Bluetooth 5 Is Here (betanews.com) 114
Reader BrianFagioli writes: Today, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announces the official adoption of the previously-announced Bluetooth 5. In other words, it is officially the next major version of the technology, which will eventually be found in many consumer devices. So, will you start to see Bluetooth 5 devices and dongles with faster speeds and longer range in stores tomorrow? Nope -- sorry, folks. Consumers will have to wait until 2017. The Bluetooth SIG says devices should become available between February and June next year.In a statement, Bluetooth SIG reminded the specifications of Bluetooth 5 -- "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."
15 competing standards (Score:1)
Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections.
It's like he is >implying we don't have practically ubiquitous WiFi coverage.
Re: (Score:3)
Consumers will have to wait until 2017.
Somebody tell them it's December now!
Re: (Score:2)
I would love to see the peer reviewed medical studies that show any effect of EM on the human body. Since you seem to be asserting something that clearly goes against the laws of physics, you must have some citations to back up your position.
Battery Life (Score:1)
Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. You now get 5.5 mintues
Re: Battery Life (Score:1)
5.5 mintues?!? Holy shit! What does that equal in minutes?
Re: (Score:2)
Audio (Score:3, Insightful)
http://lifehacker.com/does-bluetooth-audio-still-suck-1505063323
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
"however not sure why they bother as at this point why would you choose ____ when other ____ technologies now do the job"
lets play madlibs.
javascript/java/go/php/ruby/python ... programming ... dildo
dick
blah blah blah
As always, there are different tools for different jobs. Bluetooth uses much less power than WiFi for example.
Re:Audio (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Audio (Score:2)
Maybe you are an android with a metal skeleton that interferes. I have never had any problems with BT and I use it every day as a tethered modem with my phone, both from a Macbook, ipad, andoid tablets and another android phone. The headset works fine too, no hassles. In fact, this is posted from an ipad over a BT link in a train
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What other wireless technologies? Wifi? So you want every pair of wireless headphones, speakers, etc to now have to have some way to select what network to use, provide credentials etc?
Re: (Score:2)
Umm, no it doesn't. Have you ever actually used a bluetooth device?
Re: (Score:3)
Have you ever actually used a Bluetooth device?
In Putinist devices, Bluetooth uses you!
. . . and please don't tell that joke about Helen Keller's parents punishing her by moving the furniture.
Have you ever actually seen photos of Helen's loving parents . . . ?
Neither did she!
Re: (Score:2)
BLE doesn't use pairing and Bluetooth isn't a "network" that devices need to join.
With bluetooth you don't have to discover a network, join it, and provide one of several login credentials, none of which many bluetooth devices have an adequate UI to implement. Joining a WiFi network during setup of smaller devices is a horrendous, unacceptable process. The equivalent process with bluetooth is either nonexistent (BLE) or a joy in comparison. Often time, even when pairing is needed, the process is entirely
Re: Audio (Score:2)
In what way is it horrendous?
Re: (Score:2)
It *may* not exist. I can eavesdrop on keyboards (Score:2)
> it is hidden for other wireless tech devices like mice etc that don't use Bluetooth, simply because you don't see the network selection and authentication doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If you can't see it, and don't know what standards are used, don't assume there is any authentication or confidentially. I can eavesdrop on wireless keyboards sold by Microsoft and other companies.
Confidentiality requires authentication (Score:2)
Confidentially and authentication go together because over the network you can't have confidentiality without authentication. You have to know whether or not you're talking to a man-in-the-middle.
That's why the public key is signed, for authentic (Score:2)
> public key from a website to encrypt your information too it
The reason that the web site's public key is signed by a party you trust, such as VeriSign, is to authenticate the web site. Without authentication, the public key you use to encrypt your bank transfer might be the bad guy's key, or it might be my my key, rather than the bank's key.
Without authentication, you don't know who you're securely sending your information TO. Authentication allows you tell the difference between these three scena
Re:Audio (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that after so many years, BT audio still stutters and jumps sometimes?
I have experienced this problem across all the different devices and headphones I have owned over the years. It doesn't seem to matter how high end the devices are, this problem eventually crops up from time-to-time. It normally can be fixed by turning off wifi on the device, but that doesn't always do it.
This problem seems to rear its head more often when I am around other people (public transit, restaurants, office buildings, etc) which leads me to believe it is an interference problem.
If that is true then the increased range and speed might solve it, right? But if everyone has higher power BT signals wouldn't the interference be worse?
I guess just wait and see...
Re: (Score:3)
Why is it that after so many years, BT audio still stutters and jumps sometimes?
Two reasons... #1 usually the devices are cheap, underpowered and cannot keep up with blue tooth's overall processing demands and do all the other glitzy things that attracted all the people who where willing to purchase the device.... And #2, Bluetooth is not very robust in it's interference resistance as implemented on most low end devices (see #1).
