8 ms·

Bluetooth had some early success in cellphones, mostly to support Bluetooth headsets and car radio integration, starting from about 1999. It could do other thin

by phire 1y ago

Bluetooth had some early success in cellphones, mostly to support Bluetooth headsets and car radio integration, starting from about 1999. It could do other things, but the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days. Bluetooth didn’t really hit mainstream until the arrival of chipsets that multiplexed Bluetooth and WiFi on the same radio+antenna. My memory is that happened sometime around 2007-2010. At that point, the BOM cost to add Bluetooth to a laptop or smart device became essentially zero, why not include it? Modern smartphones with both Bluetooth and Wifi arrived at around the same time (I suspect these combo chipsets were originally developed for handheld devices, and laptops benefited) And once Bluetooth was mainstream, we saw a steady rise in devices using Bluetooth. WUSB operates on a completely different set of frequencies and technology and couldn’t share hardware with WiFi. Maybe it could have taken off if there was a killer app, but there never was.

mort96 1y ago
At this point, the decision to add Bluetooth or not is literally just a product decision. If you don't want Bluetooth in your product, you actively have to disable the Bluetooth part of your WiFi chip, because you can't really get a WiFi chip without Bluetooth.
- brookst 1y ago
  All of the BT+wifi chips I’ve worked with require active initialization of each feature; you have to signal the chip (over i2c or SPI or whatever) with what kind of BT operations you want. No BT stack in your product, no BT radio initialization, no BT/wifi multiplexing. At least in the (admittedly limited) chips I’ve worked with.
miki123211 1y ago
> the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days Don't forget music piracy. At least over here, a lot of kids had phones that did Bluetooth, and the primary use case for it was sharing songs they liked with each other. You could use infrared (IRDA) for that, and some people did before Bluetooth was common, but it was much slower. This was mostly on low-end Nokias, maybe with a bit of Sony Ericsson thrown into the mix. They definitely did not have WiFi, in fact, Nokia even tried to limit internet over Bluetooth for usual carrier monopoly reasons as far as I'm aware, but Bluetooth was definitely there. For many here, the iPhone not doing file and ringtone sharing over Bluetooth was one of its main limitations, at least early on. It was a social network in its own way, and having a device that couldn't participate in it was no fun.
- palata 1y ago
  > Don't forget music piracy. What you describe is file sharing, not necessarily piracy :-). Just nitpicking, I understand what you mean of course!
- rikafurude21 1y ago
  Wow this unlocked a bunch of memories from middle school where we would send each other the latest songs and games via bluetooth. I remember pirating games for my sony ericsson and sharing them with my friends and we would play these games in class. You could just share and install the .jar files. Good times
- phire 1y ago
  By "early days", I was more thinking about the 1999-2005 era, before low-end Nokias even got Bluetooth and the ability to play MP3s. The wireless headset was the killer app that drove bluetooth adoption within cellphones, driving down costs until eventually the lower-end models receiving it too. While sharing files was possible in the 1999-2005 era (especially with PDAs), most phones were lacking enough flash storage to store anything worthwhile. While I don't want to say file sharing wasn't a killer app, it does seem to have been limited to just schools during a certain time period. A time period that I missed out on by a few years. At high school, we did all our file sharing by swapping burned CDs. Then we switched to dragging around laptops and USB hard drives at university (and using the private emule network on the university wired ethernet).
  - seltzered_ 1y ago
    It may be worth articulating the Bluetooth headset specifically as the one-ear little clip headset executives and IT staff seemed to use to answer calls. Remember companies like jawbone? I vaguely remember a cultural stereotype of bmw drivers driving aggressively and wearing Bluetooth headsets. [edit: this is the clip https://youtu.be/UqfAMvXpSw4?t=25 https://youtu.be/UqfAMvXpSw4?t=25 from top gear of jeremy clarkson wearing a bluetooth headset in sunglasses in a bmw, supposedly from topgear season 10, episode 10]
    - 1y ago
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for there to even be two different modes. Why is this still happening?
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  Except for the "headphone" versus "headset" mode dichotomy that is inherent to Bluetooth, all those other issues are due to stupid product decisions that most OSes do to themselves independently on the same way. If you use Linux + KDE, you can still use any microphone or headphone, many at the same time, or in whatever mode you want.
  - bombela 1y ago
    Linux + KDE user here. It used to work on kde/plasma 5 at some point. And after a minor version update it stopped working. Now the mic of my headset doesn't work because KDE insists that only the high quality sound output without mic is available. The mic + low quality output is gone from the settings. Lucky for me this update also brought proper handling of the stereo positioned noise cancelling microphones on my thinkpad. So now I can actually enjoy the luxury of built-in microphones that work. Until the day it wont I guess.
    - redeeman 1y ago
      if you use pipewire it works fine both in plasma 5 and 6. but the audio quality in the sound + mic profile is very poor, the codec is only meant for speech
      - bombela 1y ago
        I am using pipe wire. The option to select the handset mode is gone! I can only select the various output codecs with my increasing quality. But not the mic & output mode. It's gone from the list...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Workaccount2 1y ago
The ironic thing is the Bluetooth ignored it's audio use as much as possible for as long as possible. They wanted it to be used for tracking shoppers in stores...
NooneAtAll3 1y ago
Bluetooth was the main way to transfer music from dumbphone to a dumbphone
skirge 1y ago
how to use a phone in car without headset / bluetooth to talk legally?

