. I've stopped using the Samsung Level and went back to an old pair of headphones with a 3.5mm plug (that Apple is now trying to get rid of.) I had a past without wires. I am moving to a future with them.
- nwah1 10y ago
  "Bluetooth 5 Promises an End to Pairing The power of Bluetooth is set to explode when the next version of the wireless technology is released at the turn of the year. Bluetooth 5 will offer eight times the broadcasting capacity, have four times the range, and run twice as fast as current Bluetooth technology, the organization responsible for development of Bluetooth announced on Thursday. The increased broadcasting capacity could pave the way for the introduction of "connectionless" data transfers, meaning that the need to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset or wireless keyboard with a mobile app or computer program may become a thing of the past. Longer range means that it will be possible to use Bluetooth devices throughout the home, and higher speeds will make these devices more responsive." http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pairing http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pai...
deleted 10y ago
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wjd2030 10y ago
And then bluetooth became wifi.
aleksei 10y ago
While I'm not a fan of Bluetooth for data transfer (pairing pains), this could be great for cheap indoor location services, eg. navigating inside a building with your phone.
pinaceae 10y ago
Oh anecdotes. Use Bluetooth home spekaers, headphones and car radio all the time against my iPhone 6S - works really well. What I do though is manually connect when I want this particular device to be connected (say my headphones in the gym), and then disconnect after use. Might be magic trick most are missing.
_RPM 10y ago
Try going from having bluetooth off on your phone to bluetooth being on in your car that has bluetooth capable device. It sucks. Every car I've been has trouble pairing if bluetooth wasn't on prior to me entering the car. For one car, I had to turn the engine off for it pair. WTF?
tracker1 10y ago
My hope for the future of phone/car interfaces is that once you've paired a phone, the touch screen basically becomes a display for the phone... I have a brand new (less than a week old) car, and the UI feels sluggish, and looks very dated at this point. I'd rather my N6P managed the whole thing. Hopefully BT5 can allow that to happen.
rsync 10y ago
Do I want longer range from bluetooth devices ? I sort of thought the short range was, kind of, a feature ... How far do you really want your mouse trails and your keystrokes to fly out into the ether ?
kin 10y ago
Nearly every comment in this thread is about pairing issues. I can definitely agree with most that I don't care about range and speed as much as I do the usability of pairing with multiple devices.
tmaly 10y ago
am I the only one, or does putting more radiation out into the environment pose substantial health risks. All of this excess radiation is bound to cause some potential mutations in DNA. Adding even more is only going to increase the probabilities.
Someone 10y ago
I guess that is with the same power usage, as it would be disingenuous if that were different, but it would be nice to have that confirmed. Also, I guess that, for many IoT devices, keeping range and speed the same while decreasing power usage significantly (although, as a third guess, I expect 'double the speed' means that devices can go to low power mode quicker, potentially halving power usage of the entire device) might be more useful.
DevikaG 10y ago
Its really exciting to see that kind of capabilities and potential that bluetooth 5 brings to the table for IoT. However, what excited me even more is the capabilities put forward by bluetooth 5 to boost beacon adoption and location-based services. Given how Google's recent updates such as Google Nearby and Android Instant Apps are also ones with location-based services at its core, bluetooth 5 onces it's launched will definitely boost beacon adoption to a significant extent.

297 points by bokenator 10y ago

John Gruber from Daring Fireball has already written his review: > “Next year it will work great” should be Bluetooth’s slogan. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bluetooth-5 http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/10/bluetooth-5

