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Bluetooth 5 Now Available
- neals 10y ago2x the speed. 4x the range. 8x the capacity "to send messages" Not using the x.x versioning anymore. Just Bluetooth 5 and the next will be 6. Also, apprently, there's 30.000 companies in the 'Bluetooth Special Interests Group' ? [Thanks Krasin, gerardnll for correcting me]
- krasin 10y agoThe press release above has somewhat different numbers: "four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message". For the speed it's just 2x, and the 8x is only about broadcast messages.
- inopinatus 10y agoDoes Bluetooth 5 improve the reliability, latency, or the UX? I didn't need more speed, range or capacity from Bluetooth. But I did want it to cease being synonymous in my household with lag, dropouts and pairing failures.
- Navarr 10y agowell I mean, 4x range bumps it to over 100 ft, where as it used to be 30 right? (Or am I just out of date?) But lag and dropouts is definitely my same concern with Bluetooth as well.. That said, it's still my preference if only because it's a standard - but it's getting damn hard to find decent Bluetooth mice now
- Someone 10y ago4x range also may mean you get interference from 16x the number of other devices. In a frequency band where everyone and their dog broadcast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2.4_GHz_radio_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2.4_GHz_radio_use), that may not be a net win.
- user5994461 10y ago"4x range" means the marketing guys could say anything they wanted. Just like how 4G LTE is multiple Gb per second, 10 times faster than the previous generation! :D Bluetooth can already do 100 ft... in very good conditions and with the rights devices and drivers.
- gerardnll 10y agoweb says 2x Speed 4x Range 8x Data https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/bluetooth-core-specification/bluetooth5 https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/bluetooth-core-spec...
- gt565k 10y agoThe range is quite important, a 4x improvement is a pretty big accomplishment. Although, obstacle/wall penetration is probably still fairly poor. The range is really the limiting factor in IoT uses IMO...
- wlesieutre 10y agoIf the range can reliably get from my front pocket to my earbuds I'll be much happier with it.
- markrages 10y agoYou earbuds are not low-energy, so no change for you.
- wlesieutre 10y agoWelp. I'm sure it doesn't help that I have Soundpeats QY7 earbuds that I got on sale for <$10. Higher end ones must work better? OTOH my Sony bluetooth speaker has stutters when I'm too far away in a 1-br apartment, so who knows.
- pogo 10y agoIt's important to note that these improvements only apply to BLE. Classic Bluetooth (EDR) is not changing, at least not significantly. Also, there will continue to be minor spec revisions (5.1, 5.2, etc). The "Bluetooth 5" terminology is for marketing and PR, to simplify the message. They don't want to confuse the general public with spec revisions.
- moonbug 10y ago> They don't want to confuse the general public with spec revisions. I'd say its about 13 years too late to start worrying about that
- gumby 10y ago> Also, apprently, there's 30.000 companies in the 'Bluetooth Special Interests Group' ? You need to pay to join the SIG to put the logo on your device (and to advertise support). So the vast majority of those "members" are just people who paid for that. Same applies to USB and HDMI.
- IshKebab 10y agoNot that it's not 2x the speed and 4x the range. It's one or the other. In fact the 4x range version is 8x slower.
- Twirrim 10y agoHaven't look at the spec yet, but curious if they've improved the security side of communications. edit: Here's what I'm referring to, bluetooth 4 LE mode is vulnerable to certain attacks: https://lacklustre.net/bluetooth/Ryan_Bluetooth_Low_Energy_USENIX_WOOT.pdf https://lacklustre.net/bluetooth/Ryan_Bluetooth_Low_Energy_U... https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/
- lucb1e 10y agoI was not aware of this[1], thanks for linking. Do you know whether the same is true for non-LE connections? I always thought those were secure, provided there are no bugs in the implementations. [1] The paper's conclusion summarizes very nicely, though they write it formally and a little confusingly: the thing is utterly broken. They can read contents, even if they key exchange was not observed/captured, and they can inject traffic. Basically it's obfuscated plain text.
