Bluetooth 5 Now Available • Hacker News Board

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#131

Post by dominicgs » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering 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 b…

Bluetooth 5 extends the range and increases the data rate of BLE, but not both at the same time. This will allow you to stream high quality audio over BLE, saving power over regular Bluetooth, but you won't get the range benefit.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#132

Post by kayoone » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

seanp2k2 wrote: post #49

brickmort wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, connecting a device with bluetooth has less than 50% chance of continued success. When it doesn't work it really doesn't work, and there's only so much you can do with most device interfaces. I avoid it whenever possible. Hopefully this new release will change that for future devices.

Yep, I wanted to love Bluetooth for keyboards, but my Logitech and Microsoft wireless keyboards (work and home, respectively) work great with their proprietary receivers (basically like a wireless wire), while the Logitech K810 has random key lag and connectivity issues (try typing your password when Bluetooth doesn't work and you can't log in to re-pair it). Windows 10 also seems monumentally bad at Bluetooth, and I…

Similar experiences with Windows, but my Bluetooth devices usually work without any issues on Macs though.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#133

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #115

Sephr wrote: post #72

Still 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.

Bluetooth 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).

> 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!

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#134

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 5:39 AM UTC

jburgess777 wrote: post #120

agumonkey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You worked on BT specs ? BT seems an acute case of design by comittee. It's huge, full of profiles and corners. Nobody implements it really well, everything moves before it's finished. Makes you dream of wires some times.

I was involved in the 1.0 Bluetooth specifications and can confirm it was "designed by committee". IIRC the original wireless specification came from either Nokia or Ericsson and they drove a lot of the initial development. They had already developed the RF technology before the Bluetooth SIG was even formed. The original stated goal for Bluetooth was "cable replacement". Features such as pairing a headset to a phone…

Yeah, that's how it felt, they provided an out of the box full stack. Maybe this AND the field it lived in, cellphones as opposed to computers, made it too hard to do right. Cellphones changed a lot since the BT 1.0 days, instead of implementing gradual layers, you have to deliver a monolith..

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#135

Post by paulddraper » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 5:56 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #105

pdx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting 2.4GHz through the human body is hard. The human body is mostly water, and bluetooth is, after all, the same frequency of your microwave oven, which uses 2.4GHz because it's in a band of frequencies from 1-20GHz that water absorbs. When you're indoors, you don't need to get bluetooth through your body. You're getting reflections off of nearby walls and ceilings which allow your bluetooth devices to communicat…

Engineer's solution: drink less water when you want to use your wireless headphones (also, for a few days previous)

Also, become more similar to a petite woman.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#136

Post by jmspring » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 6:21 AM UTC

The title is wrong until hardware/software out there supports it. A spec does release does not mean an immediate vendor adoption.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#137

Post by skbohra123 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 6:48 AM UTC

Little too late, bluetooth as a technology is way passed it's hey days.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#138

Post by walrus01 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 6:48 AM UTC

pdx wrote: post #83

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering 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 b…

Getting 2.4GHz through the human body is hard. The human body is mostly water, and bluetooth is, after all, the same frequency of your microwave oven, which uses 2.4GHz because it's in a band of frequencies from 1-20GHz that water absorbs. When you're indoors, you don't need to get bluetooth through your body. You're getting reflections off of nearby walls and ceilings which allow your bluetooth devices to communicat…

2.4 GHz is also extremely noisy in any urban area. If you ever get access to a real spectrum analyzer capable of 2350 to 2500 MHz, it's amazing.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#139

Post by sampullman » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 6:56 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #84

jwr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth is complex. Lots of devices have crappy software which gets things wrong. And it doesn't help that the 2.4GHz band is full of radio noise, either. But most of the problems aren't with transmission, they are with setting things up and turning things on and off. Crappy software. Also, it doesn't help that everything in Bluetooth until BLE (Low Energy) arrived was pretty bad. BLE changed everything and turned…

"not even radio-compatible" Bluetooth 1.0 uses GFSK at 1 Msym/s, just like BLE / Bluetooth 4.0. So it's the same r/f modulation protocol (it's the higher layers that are incompatible.) Is it the actual GFSK parameters, eg. frequency shifts, that are different? I know that Bluetooth 2.0 and 3.0 use different r/f modulation (π/4-QPSK and 8DPSK at 1 Msym/s), but why do people say Bluetooth 4.0 is so different when it se…

One difference is that BLE uses 40 channels in its adaptive frequency hopping scheme, from Wikipedia: "Instead of the Classic Bluetooth 79 1-MHz channels, Bluetooth Smart has 40 2-MHz channels"

Now that I write it out, I see that frequency hopping would count as a "higher layer," but I think it's still managed in hardware, which could be why there are many BLE-only chips. It's possible the GFSK parameters are also different, and of course the layers above the link manager are vastly different (for some reason).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_low_energy#Technical...

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#140

Post by qdot76367 » Thu, Dec 08, 2016, 7:36 AM UTC

pdx wrote: post #83

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering 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 b…

Getting 2.4GHz through the human body is hard. The human body is mostly water, and bluetooth is, after all, the same frequency of your microwave oven, which uses 2.4GHz because it's in a band of frequencies from 1-20GHz that water absorbs. When you're indoors, you don't need to get bluetooth through your body. You're getting reflections off of nearby walls and ceilings which allow your bluetooth devices to communicat…

I work in adult toy design/consulting, and radio/antenna design is actually a HUGE problem there. Trying to figure out how to build antennas for mobile-connected wireless adult toys (versus the cheaper < 1ghz radio toys that just come with a remote) that can work in a myriad of situations is a big problem that's delayed some products, killed others. Any glitches on those products usually guarantees online comment/review anger and that it'll never get used again.