Re:Audio (Score:5, Informative)
#3 Bluetooth uses public spectrum and is subject to interference from all kinds of other electronic devices, including other bluetooth devices in the immediate area.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends. Higher range requires higher transmission power. So, for the one using the BT device, you'll get less interference from other devices. Until they all upgrade to BT5, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
If you assume they all blare out radiation as much as they can as often as they can, sure...
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo. 2.4Ghz is hopeless for anything that isn't heavily buffered. Applies to wireless keyboards and mice as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I had big time problems trying to use my Logitech bluetooth mouse and keyboard at the same time an external spinning disk was attached via USB 3. Apparently the interference is a known issue [intel.com].
I also recently purchased a WeightGurus scale that uses lower-power bluetooth to transmit reading to a companion smartphone app. When this happens there's some sort of interference between the WiFi and bluetooth receivers on my phone and I have to turn off bluetooth, then turn WiFi off/on and finally turn bluetooth b
Re: (Score:3)
Interference seems to be a big problem with Bluetooth. There are certain intersections in my city where the signal craps out while crossing the street; certain sections of the train and bus routes, and other places where music simply stutters or dies. I assume there's a local point source of interference to blame in each of those areas. I ended up fixing the problem by shelving my collection of Bluetooth headphones and going back to using wired headphones. The sound quality and reliability are far superi
Re:Audio (Score:5, Funny)
"Interference seems to be a big problem with Bluetooth. There are certain intersections in my city where the signal craps out while crossing the street;"
Usually, this happens about ten milliseconds before the truck you walked in front of slams into you as its grille interferes with the signal.
Re: (Score:3)
Leaving the screen on for me stops all those problems, and I've tried it on 3-4 different affordable bluetooth speakers.
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't mind something better than A2DP to play high quality audio, with the ability to downshift if there are connectivity issues. I also wouldn't mind some sort of block transfer protocol, perhaps upshifting to Wi-Fi (without needing to join a SSID or use an AP) when needed. Wi-Fi Direct tries to do this, but it needs an AP, so it isn't really that useful for allowing a drive to communicate to a laptop while the laptop is already using an AP, and one doesn't want to connect their hard drive to a publ
Re: (Score:2)
More bandwidth for advertising! Yay! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've never owned one that worked.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Totally agree. I hate that when using bluetooth to my headset, it drops back to the headset protocol to use the mic. Why can't a2dp offer bidirectional audio for devices that have speakers and microphones?
Also, the quality is terrible, but you mentioned that already.
Re: EH! (Score:2)
And that was a reasonable reply to thos forum how? I dont own a car and i dont comment in car forums. Imdont own a dildo and i dont comment in dildo forums. Thanks for wasting a part of my day.
PS no one gives a fuck what you do, luddite
Good hardware, bad software. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately for BT the software stacks will still suck.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for BT the software stacks will still suck.
I've given up on BT mice. Even the Microsoft branded ones, on different computers with different MS OS's eventually un-pair and become unusable.
Re: Good hardware, bad software. (Score:2)
The problem with newer BT peripheralw is that, for some reason, they are all now using bluetooth 4LE which is entirely another protocol which was not designed for HID devices. Why mice need to hack HID over BLE if the original standard worked better is a mystery to me.
My MS BT 4 mouse sucks. The apple magic mouse is OK, but the logitech non-BT mice are much better.
Re: (Score:2)
After Bluetooth 4 disappeared without a trace, they needed to come up with another standard to replace it?
Re: (Score:2)
"have to wait until 2017" means you'll be lucky if they dump out a half-baked buggy, premature model right on December 31st, 2017. They'll try patching it in software but it will never work right until version 2.
Re: "Consumers will have to wait until 2017" (Score:2)
Well, we are already at v5 here...
Audio (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen this complaint before, but I don't understand what people are talking about. I bought a Sony "mechless" head unit for my car so I could use BT for playing music, and it sounds fine to me. FWIW I'm not one of those that thinks 128K CBR MP3 sounds fine, I can usually tell up to at least 192K MP3 that it *is* MP3, ie I can hear the compression artifacts. The MP3s I put on my phone are compressed to VBR0, J-Stereo. It sounds quite decent in my car, plenty of "punch" as you put it. Granted I do have th
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen the complaints before too, and I don't understand them either, but then again, maybe it's because I'm not buying the $5 bluetooth adapters or the $11 kmart bluetooth headphones.
Re: Audio (Score:2)
Bingo
Will we get simultaneous pairing? (Score:3)
I mean where I can pair a set of headphones to, say, a phone and a computer at the same time and get audio from both at the same time? Or send the audio from one device to multiple devices at the same time? Two headsets paired to one phone at once?