- bjt2n3904 10y agoThe non-LE protocol has been pretty difficult to breach from the hacker-hobbyist level. The communication protocol is incredibly complex, and the hardware simply doesn't exist to interface well with it. A lot of BT2.0 (ie: non LE) "security" comes from the fact it's just darn hard to interface with it.
- 10y ago
- moonbug 10y agoFifth time lucky, guys.
- lasryaric 10y agoWhy is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.
- vadimbaryshev 10y agoI have problems with Macbook + JBL xtreme. It's not working. But any other combinations working fine: macbook + any other bluetooth speaker (i have 4 different speakers + headphones) and several mobile phones + JSB xtreme. Just magic.
- thearn4 10y agoI think we'd need an RF engineer to answer this more thoroughly, but it's my understanding that there are a lot of materials capable of absorbing the low-energy microwaves that it uses as its transmission medium. Water is a big one, which I think is one reason that having my phone in my back pocket almost always results in a dropped connection to my headphones over the course of working outside for a few hours, compared to my side or front jacket pocket. Too much water in our tissues.
- bjt2n3904 10y agoHi! RF Engineer here. Bluetooth sucks for a number of reasons, only a few of which actually relate to RF. First, we're bad at naming things. Is it BLE? Bluetooth Smart? BTLE? Bluetooth 4.0, or Bluetooth 4 Low Energy? And what does this have to do with ANT+? This doesn't seem to be a big problem, but it's a sign of deeper problems with the spec. In the long run it makes it very difficult for developers to implement. Bluetooth 2.0 is radically different from BTLE. In 2.0, you had one device which acts like a microphone, and another device which acts like a speaker. This was like getting two people to dance together, it takes a lot of practice to get the joined movements right. If one person stumbles, it all goes down like dominoes. BTLE on the other hand, acts like a (more familiar) client server model. You come up to the bank teller, and have a limited set of operations you can preform (withdraw/deposit money, open/close account). Here's the catch though... the teller is only open for 10 seconds during a 24 hour day, and moves throughout the city. You have to arrive at just the right time, or you have to wait until tomorrow. (This was done for battery saving.) The throughput is also MUCH slower than 2.0, which makes applications like audio out of the question for now. There's also a lot of bureaucratic hype surrounding it. If you look at the release from the BT SIG, it seems very much similar to Java's claim that it runs on a bajillion devices. All in all, BTLE seems to be a solution in search of an IoT related problem, much like Java. So in short, the reason I think it sucks is because it's a very complicated protocol with poor and confusing naming conventions. It sure doesn't help that it keeps getting re-invented! (Although BT5 seems to just be add-ons, finally!) Implementers (both on the HW side and the mobile/desktop side) have a difficult time figuring out how to do things correctly, much less why they need to be done. Things are getting better, but until the next "killer BTLE" application comes out, it's just heart rate monitors and useless iBeacons.
- wyager 10y agoWow, this press release is horrible. Full of useless business jargon. Ctrl+F "IoT": 9 results. Why do they write these things? The only people who care about bluetooth press releases are tech-literate enough to understand at least mildly useful information about the new standard.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- amelius 10y agoYes. I'd love to hear what modulation scheme they use. Or what kind of network protocols they support. But also more basic things like: is it now possible to pair multiple headphones with a single player device?
- kylehotchkiss 10y agoIs this one still going to change pitches several times in the middle of the song with top of the line hardware?
- oneplane 10y agoDoes it finally come in different colo(u)rs now?