theGimp 10y ago
That's just gratuitously negative and dismissive. Bluetooth 4 is actually not bad at all in my experience. Pairing is painless relative to old versions; sound quality is flawless; connections are quite reliable. The "strain" is to be expected around other devices since Bluetooth uses 2.4GHz, a very crowded band. I can't speak to the technical bits since I never looked at them, but my experience as a consumer has been positive. Sure, it doesn't have the same range as a WiFi router, but it also doesn't use 1.5-20 watts (My source: http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?type=11 http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?type=11)
- kabdib 10y ago
  Depends on the devices. My car, for instance, has about a 50% chance of successfully hooking up to my iPhone. BT needs fewer features and better implementations. But apparently interop and reliability are not sexy enough for the BT standards folks to worry about. Can you imagine TCP/IP being in the same quality hole that Bluetooth is in?
  - theGimp 10y ago
    Right, I agree that it depends on the device. A Chevy model I don't recall had the stupidest bug where you sometimes couldn't pair unless you reset the car computer... by leaving the driver's door open for 5 minutes. I don't blame the Bluetooth standard though, messy as it might be. That's clearly terrible implementation on the car manufacturer's part.
    - kabdib 10y ago
      BT seems over-complicated, especially considering that it's quite often low-level (I really mean that organizationally) firmware engineers working on products that won't be updated after they ship. Given the types of products that are made with BT support, the hostile environments that they're developed within, and the common after-sales abandonment of support, BT should be a simpler protocol that is a LOT more resilient to implementation mistakes. But I don't think that anyone designs protocols to withstand institutional failure :-)
      - com2kid 10y ago
        BT itself is not overly complicated. Bargain basement BT chips, which is what everyone ends up using to save pennies, are full of bugs that have to be worked around. Of the various BT stacks out there, only a few are actually good, and the good ones get to charge appropriate licensing fees, meaning that they aren't in wide use. When you combine randChip with randBtStack, the end result is not necessarily a quality product. The poor engineers who have to work with this combination end up resorting to sending reset commands to their chip in an attempt to get the damn thing working.
        gtirloni 10y ago
        It would be really interesting to have a list of good BT stacks and devices using them. That way maybe we could avoid the bad ones. As a consumer I have no idea which devices will actually work properly (and I assume Bluetooth as a whole sucks).
      - Gibbon1 10y ago
        Fifteen years ago, looking at the Bluetooth spec my impression was the best way to implement it would have been to send the designers to the Siberia and then start over. The two issues I saw were Bluetooth is based on a frequency hopping radio using a dated low performance modulation scheme. The only nice thing you could say is potentially you can build really low power radio's using that design. However that brings up the second issues, a very complicated kitchen sink base band which requires a complex software stack and power hungry processor to support it. There goes your low power, out the window. (I think there were about 20 companies trying to design low power Bluetooth transceivers circa 2000-2003, most of them never could get the power low enough or a working stack) Hardware design issues aside, frequency hoppers have insurmountable quality of service issues for most applications. Professionally I don't think this is fixable. They would have been better off doing the following three things. 1. Define a low speed point to point oriented modulation scheme that can be supported by 802.11 radio front ends. Probably could have implemented this as a sub-band of some sort. 2. A direct sequence spread spectrum physical layer for USB. Advantage of that is the USB stack mostly works as USB had a 10 year head start and more resources than the Bluetooth alliance ever had, or will have. If one thinks a stack like USB is 'easy' consider Microsoft had to redesign theirs three or four times. 3. Dedicated DSSS wireless headphone spec. Seriously this was the original design goal and was totally achievable until the committee responsible for the spec lost their minds.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  > That's just gratuitously negative and dismissive That's the point. If you want a heavily opinionated summary that will likely inflame a fair portion of people, Gruber is your man.
- gtirloni 10y ago
  > sound quality is flawless; I have a headset that supports Bluetooth 3 only and audio quality is bad (especially while making calls where it chooses the HFP profile which is the only one where the mic is available). I vouched to never again buy any Bluetooth audio devices. Are you saying Bluetooth 4 would actually solve my problem? Should I still have hope?
  - gman99 10y ago
    >Are you saying Bluetooth 4 would actually solve my problem Make sure your headset and device (phone?) both support HFP1.6 or above (which supports wideband speech/HD voice) which makes the sound quality semi-decent
underwater 10y ago
If it were anyone else this would be flagged as blogspam. Sometimes he can bring insight, but these Tweet-like posts don't add anything to the conversation.
- bokenator 10y ago
  who is he?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - underwater 10y ago
    John Gruber is an Apple fanboy who somehow makes a lot of money from his blog. And invented Markdown formatting.
kalleboo 10y ago
Isn't this a problem with anything wireless in general? WiFi is also plagued with connection issues, inexplicable dropouts, and slowdowns. With Bluetooth in particular it seems like there are a lot of poor implementations (if it's rock solid or buggy seems to have to do with which two devices you're using ) - maybe they would benefit from a more stringent conformity licensing process.
- 9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
  But.... it's really not. The WiFi issues you describe affect some people who most likely have 1) bad routers 2) poorly configured routers 3) tons of interference 4) Bad ISPs 5) Other clients on the network I'm not saying that setting up a WiFI network well is super easy, and there are definitely lots of things that can impact WiFi connectivity, but for it's ubiquity, I'd say WiFi works very well. In my three story townhouse with fibre and a decent router in the basement, I have none of the problems you describe.
- flamethroeaway 10y ago
  The stringent licensing is the reason why thunderbolt 3 is dead.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  I think there are two problems, one yes wireless is 'bad' You can think. 1. Reliable 2. Cheap 3. Low power Pick no more than two. Bluetooth was originally designed to be cheap and low power. The other problem is networking is complicated, and then throwing device API's on top of that makes it very hard to get right. USB had lots of issues originally. And once you leave standard devices like, keyboards, mice, and mass storage devices it gets iffy real quick. (Go scan through the libUSB mailing list archives sometime)