Is this a hardware restriction of the radios, a limitation of the BT protocol or just the retarded nature of the implementation?
Re: (Score:2)
Good point. Bluetooth allow one-many pairings - the computer can pair w/ Bluetooth speakers, mice, keyboard, all simultaneously. But it doesn't allow many-one pairings, such as two phones accessing the car stereo. I'm not sure whether a phone being able to connect to just one headset is true or not, and if it is, why.
I have 2 phones and 2 tablets. Sometimes, I may have 1 phone and 1 tablet in the car, making the tablet one of the music sources. Normally, if I am listening to the radio and a call come
Re: (Score:2)
It does have that functionality. Seemingly not in the devices you purchased, but it exists, so you should blame the products (or the purchaser thereof :-P) instead of bluetooth...
Re: (Score:2)
How is the headset/speaker supposed to know which audio stream should be played. Assume you have two phones connected to your car via BT, listening to music from phone #1 and phone #2 gets called. Is the car receiver supposed to figure out which audio to mute and which to play, or just play both streams over each other and let the driver/user pause one?
Mostly that's a logic problem. Usually calls are prioritized over music in bluetooth, so if you were playing music on device 1 and a call came in on device 2, why wouldn't it make sense to pause playing on device 1 and play audio on device 2? That would be the "logical" choice for a relatively dumb playback device, but on a platform like a PC or something with a control plane for configuration choices it could be something that was configurable.
Mute playback on all devices, reduce volume to x% and continu
Re: (Score:2)
I think that this indicates the need to allow not just 'master-slave' pairings, but 'gay' pairings, like multiple masters (not sure that slave-slave pairings would work). Like the phones should be able to connect to multiple devices, while the car stereo should be capable of controlling which phone handles it. For this sort of logic, I think the phone's Bluetooth would have to work as well, so that if phone A is playing music and phone B gets called, phone A pauses and releases the car stereo to phone B
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think multi-phone pairing with most Bluetooth receivers would be that hard. Nearly all the reasonably modern ones have track skip control and pause/resume functionality. Cars in particular seem to know when a call is coming in since the in-dash display usually shows incoming call status. It doesn't seem unreasonable that the car would just send a PAUSE to the sources playing music if the call came in on another device.
And up to this point, nobody STILL has explained tome whether multi-device pair
Re: (Score:2)
From what I understand, the Bluetooth protocol is about converting RF signals into digital signals that can then be interpreted by the receiving baseband. It has nothing to do w/ manipulating the actual signals themselves: that would have to be done in a higher layer beyond the protocol.
The multi-device pairing/switching is something that would have to be done by another controller - maybe the baseband can do it, but I'm not sure whether it's on the to-do list of the baseband processor
Re: (Score:2)
Think about your problem for a moment especially when combined with frequency hopping and other features intended against hardening a protocol against interference /attack. There actually few if any wireless standards which support this for data.
Re: (Score:3)
I guess I'm asking "why not?"
If two devices can share information about frequency changes, key rotation or whatever, why can't three or more? The assumption is that you go through manual pairing/peering verification on the devices themselves, so there seems to be no reason that the protocols couldn't replicate this data among more than two devices.
Re: Longer range? (Score:1)
I ride motorcycles and use an intercom to talk to fellow riders using Bluetooth. It works very well up to 1km as long as there are no buildings or whatever in between. At the same time, the device is paired and connected to my GPS and phone which plays music. Battery lasts more than 8 hours. Look up Sena 20s.
iPhone support (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:iPhone support (Score:5, Interesting)
iPhone 7 & Air Pods (ie W1 chip) already support BT5 (in hardware anyway).
Today they just ratified the standard and set it in stone (which allows the hardware to get a software update on todays spec).
Perhaps this is why the Air Pods were delayed until now. [macrumors.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I was actually wondering this when the iphone 7 came out. Apple literature kept saying "custom bluetooth chip" which, to me, is code for "don't touch it with a 10 foot pole". But if it really is just pre-released BT5 (which will be presumably be updated with new firmware), then the iphone 7 suddenly becomes a whole lot more attractive.
Was quite surprised that iPhone 7 doesn't have thi (Score:2)
Considering the removal of the headphone jack, surely this would have been a nice olive branch to say they have the latest and greatest.
Plus they generally adopt new tech very quickly
Re: Was quite surprised that iPhone 7 doesn't have (Score:2)
If 'very quickly' means 'before it comes out' i think your standards are maybe a bit too high. Even Apple cant buy a time machine
Re: where are the angry nerds? (Score:2)
No. Really.
Bluetooth: Implemented to disapoint (Score:1)
I just want my phone to connect to my car reliably!