- moron4hire 10y agoI cannot think of a single way in which Bluetooth has changed my life. Of the Bluetooth devices I have, I do exactly the same things I've always done, just with slightly more annoyance. My smartphone let me answer emails and burning questions on the go, while also letting me give up my car. My VR headset is making me completely rethink what User Experience means to the point of making the current usage of the term UX just downright laughable. But that's actually beside the point. I don't actually need Bluetooth to change my life. I need it to get rid of the wires in my life. And if it worked as advertised, I could do that. But Bluetooth devices... they're just always a tad sucky. And the ways in which they just feel bad is in the secret society handshake of doom you have to do every time you want to use the device because it's 2016 and for some reason my devices still can't reliably pair with multiple other devices. And then once they are connected, the latency in the communication almost makes them useless. I can't use Bluetooth headphones to play games, which is usually when I want to wear headphones. I can't use Bluetooth in any of my motion tracking wearable hardware prototypes, which is ostensibly the sort of thing Bluetooth wants to cover. Something that might work for me: decouple the Bluetooth pairing from the host computer. Make it a part of the dongle. Make a dongle that is basically the wireless equivalent of a USB hub, and it's to that that I pair my devices. I'd be happy to bring that dongle with me everywhere I bring my Bluetooth devices. That might actually let me use my Bluetooth mouse on my home PC, on my laptop, and on my work PC. Finally, would someone please design a decent, full-sized keyboard, with Bluetooth support.
- jwr 10y agoBLE devices actually tend to work quite well. If you try a Logitech MX Master Mouse, or an Apple Pencil, or a Microsoft mobile keyboard, you will find that they all perform very well. And most importantly, the dreaded "pairing" is only done once, ever.
- spiderfarmer 10y agoMy MX master needs to be paired at least a few times per week. It also doesn't wake up my Macbook Pro reliably. It sucks because other than that I love both devices.
- lowglow 10y agoAs someone who is building an applied AI hardware product, what can we expect from BT5 ? > Key feature updates include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity. Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections. Higher speed enables more responsive, high-performance devices. Increased broadcast message size increases the data sent for improved and more context relevant solutions. When will the chips be shipping anyone know?
- audunw 10y agoKeep an eye out for this. Should be available very soon https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF52840 https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF52840
- johnhenry 10y agoWhat's the likelihood that this can be an update to existing products so I don't have to buy all new hardware?
- fra 10y agoI would say 0 chance. Vendors typically need to rev silicon to support new bluetooth releases.
- mrpippy 10y agoRelated: Nordic Semi nRF52840 announced today, with BT 5 support and additional on-board peripherals (including ZigBee) https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF52840 https://www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF52840
- btreecat 10y agoWith no mention of audio/music improvements, I am not hopeful this release will do more than continue down the same path.
- vmarshall23 10y agoWait. What? I'm still waiting for reasonable adoption of 4 (re:BLE) ...
- Analemma_ 10y agoSeeing a new Bluetooth version is like being a fan of a perennially losing sports team. You hope that "Maybe this is year they finally get it together!", but deep down you know they won't. The three certain things in life are death, taxes, and Bluetooth being flaky.
- kraftman 10y agoWhat do they not have together?
- drak0n1c 10y agoHere is the Core v5 Spec PDF (26mb with 2822 pages) https://www.bluetooth.org/DocMan/handlers/DownloadDoc.ashx?doc_id=421043&_ga=1.9726513.560532406.1481142849 https://www.bluetooth.org/DocMan/handlers/DownloadDoc.ashx?d...
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoI wonder why 802.11ah isn't getting much industry love. It has a range of 1km! That's enough to cover an entire home and yard with "good enough" low-bandwidth coverage. Combine this with a mesh network and we could get very large private networks without many devices.
- y04nn 10y agoIt's very new, I don't know if the standard is finalized yet and I don't think there is many chip for it and if there are, the price is probably prohibitive.
- drey08 10y agoHas anyone here had issues with bluetooth interference from.. traffic lights? My Sennheiser Momentum wireless headphones seem to be running into this issue. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does I notice it happens when the traffic lights switch (e.g green to red). There must be some kind of signal interfering with bluetooth that's emitted at that point, though I can't understand why since all traffic lights should be wired, to my knowledge. For reference this is in Berlin, Germany. Perhaps it's something to do with the traffic tech they use in Germany.
- askvictor 10y agoAn increasing number of roads administrations use Bluetooth to track traffic movement. They can get a signature of a car at one intersection, and track that car as it moves through the city. I guess they look for any Bluetooth device in the area. Supposedly it's anonymized, but you never know. I know they do this in Sydney Australia, not certain where else.