x5n1 10y ago

What does bluetooth not require support for multiple simultaneous devices. Have more than one device that won't let you connect more than one at a time.

bokenator 10y ago
I think it's a bandwidth issue. If I use bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and headphones at the same time, the mouse becomes very sluggish. It works totally fine if I turn off either the keyboard or the headphone.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I suspect that comes down to the protocol used. I had no problem connecting a keyboard and phone (as modem) to a N800 back in the day, while also playing music from the phone to a pair of bluetooth headphones. But that was if i used PAN For the data connection between N800 and phone. If i used DUN, either the music or the data would occasionally skip. And that may well be what gives Bluetooth its reputation. So many choices for the various OEMs in terms of protocols/profiles, on top of a more complex air interface (channel hopping). Given all of it, one may well be better off comparing Bluetooth to USB than wifi. As wifi is Ethernet over a single radio channel.
Niksko 10y ago
In theory, the Bluetooth protocol supports up to 7 devices connected simultaneously as slaves to one master device. However in practice, hardware support may be less than this.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piconet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piconet
abritinthebay 10y ago
The standard does support multiple simultaneous devices. Your hardware? Not always.

modeless 10y ago

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

honkhonkpants 10y ago
As a matter of fact "more range" is quite the opposite of what I want from Bluetooth. Do I really need to have 5000 keyboards within range of my computer at the office, instead of the 100 I already have? I definitely do not.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Headphones are the big benefactor here, for me at least. I can walk to the kitchen with my wireless headphones.
  - bokenator 10y ago
    I've found that microwave interferes very strongly with Bluetooth headphones
    - thomaskcr 10y ago
      And bodies. Had to move my laptop dock to the other side of my desk when I switched headphones from a pair that had the transmitter in the left ear to the right.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Sacks of water will do that :)
        digi_owl 10y ago

smegel 10y ago

But will it constantly fail to connect to devices it has been paired with a million times before? Don't know how I could live without that "feature".

danjayh 10y ago

For those who have given up on Engadget (I can't be the only one): http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-coming-next-week-with-2x-more-range-and-4x-better-speed/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-comi...

bokenator 10y ago
What's wrong with Engadget?
- danjayh 10y ago
  I left when they kicked off a series on modern male masturbation devices by putting a graphic cartoon of a dude with his pants around his ankles using a fleshlight-like device on their front page. Some people (legitimately) use Engadget at work ... personally I used to read it while I ate lunch. Not cool. EDIT: Found it. Warning: totally NSFW NSFW -> https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/a-first-hand-quest-for-the-future-of-sex/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/27/a-first-hand-quest-for-t...
- nameless912 10y ago
  It's 80% clickbaity bullshit and 20% mediocre gadget reviews. Long gone are the days when Engadget was a relevant source of tech journalism. On a tangentially related note, does anyone remember Engadget's apple-only sister site TUAW? That was a great outlet for a good long while until Engadget started to shit the bed a couple years ago.