by phire 1y ago

mort96 1y ago

At this point, the decision to add Bluetooth or not is literally just a product decision. If you don't want Bluetooth in your product, you actively have to disable the Bluetooth part of your WiFi chip, because you can't really get a WiFi chip without Bluetooth.

brookst 1y ago
All of the BT+wifi chips I’ve worked with require active initialization of each feature; you have to signal the chip (over i2c or SPI or whatever) with what kind of BT operations you want. No BT stack in your product, no BT radio initialization, no BT/wifi multiplexing. At least in the (admittedly limited) chips I’ve worked with.

miki123211 1y ago

> the wireless headset was the killer app in its early days Don't forget music piracy. At least over here, a lot of kids had phones that did Bluetooth, and the primary use case for it was sharing songs they liked with each other. You could use infrared (IRDA) for that, and some people did before Bluetooth was common, but it was much slower. This was mostly on low-end Nokias, maybe with a bit of Sony Ericsson thrown into the mix. They definitely did not have WiFi, in fact, Nokia even tried to limit internet over Bluetooth for usual carrier monopoly reasons as far as I'm aware, but Bluetooth was definitely there. For many here, the iPhone not doing file and ringtone sharing over Bluetooth was one of its main limitations, at least early on. It was a social network in its own way, and having a device that couldn't participate in it was no fun.

palata 1y ago
> Don't forget music piracy. What you describe is file sharing, not necessarily piracy :-). Just nitpicking, I understand what you mean of course!
rikafurude21 1y ago
Wow this unlocked a bunch of memories from middle school where we would send each other the latest songs and games via bluetooth. I remember pirating games for my sony ericsson and sharing them with my friends and we would play these games in class. You could just share and install the .jar files. Good times
phire 1y ago
By "early days", I was more thinking about the 1999-2005 era, before low-end Nokias even got Bluetooth and the ability to play MP3s. The wireless headset was the killer app that drove bluetooth adoption within cellphones, driving down costs until eventually the lower-end models receiving it too. While sharing files was possible in the 1999-2005 era (especially with PDAs), most phones were lacking enough flash storage to store anything worthwhile. While I don't want to say file sharing wasn't a killer app, it does seem to have been limited to just schools during a certain time period. A time period that I missed out on by a few years. At high school, we did all our file sharing by swapping burned CDs. Then we switched to dragging around laptops and USB hard drives at university (and using the private emule network on the university wired ethernet).
- seltzered_ 1y ago
  It may be worth articulating the Bluetooth headset specifically as the one-ear little clip headset executives and IT staff seemed to use to answer calls. Remember companies like jawbone? I vaguely remember a cultural stereotype of bmw drivers driving aggressively and wearing Bluetooth headsets. [edit: this is the clip https://youtu.be/UqfAMvXpSw4?t=25 https://youtu.be/UqfAMvXpSw4?t=25 from top gear of jeremy clarkson wearing a bluetooth headset in sunglasses in a bmw, supposedly from topgear season 10, episode 10]
  - 1y ago

thaumasiotes 1y ago

> the wireless headset was the killer app [for Bluetooth] in its early days But the wireless headset is now a horrifying millstone making Bluetooth look like the world's stupidest trash fire. If you enable your microphone, you lose all audio from anything that doesn't want to use the microphone as the headset switches into "headset" mode and drops anything that wants to use "headphones" mode. There is no reason for there to even be two different modes. Why is this still happening?

marcosdumay 1y ago
Except for the "headphone" versus "headset" mode dichotomy that is inherent to Bluetooth, all those other issues are due to stupid product decisions that most OSes do to themselves independently on the same way. If you use Linux + KDE, you can still use any microphone or headphone, many at the same time, or in whatever mode you want.
- bombela 1y ago
  Linux + KDE user here. It used to work on kde/plasma 5 at some point. And after a minor version update it stopped working. Now the mic of my headset doesn't work because KDE insists that only the high quality sound output without mic is available. The mic + low quality output is gone from the settings. Lucky for me this update also brought proper handling of the stereo positioned noise cancelling microphones on my thinkpad. So now I can actually enjoy the luxury of built-in microphones that work. Until the day it wont I guess.
  - redeeman 1y ago
    if you use pipewire it works fine both in plasma 5 and 6. but the audio quality in the sound + mic profile is very poor, the codec is only meant for speech
    - bombela 1y ago
      I am using pipe wire. The option to select the handset mode is gone! I can only select the various output codecs with my increasing quality. But not the mic & output mode. It's gone from the list...

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Workaccount2 1y ago

The ironic thing is the Bluetooth ignored it's audio use as much as possible for as long as possible. They wanted it to be used for tracking shoppers in stores...

NooneAtAll3 1y ago

Bluetooth was the main way to transfer music from dumbphone to a dumbphone

skirge 1y ago

how to use a phone in car without headset / bluetooth to talk legally?