Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades • Hacker News Board

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#141

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

blackhaz wrote: post #91

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion.

Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years!

Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge.

Man can these things backfire!

But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice; iPhone is work mandated) and there's just no telling what'll happen any given time when we start the car. Especially annoying since modern infotainment units make you wait 3 to 5 seconds to display crucial legal information before you can mute the darn thing. And let's not start if you have more than one Bluetooth headphone and more than one device at home :(

(Yes I'm now the grouch that misses 3.5mm on modern phones and uses my old Note 8 and wired Sennheiser to listen to music hassle free :D)

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#142

Post by noisy_boy » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:06 AM UTC

badthingfactory wrote: post #73

Paul_S wrote: post #56

Let me pass on to you some ancient Chinese... er, German engineering wisdom: He who understands wireless communication uses cables.

Any time a relative asks me which printer they should buy, I tell them to get the cheapest Brother laser printer they can find without wifi. I mostly do this to save myself support calls, but it's also the printer I use in my own house.

I have the wifi laser printer from Brother - works fine wirelessly with Ubuntu.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#143

Post by mort96 » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

sgt wrote: post #122

bluescrn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good hardware ruined by non-replaceable batteries

Lithium-ion, should last a long time

Really? Phone batteries are lithium ion, and they get very noticeably worse after just a year or two.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#144

Post by QuarterReptile » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

My only complaint is, I suspect, a regulatory thing. Cars don't let you pair when driving, which is perfectly useless since the only time you pair a new phone to your car is when you have a new passenger wanting to connect her phone...

Other than that, my Bluetooth experience is perfectly boring 99%+ of the time.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#145

Post by neurostimulant » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:07 AM UTC

dhsysusbsjsi wrote: post #24

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

People seem to complain a lot about Bluetooth, yet I owned dozens of devices of all vintages and they all played nicely with each other, except for a cheapo pair of MPow earbuds off Amazon. I even managed to transfer old school photos off my ancient 2003 NEC flip phone to my current Android phone even though the former uses Bluetooth 1.1 and the latter 5.1. I also fondly remember using Bluetooth in school to transfer…

Yet every month my Apple AirPods stop connecting with my Apple iPhone, until I hard reboot the iPhone. And a $70 Bluetooth headset that wouldn’t connect to a brand new Apple laptop until I restarted it 4 times, rebooted the Mac twice, and toggled the pairing mode about 8 times. And Bose headsets that don’t connect to iPhone for 2-3 attempts.

This is one of the reason why I prefer to use a usb-c bluetooth audio dongle to use my bluetooth headphones. I have multiple bluetooth headphones and multiple devices that can use them, so switching the headphones between those devices got old very quickly. Now I just plug the bluetooth audio dongle to the device I currently use (pc, laptop, or phone) and turn on the bluetooth headphone I want to use, and it's done. I basically turned the bluetooth headphones into a virtually wired headphones now.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#146

Post by blackhaz » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:08 AM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #141

blackhaz wrote: post #91

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion. Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years! Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge. Man can these things backfire! But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice;…

We should start a club!

My son just bought a 3.5 mm adapter for the phone. Turns out the younger generation prefers wired too.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#147

Post by astrange » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:08 AM UTC

turtleman1338 wrote: post #19

Bad audio quality with bluetooth on phones is mostly a myth. Todays smartphones only have cheap digital audio converters(DAC), so that you usually get higher quality music with a proper bluetooth codec like aptx.

Recently phones don't have DACs since they don't have headphone jacks. Well, they have them for the speakers and vibration but presumably you didn't mean that.

But their dongles' DACs are quite sufficient and are better than most of the audiophile DAC industry (which doesn't have the budget to actually make anything good).

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r...

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#148

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

blackhaz wrote: post #91

My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…

For what is worth, the same is for android. Whoever thought that changing volume should trigger "play" didn't actually test it.

I thought Audible was a virus, I can't shut it down or stop it and whatever I do, it starts playing

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#149

Post by AmericanChopper » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:09 AM UTC

There’s a huge problem with BT that the article doesn’t seem to touch on at all, which is that it’s too low-bandwidth to provide a good experience for many of its intended use cases. It has no high quality full duplex audio profile. It is literally not possible to use a Bluetooth headset that doesn’t very noticeably degrade the audio quality for both yourself and your audience.

Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

#150

Post by yosito » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 11:10 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #54

I tried to learn why BT is still somehow painful to use, and the article basically does not have an answer. My take from comments here and my experience: - Makers of BT devices can't agree on many important common things (easy discovery / pairing mode, priority, etc), and have little incentive to seek agreement. It's like phone chargers before USB. - Makers of BT devices tend to cut corners and/or add not-entirely-st…

> user never notices when a small EM storm rages nearby

What's the easiest way to detect this? Is this something an average smartphone can detect with the right app? Or would I need to buy specific hardware to detect it?