voltagex_ 10y ago

I think a lot of the comments here could be attributed to the terrible Bluetooth software stacks that are around (Car head-decks, Android (all versions), Windows 8-10 default stacks). I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with speakers and mic won't work.

klagermkii 10y ago
At what number of terrible Bluetooth software stacks does one start wondering if there isn't something fundamentally wrong with the specification that makes it so incredibly hard to get right? It's been bad from day one with Widcomm and later Bluesoleil on Windows. Mac OS X for years had a Bluetooth where after a couple of hours of using the DUN profile it would need a reboot, on an otherwise nicely reliable operating system. Mice on Bluetooth have never worked as smoothly, reliably, or as well as just using a proprietary protocol like Logitech Unifying. It's not that I necessarily think it's an unsolvable problem, it's just that after a decade with so many multiple implementations that can't get it right I feel Bluetooth itself has to bear some responsibility.
- x0x0 10y ago
  bluetooth is an extended public alpha I so can't wait for phones to drop 3.5mm jacks so playing music can become an infuriating ritual too
gtirloni 10y ago
I have the same issue with a Philips SHB7150 headset. Music will play okay using A2DP (with occasional stuttering and pitch changes) but all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality). So the device has what looks like a decent microphone that is completely destroyed by Bluetooth (where in the stack this happens, I don't know).
- gman99 10y ago
  >all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality) While it's true that audio quality over HFP is a lot worse than A2DP, note that A2DP is designed for cases where latency is not an issue, you want stereo audio, and there is no microphone audio to carry the other way. (i.e., designed to listen to music) If you want low latency mono-audio to the headset + microphone audio back to the host, there is no choice except to use HFP. Note that if your headset (and your host device) supports HFP1.6, then it should support wideband speech/HD voice and the difference should not be so drastic.

x0ner 10y ago

Curious if these upgrades include any addressing security.

jamesrom 10y ago

Bluetooth is very easy to hate. It never ever just works: the pairing rituals, the flakiness. It's annoying. But in recent years it has become more and more invisible. You've probably used Bluetooth in the past 12 months without noticing. Invisibility is something that the Bluetooth SIG should strive for.

jerluc 10y ago
If anything, it would seem that (from these comments and from my own personal experiences) Bluetooth is actually not doing very well at being invisible at all.
starky 10y ago
I can think of one device where Bluetooth has been invisible, the Surface Pro 3 pen.

jtchang 10y ago

I want better range, more bandwidth, less power consumption, and smaller footprint. Oh and make it super reliable. One can dream...

tranv94 10y ago

Maybe I'm living in the past and haven't been informed, but is Bluetooth still unsecure?

MohammadLee 10y ago
Yes, it still is especially since 4.0, and this new update does not seem to do anything to improve it. BT sux.
- drewbug 10y ago
  Care to elaborate?
programmarchy 10y ago
Bluetooth 4.0 and 4.1 had a broken key exchange that was vulnerable to both passive and active attacks [1]. This could be remedied by a custom in-band or out-of-band key exchange, but I think it was rare for device manufacturers to go to those lengths. The key exchange vulnerability was addressed in Bluetooth 4.2, which implements ECDH and is at least theoretically secure. [2] [1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop-program/presentation/ryan https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop-program/pr... [2] http://blog.bluetooth.com/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-bluetooth-security-in-bluetooth-4-2/ http://blog.bluetooth.com/everything-you-always-wanted-to-kn...
- IshKebab 10y ago
  Except... that pairing in Bluetooth 4.2 is still broken. And they apparently even used an algorithm from Bluetooth 2 that was known to be broken. https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ Basically Passkey Entry is broken so eavesdroppers can trivially learn the PIN. You must use a dynamic PIN (not always possible). Oh and if you're thinking you can implement your own pairing method that is actually secure, via the Out-of-Band method, think again! Neither Android nor iOS support it.
  - 10y ago

BuckRogers 10y ago

The only reason I like Bluetooth at all is because the alternative is a bunch of USB receivers plugged into my NUC. But I have to admit that it seems to work pretty well on my iPhone while years ago on other phones I had a lot of disconnects. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point. I'd like to see more BT headsets for PC hit the market. The only ones I could find were from Turtle Beach.

aphextron 10y ago
>. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point. These are great but the real drawback that keeps me from going wireless is still the audio quality. Hopefully this upgrade will be the end of that.
- BuckRogers 10y ago
  I'm concerned about Apple possibly removing the 3.5mm jack. Removing the ability to use a headset + charge my phone at the same time is going to be a killer. I may switch back to Android if that happens. I bought one of the very few 3.5mm cellphone headsets I could find (Voistek) for my wife and it works pretty well. We shouldn't be forced into choosing between wired up for charging or wired up for headset/headphones.