- joshschreuder 10y agoInteresting, I'm in Melbourne and at least once I got interference when I was crossing at an intersection. Maybe that's why.
- servercobra 10y agoYes! Every intersection in downtown Chicago I have this same issue with my Jabra Revo bluetooth headphones. I'm not sure if it involves the lights switching, but I always get audio cutting out very badly when I'm waiting to cross the street.
- phs318u 10y agoAnd not just traffic lights. I'm in Melbourne, Australia and every day I walk across the concourse above Southern Cross station (major rail switching hub), and at a certain point my BT phones (also Jabra Revo) keep dropping out, then recover as I move past that black spot ("blue spot"?)
- 10y ago
- legulere 10y ago> Bluetooth 5 continues to advance the Internet of Things (IoT) experience by enabling simple and effortless interactions across the vast range of connected devices. What I guess is missing for Bluetooth IoT are standard profiles for IoT devices. Currently there are almost only products which speak their own protocol and need their own app. The only thing that comes a bit close to a standard is HomeKit by Apple that also works over Bluetooth, but it's closed and only Elgato managed to imlement it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2015/07/21/whats-the-hold-up-for-apples-homekit/#7c4a10b3322b http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2015/07/21/whats-the... It's kind of sad, because bluetooth seems to be the right protocol for this: - it's supported by almost all devices (contrary to zigbee which needs a bridge) - it's not totally broken in regards to local security like zigbee - it keeps IoT devices in a local network where they belong in contrast to the WiFi IoT devices that form a botnet - it takes less power than wifi
- sliken 10y agoHopefully this finally means lossless audio.
- FrenchyJiby 10y agoAnyone have a good introduction to Bluetooth ~4.0 + reasonable documentation ? I've always loved bluetooth, the concept of P2P file exchange got me through high school[1] to think about all the levels of tech involved in making your music shared with someone else's phone, but very let down by the documentation and implementation aspect. As a curious hacker who would like to decentralize his life, I've always wanted to start programming stuff over Bluetooth for any task (remove dependency on internet for purely-local services). But when I tried actually doing so, I was met with an incredibly complex ecosystem I couldn't find RFCs for (or Russian equivalent), with only Bluez as partial reference [2]. I got the impression that if you're not some deep pocketed company or are doing something with phones (preferably with IoT as key buzzword), you're not welcome to the Bluetooth(®) club. [1] My first bluetooth headset, a Jabra BT620s, bought for 30€ online, is still functional (if a little beaten) after 14 years, delivering about 6 hours of music streaming before recharge. I had to use earbuds recently for a project, and got myself really crossed with the wires thing. How pampered I have been ! [2] At the time I was interested in using BTLE with a linux laptop that clearly supported it, and a flagship Nexus 5. I gave up when I realised at the time, Bluez had only command line tools to access the Low Energy stuff, and some guy had to reverse-engineer the binaries to access some level of API. I really hope this changed/changes.
- wsetchell 10y agohttps://people.csail.mit.edu/albert/bluez-intro/c54.html https://people.csail.mit.edu/albert/bluez-intro/c54.html is a great intro. Reading the code here is a good second step. https://github.com/sandeepmistry/noble https://github.com/sandeepmistry/noble After you've gone through those, the bluetooth spec is useful for specific questions.
- Sephr 10y agoStill no audio profile that supports Opus. Why are we still using a 20 year old audio codec (SBC) for Bluetooth speakers? Opus is low enough bitrate that it could even theoretically be used over BLE (ignoring latency problems), while still wiping the floor with SBC. Regardless of whether BLE transport is possible, it depresses me that Opus support still hasn't been added to the A2DP.
- rasz_pl 10y agoWe got brand new 25 year old codec now! PATENTED and owned by Qualcomm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AptX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AptX
- DiThi 10y agoI tried to use that and after I received an expensive aptX-LL capable receiver I found out my Google Pixel doesn't support aptX! I've been wanting an Opus powered headset too, for years. Maybe someone can make a non-A2DP opus receiver and some type of virtual audio device in PC and Android?
- tinus_hn 10y agoIf it's 25 years old the patents either already have expired or are due to do so soon. Patents don't last forever.
