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Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades

cnn.com

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

#231

Post by stkdump »

askvictor wrote: post #191
NikolaNovak wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, apple started a 3.5mm free future and others were happy to jump on that horrible wagon (as well as soapbar sexy designs which you cannot hold without a case, but that's another lovable rant :). But yeah. My computers have Ethernet whenever they can. That alone saves what little hair I have left.

Maybe Apple had a sinister plan here... First, they make all of their own Apple gear's bluetooth work really well with other Apple gear (which they generally do). Then get rid of the cables, and everyone else will copy Apple because that seems to be what other companies do. But everyone else's bluetooth implementations suck (which they generally do), so people think that Android/Samsung/etc aren't as good as Apple wh…

I dunno, people here report having problems with iPhones pairing to their cars. I never had a problem with Android phones pairing with my car. Or with my soundcores. As matter of fact, it works so much better, that even though my phone still has a 3.5mm, never thought I would have to use it and would be quite ok if my next phone came without. Back before I had my first soundcores I would always be annoyed with the cord rubbing against my cloths whenever I move, creating noise. And not having to deal with the cord when I put them on/off, etc. It is such a quality of live improvement, easily one of the biggest improvements in recent years.

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

#232

Post by kyaghmour »

stephen_g wrote: post #135
kyaghmour wrote: post #92

Because it's RF, shipping firmware can't be open source -- end user tweakable and replaceable. I bet this is one reason BT will never be good. If it could be open source there would be a winning stacks (or a few) that would bubble up on some git repo and be good enough for most everyone.

There’s no reason Bluetooth stacks couldn’t be open source - unlike a GSM modem, a Bluetooth chipset should only be able to transmit in the 2.5GHz ISM band, which is unlicensed. Even if you can change the LO enough to get outside the band, there should be hardware filtering etc. Of course, commercially available SDRs can transmit in all sorts of bands including licensed ones if you write the code to do so, and there…

It's not just the licensed bands but also SAR. Commercial devices with BT are often close to the body. For those devices to be certified they have to operate within specific power levels, and this has to not be operable/changeable. If you can change power levels, you can bust the SAR limits.

It's one thing for geeks to do what they want with SDRs. It's another to get the certification to ship a real product.

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

#233

Post by floodle »

meltyness wrote: post #219
faeriechangling wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pairing is my main issue with the technology as I’m frequently using one device across multiple devices. The ideal for me would be latency free crystal clear audio that can fuse maybe four different simultaneous input streams, but since that’s likely impossible, I would just like to spend less time in the hell of trying to force my headphones to stop autopairing to the wrong device every time it turns on. Nobody offe…

I hadn't thought about it, but yeah this headline captures it for sure. The music / voice / connect construct of the spec seems to have improved this in the past few years so that it's possible in software to connect. I downgraded from a flagship to a dirtpile phone, and now when I turn off Bluetooth from the Android Quick Settings, it turns itself back on exactly once, every. single. time. Sending interactions is pr…

Android automatically re-enabling Bluetooth after I just turned it off irks me to no end. It feels like a violation of the contract that I have with my phone.

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

#234

Post by fennecfoxen »

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.

I worked on a wireless network management product for ~5 years, integrating with multiple vendors, and I'm putting fiber in my walls later this year

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

#235

Post by dingleberry420 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#236

Post by themaninthedark »

ajdude wrote: post #194
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…

Similar happens in my Mazda. No matter what I do, unless the source was actively changed to something like the radio before I shut my car off, as soon as I turn on the ignition it starts force playing a random song on my iPhone , Usually at a painfully high volume. Apple has bloomed Mazda and Mazda have found Apple. It always tends to be a race between the Bluetooth connection in my ability to turn the volume down be…

Not sure which version of the entertainment system you have but on my 2016 Mazda 3, it will try and play the last song you had playing on your phone. If it can't get the song to play it will then default to the other last audio device i.e. radio, XM, CD.

You should have separate volumes for music, navigation and hands-free in the entertainment system. Also, you can mute the sound using the volume knob while the warning text is displayed during key on.

My current solution is to make sure my CD player is the other last used device so that if the BT connection fails, I get sweet sweet Baroque music instead of FM blaring.

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

#237

Post by knorker »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #222
cedivad wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you had a bad test setup. BT is 10dB below wifi, I can't see how what you are saying makes sense. Also it uses simple encodings that save on processing power but require more rf power to be decoded successfully.

For those who don't know, every 3db the energy is halved/doubled. So at -10db the energy has been halved over 3 times.

And for those who don't know, that's not actually a particularly big difference.

The inverse square law means this is just the difference between 1 meter and 3 meters. And your WiFi has no problems at 3 meters from the AP.

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

#238

Post by HPsquared »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #190
causi wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's patently ridiculous how much better the microphone on $15 wired headphones is than the ones on a $50 set of wireless earbuds.

A 25 dollar logitech wired headset with a boom is brilliant. I have people with $200+ airpods on the call and I hear their cat dog air conditioner wind spouse keyboard car and everything. But they cannot be told this - they have expensive earbuds and they can hear ME fine, so it's all great!

Boom mic is always the superior choice.

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

#239

Post by corobo »

jeffhuys wrote: post #213
NikolaNovak wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs

Looks like that might be retired going by https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251184844

> Customers are no longer able to remove the album on their own. You will need to reach out to Apple Support directly to have the album removed

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

#240

Post by wikfwikf »

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 bought the cheapest Brother laser printer in the early 2010s because someone on a forum gave me this same advice. It has worked without issue ever since.

A few years ago I plugged it into a Raspberry Pi so that I could share it via CUPS to all the family's PCs. This has also worked almost without problems (the exception being it had to be reconfigured a few times on my wife's Apple laptop). A year or so later I realised that while connected to wifi I can print from my Android phone. The phone found the CUPS server and the printer without me doing anything at all and it has never gone wrong.

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