Niksko 10y ago

Working with Bluetooth on a project last year was a gigantic pain in the ass. Linux support was reasonably good, though with bizarre quirks and changes of tooling between libbluetooth versions. OSX was a total nightmare. The project is currently stalled because three days before I had to head off (I was doing all of the programming and troubleshooting on the software side) my collaborators decided to inform me that they would be using a different laptop to what they'd been using for the rest of the project, and when we tried our software with that version of OSX and hardware, it refused to work nicely. We eventually came up with a bizarre pairing ritual that involved removing devices, then quickly adding them, and in a specific order, and then that mysteriously stopped working and now I don't have access to hardware to fix it. Knowing what I now know, if I'd had my time again I would have recommended ESP8266 based boards instead of the LightBlue Beans we were using. Even though one of our requirements was low power usage (which we certainly got through Bluetooth 4), it probably would have been less hassle to just make the WiFi modem sleep for a period and then transmit in bursts.

BillinghamJ 10y ago
macOS/iOS support for Bluetooth is very good at the core API level but ultimately that means you must use Objective-C for at least a small part of your codebase.
jerluc 10y ago
Depending on how much data you need to transfer between the two devices, I'd highly recommend a pair of ZigBee radios for low-bandwidth (<250k), super-low-power applications. Specifically using a pair of XBee (series 1) radios in "transparent" mode, you get what looks like a serial device on either end. When used with a USB dongle, you can simply write your code to use basic ioctl ops on the USB device file, which works well across most POSIX platforms.

lewisl9029 10y ago

What I want from my wireless devices is not more range or speed, but total freedom from wires, especially for charging. I remember from an Intel demo from a while ago, where they showcased a number of peripherals using their inductive charging tech, where you can just dump them onto a large inductive charging pad along with your phone and tablet without having to fumble with plugging wires into each one. That's the killer feature for a wireless device, in my opinion.

mschuster91 10y ago

Ah great, a new BT version once again, when even the LAST standard isn't properly supported (and especially documented!!!) in BlueZ. Not to mention Windows (which usually comes with a next-to-useless stack, and every other stack costs $$$) or OS X...

coroutines 10y ago

I kind of want an 802.11z that does wifi over Bluetooth for sub-802.11a conditions. Am I weird?

Nullabillity 10y ago
IIRC there's already a spec for this, usually it's called something like PAN (Personal Area Network).

gambiting 10y ago

And hopefully we will get bluetooth audio that doesn't suck?

micheljansen 10y ago

That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another. It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental problems that nobody seems to worry too much about, apart from a small number of vendors (Apple did a decent job solving the pairing problem with the Apple TV: http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-like-bluetooth-ios-remote-setup/ http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-lik...). I realise it's pretty hard to beat the intuitive action of plugging physical cables into devices to connect two things, but if we really want to get rid of cables, things need to be easier.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago
I couldn't agree more. I have a set of headphones that I love using with my phone and several computers. It's such an annoyance to connect it from one to the other and it doesn't appear that ANYONE is even working on making this better anymore. There was that brief period where some bluetooth devices included NFC where you could take it to the device to pair which was actually interesting but it only happened to such few products I have no idea if it ultimately ended up being usable or not.
- FroshKiller 10y ago
  I bought an August EP650 Bluetooth headset recently that has NFC pairing. The problem is that my phone is the only other device I own that also supports it.
- josho 10y ago
  It strikes me as a software problem in the device, not a bluetooth limitation. For example, some devices that I have pair only to a single peer, while others have no problems switching between several, while another device is limited to two peers--requiring a reset if you want a third. I suggest that anyone buying a bluetooth device test out pairing between multiple devices and if the device makes you jump through hopes to switch between bluetooth peers then immediately return it.