- DiabloD3 10y agoBluetooth 5 now has enough bandwidth to do uncompressed 16/44.1 stereo PCM in real world situations. Bluetooth has also optionally supported device-side AAC and MP3 encoding (which Apple now supports, after 10+ years of being in this game, on exactly one chipset: theirs, the W1, via iTunes only, or AAC only).
- kalleboo 10y ago> which Apple now supports, after 10+ years of being in this game, on exactly one chipset: theirs, the W1, via iTunes only, or AAC only I remember having rock-solid, fully-featured (volume control, display of song titles etc), well-sounding Sony Ericsson Bluetooth gear back in the featurephone era, but once the iPhone and Android came on the scene, it all regressed with the iPhone not even supporting A2DP for a long time, and when they first added it, the fidelity was atrocious. I can't believe they're still stuck on SBC!
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoConsidering every phone I've tested (iPhone 5S, iPhone 6+, Samsung Note, Moto X, Nexus 6P) with 7 different bluetooth headphones (ranging from cheap Amazon ones to expensive LG) I have NEVER found a phone, paired with headphones, that stayed connected especially when the phone is in my side pocket and I'm walking in an open space which seems to make connectivity significantly worse. For instance getting on the BART being an enclosed space? I never have an issue. All of the headphones I've tested stay connected the entire time without issue. The SECOND I walk out of the station, even in the city, every pair of headphones I've tried work most of the time but typically cut out once every 30 seconds or so. But it's crazy inconsistent because I managed to walk to my office, once, the entire way without it disconnecting. Seeing as bluetooth 5 helps with range I'm hope I can finally using it to keep my phone in my side pocket and actually listen to my headphones, uninterrupted.
- joshschreuder 10y agoI picked up a pair of Bose QC35 a couple of months ago, and for my first pair of BT headphones I'm really impressed. I use them almost every day on my way to and from work (roughly an hour each way) and I can count the number of interference issues I've had on one hand, and definitely not every 30 seconds. This is with an iPhone 7 and iPad Pro 9.7". They're not cheap, but I'd highly recommend them.
- pkulak 10y agoSecond on the Quiet Comforts. I've owned more than a dozen BT headphones over my life and these are the best. Well, best BT implementation at least, I'm not much of an audiophile.
- isaac_is_goat 10y agoCan confirm, got the Quiet Comforts myself about a month ago and use them every day. Use them with my S7 Edge, Surface Book, cheap 20$ bluetooth dongle connected to my gaming PC and a fat 2012 13" MacBook hand-me-down at work. The only machine I have problems with is the MacBook, to the point where I'd rather just play music from my phone all day than fight with it.
- sandworm101 10y agoOh great. More powerful transmitters at 2.4, and everyone is wearing at least a couple of them. I just got my wifi channels sorted. Talk about range and connectivity all you want. 2.4 can only take so much before everything starts fighting with everything else. And KSP just updated too.
- pksadiq 10y agoIs Bluetooth 5 compatible with 4.x? That is, can a Bluetooth 4.x Central connect to 5 Peripheral (or vice versa)? Does anybody know the power usage (idle, advertising, data transferring, etc.) of BT 5 compared to BT 4.x LE? Thanks
- maw 10y agoI don't really think that Bluetooth is an industry-wide practical prank that's gotten totally out of control (you weren't let in on the joke, and I wasn't either), but I do think that it's nearly indistinguishable from one.
- aphextron 10y agoWhy hasn't Bluetooth been dumped for audio applications? The bit rate is atrocious even to a non audiophile, while my 5.8ghz wireless headphones for PC sound fantastic. Why is this?
- csours 10y agoI should have asked this earlier, but is there a good diagram/discussion of the steps to attach bluetooth audio?
- jmspring 10y agoThe title is wrong until hardware/software out there supports it. A spec does release does not mean an immediate vendor adoption.
- skbohra123 10y agoLittle too late, bluetooth as a technology is way passed it's hey days.
- Somasis 10y agoWill it still kill my laptop's wifi connection speed if I try to use it?