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Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

engadget.com

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Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#151

Post by marssaxman »

zmmmmm wrote: post #73

So much negativity about bluetooth in these comments ... and yet I can happily say that bluetooth has really changed my life. Bluetooth headphones allow me to walk around and exercise without an annoying cord trailing the length of my body. And I can get to the office and sit down with my mouse and keyboard and just start typing without plugging anything at all in. While it certainly had early problems, I'm super hap…

Bluetooth has made me feel happy about the existence of cords. Ahhhhhhh, I think to myself: it will definitely work, when I plug this thing into that other thing.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#152

Post by gtirloni »

com2kid wrote: post #43
kabdib wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BT seems over-complicated, especially considering that it's quite often low-level (I really mean that organizationally) firmware engineers working on products that won't be updated after they ship. Given the types of products that are made with BT support, the hostile environments that they're developed within, and the common after-sales abandonment of support, BT should be a simpler protocol that is a LOT more resil…

BT itself is not overly complicated. Bargain basement BT chips, which is what everyone ends up using to save pennies, are full of bugs that have to be worked around. Of the various BT stacks out there, only a few are actually good, and the good ones get to charge appropriate licensing fees, meaning that they aren't in wide use. When you combine randChip with randBtStack, the end result is not necessarily a quality pr…

It would be really interesting to have a list of good BT stacks and devices using them. That way maybe we could avoid the bad ones. As a consumer I have no idea which devices will actually work properly (and I assume Bluetooth as a whole sucks).

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#153

Post by xexers »

modeless wrote: post #4

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

I never understood why Bluetooth and NFC still aren't best friends. Pairing should be as simple as tapping.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#154

Post by ascagnel_ »

legulere wrote: post #71
r0m4n0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, I look forward to the day I can leave my iPhone in a gym locker and work out with just headphones

Aren't they often made out of metal and act like a faraday cage thus?

Typically, but not always. I've belonged to gyms that have had a metal mesh (along the lines of a stiffer chain-link fence), flat metal (like a high school locker), and wood cabinets for their lockers.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#155

Post by nwah1 »

creativeembassy wrote: post #140

I could not care less. - 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it... - 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable. - 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4…

"Bluetooth 5 Promises an End to Pairing

The power of Bluetooth is set to explode when the next version of the wireless technology is released at the turn of the year. Bluetooth 5 will offer eight times the broadcasting capacity, have four times the range, and run twice as fast as current Bluetooth technology, the organization responsible for development of Bluetooth announced on Thursday. The increased broadcasting capacity could pave the way for the introduction of "connectionless" data transfers, meaning that the need to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset or wireless keyboard with a mobile app or computer program may become a thing of the past. Longer range means that it will be possible to use Bluetooth devices throughout the home, and higher speeds will make these devices more responsive."

http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pai...

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#157

Post by gman99 »

gtirloni wrote: post #148
voltagex_ wrote: post #19

I think a lot of the comments here could be attributed to the terrible Bluetooth software stacks that are around (Car head-decks, Android (all versions), Windows 8-10 default stacks). I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with…

I have the same issue with a Philips SHB7150 headset. Music will play okay using A2DP (with occasional stuttering and pitch changes) but all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality). So the device has what looks like a decent microphone that is completely destroyed by Bluetooth (where in the stack this happens, I don't know).

>all Skype calls automatically revert to HFP (extremely bad quality)

While it's true that audio quality over HFP is a lot worse than A2DP, note that A2DP is designed for cases where latency is not an issue, you want stereo audio, and there is no microphone audio to carry the other way. (i.e., designed to listen to music)

If you want low latency mono-audio to the headset + microphone audio back to the host, there is no choice except to use HFP.

Note that if your headset (and your host device) supports HFP1.6, then it should support wideband speech/HD voice and the difference should not be so drastic.

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#158

Post by Dayshine »

creativeembassy wrote: post #140

I could not care less. - 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it... - 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable. - 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4…

That's weird, I have a Pebble and the bluetooth is absolutely solid, even across my house.

I've never had a good experience with desktops and bluetooth devices however.

I wonder why drivers are so much better on mobile?

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#159

Post by gman99 »

IshKebab wrote: post #135
programmarchy wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluetooth 4.0 and 4.1 had a broken key exchange that was vulnerable to both passive and active attacks [1]. This could be remedied by a custom in-band or out-of-band key exchange, but I think it was rare for device manufacturers to go to those lengths. The key exchange vulnerability was addressed in Bluetooth 4.2, which implements ECDH and is at least theoretically secure. [2] [1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/wo…

Except... that pairing in Bluetooth 4.2 is still broken. And they apparently even used an algorithm from Bluetooth 2 that was known to be broken. https://pomcor.com/2015/06/03/has-bluetooth-become-secure/ Basically Passkey Entry is broken so eavesdroppers can trivially learn the PIN. You must use a dynamic PIN (not always possible). Oh and if you're thinking you can implement your own pairing method that is actually…

>Neither Android nor iOS support [pairing ... via the Out-of-Band method].

I'm not sure this is actually true (unless you're talking about bugs with individual manufacturers implementation on Android?). Both iOS and Android support SSP with OOB key exchange via NFC.

There are lots of products that have been available that use this for pairing/connecting, eg: https://www.bose.com/en_us/support/article/pairing-a-device-...

Re: Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

#160

Post by Waterluvian »

creativeembassy wrote: post #140

I could not care less. - 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it... - 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable. - 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable. - 4…

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I would have never known Bluetooth was anything less than a dream. I've apparently been very fortunate.
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