zmmmmm 10y ago

So much negativity about bluetooth in these comments ... and yet I can happily say that bluetooth has really changed my life. Bluetooth headphones allow me to walk around and exercise without an annoying cord trailing the length of my body. And I can get to the office and sit down with my mouse and keyboard and just start typing without plugging anything at all in. While it certainly had early problems, I'm super happy with it these days and especially the increase in bandwidth will be very welcome.

digi_owl 10y ago
Its because it is a complex combination of hardware and software protocols. With wifi you have a single channel, and basically ethernet. On top of that anything goes as far as software is concerned. With Bluetooth you have channel hopping radios, a pairing system for devices, and a bunch of profiles/protocols that define anything from basic serial data to encoding agnostic audio.
marssaxman 10y ago
Bluetooth has made me feel happy about the existence of cords. Ahhhhhhh, I think to myself: it will definitely work, when I plug this thing into that other thing.

0898 10y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but how come the range is affected by the protocol? Wouldn't it be the aerial?

IshKebab 10y ago
It could be new modulation techniques. You can often transmit further if you lower your data rate.
retSava 10y ago
There are many things in a protocol specification that can affect range. Allowed transmission power, specifiying that compliant receivers should have X dBm sensitivity, data bit rate, channel frequencies, modulation, etc.

pknerd 10y ago

Wonder why it was not thought earlier? After BT we saw development in WiFi,GPS, RDID etc. Nobody thought that BT could help indoor for the shopping mall usecase present in the article. Now they are planning for late 2016, means it will only be available in new phones from 2017

mtgx 10y ago

With all the Bluetooth car hacking going on and with the emergence of "connected cars" and self-driving cars, you'd think they would've introduced some stronger security features for Bluetooth 5.0 as well.

tdkl 10y ago

Can't wait for nearby ads[1] to hit me from a far larger distance in the future. [1] https://developers.google.com/nearby/ https://developers.google.com/nearby/

kevincox 10y ago
Yeah... I think nearby is a really cool idea for many things, but I don't know if it is worth all of the notifications I will have to ignore from every billboard I walk by.

Unklejoe 10y ago

You know there's a problem when a majority of the comments (on a website filled with software engineers and other technologically inclined people) are all claiming that Bluetooth simply sucks in terms of usability. Imagine how hard it would be for someone like my parents to debug a Bluetooth pairing issue. I think they need to focus 100% of their efforts on addressing some of these issues which seem to have been a problem since the beginning. Bluetooth is “almost there” in my opinion. It’s incredibly convenient (when it works), and I can envision how great it will be once they work all the kinks out. It has been getting better and I’m confident it will keep improving. Let me just add another data point: I have a 2013 Android phone and a 2011 car. Luckily, the car supports playing audio through Bluetooth which is really cool when it works. However, every time I get into the car, there’s a 50/50 chance that BT audio will actually work. The phone always pairs with the car, but it seems like it doesn’t reliably “negotiate” the audio capability. Sometimes I can make a phone call which seems to reset the system and can cause it to start working, but other times I have to actually power cycle the phone. The other issue is that every once-in-a-while, there will be this spontaneous audible crackle. After the initial crackle occurs, there will be periodic crackles about once every 10 seconds from there on out. The only way to get it out of this state is to make a call or restart the phone. It seems almost like there’s some kind of memory leak in a buffer or something which causes it to eventually run dry and bounce off of being empty. These issues seem more software related and probably have nothing to do with the Bluetooth standard itself, but I won’t let that stop me from ranting.

CaptSpify 10y ago
In my experience, if the implementation is wrong often enough that most people think the procotol/spec are to blame, than the protocol/spec are usually too complicated.
- lotyrin 10y ago
  In my experience, no standard is too simple for someone to mess up implementing.
  - 10y ago

sly010 10y ago

Here is a device I would pay for: A USB dongle that somehow pairs to my Apple Keyboard and Touchpad and presents itself as a standard USB keyboard and mouse to the OS. I could plug said device to my cinema display's USB hub. This way both me and my wife could use the same workstation by simply plugging in the computer.

creativeembassy 10y ago

I could not care less. - 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it... - 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable. - 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.1: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.2: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 5.0: More range, more bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. I have the latest Apple "Magic" Trackpad, hooked up to a Mac Pro. At least once a day, latency will take a dive, or it will completely disconnect. I have to turn the trackpad on and off repeatedly, to see if it will finally re-pair by itself. No other recourse, you can't easily access bluetooth settings on a mac with only a keyboard. (Which I made sure to get with a USB plug, since my last bluetooth keyboard had the same issues.) I also have a Samsung Level BT headset, paired with a Samsung Note 5 phone. I can listen to Google Music or Player.fm for between 1 and 10 minutes until the headset will suddenly blast noise at full volume, and become unresponsive until I turn it off and back on again. Left my ears ringing on more than one occasion. I've replaced my "magic" keyboard with a USB one, and recently hooked the trackpad back up via USB. I've stopped using the Samsung Level and went back to an old pair of headphones with a 3.5mm plug (that Apple is now trying to get rid of.) I had a past without wires. I am moving to a future with them.

nwah1 10y ago
"Bluetooth 5 Promises an End to Pairing The power of Bluetooth is set to explode when the next version of the wireless technology is released at the turn of the year. Bluetooth 5 will offer eight times the broadcasting capacity, have four times the range, and run twice as fast as current Bluetooth technology, the organization responsible for development of Bluetooth announced on Thursday. The increased broadcasting capacity could pave the way for the introduction of "connectionless" data transfers, meaning that the need to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset or wireless keyboard with a mobile app or computer program may become a thing of the past. Longer range means that it will be possible to use Bluetooth devices throughout the home, and higher speeds will make these devices more responsive." http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pairing http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pai...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wjd2030 10y ago

And then bluetooth became wifi.

aleksei 10y ago

While I'm not a fan of Bluetooth for data transfer (pairing pains), this could be great for cheap indoor location services, eg. navigating inside a building with your phone.

pinaceae 10y ago

Oh anecdotes. Use Bluetooth home spekaers, headphones and car radio all the time against my iPhone 6S - works really well. What I do though is manually connect when I want this particular device to be connected (say my headphones in the gym), and then disconnect after use. Might be magic trick most are missing.

_RPM 10y ago

Try going from having bluetooth off on your phone to bluetooth being on in your car that has bluetooth capable device. It sucks. Every car I've been has trouble pairing if bluetooth wasn't on prior to me entering the car. For one car, I had to turn the engine off for it pair. WTF?

tracker1 10y ago

My hope for the future of phone/car interfaces is that once you've paired a phone, the touch screen basically becomes a display for the phone... I have a brand new (less than a week old) car, and the UI feels sluggish, and looks very dated at this point. I'd rather my N6P managed the whole thing. Hopefully BT5 can allow that to happen.

rsync 10y ago

Do I want longer range from bluetooth devices ? I sort of thought the short range was, kind of, a feature ... How far do you really want your mouse trails and your keystrokes to fly out into the ether ?

kin 10y ago

Nearly every comment in this thread is about pairing issues. I can definitely agree with most that I don't care about range and speed as much as I do the usability of pairing with multiple devices.

tmaly 10y ago

am I the only one, or does putting more radiation out into the environment pose substantial health risks. All of this excess radiation is bound to cause some potential mutations in DNA. Adding even more is only going to increase the probabilities.

Someone 10y ago

I guess that is with the same power usage, as it would be disingenuous if that were different, but it would be nice to have that confirmed. Also, I guess that, for many IoT devices, keeping range and speed the same while decreasing power usage significantly (although, as a third guess, I expect 'double the speed' means that devices can go to low power mode quicker, potentially halving power usage of the entire device) might be more useful.

DevikaG 10y ago

Its really exciting to see that kind of capabilities and potential that bluetooth 5 brings to the table for IoT. However, what excited me even more is the capabilities put forward by bluetooth 5 to boost beacon adoption and location-based services. Given how Google's recent updates such as Google Nearby and Android Instant Apps are also ones with location-based services at its core, bluetooth 5 onces it's launched will definitely boost beacon adoption to a significant extent.