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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

#171

Post by wildrhythms »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #36

The annoying thing I have with bluetooth, is with my headphones, I connect them up, set them as the sound source and just..... nothing. I have to go round all of my devices and disable the bluetooth on them, because some other device is connected too and although that is not playing any sound at all, somehow has priority and doesn't allow any sound to be played by any other device.

Same issue. I find Apple devices are the most aggressive to try to pair themselves, even when the devices are in sleep mode! Most of the time I just relegate myself to holding the pair button on the headphones and re-pairing from scratch.

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

#172

Post by john61 »

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…

Thank God that I have a car from 1981.

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

#173

Post by anon_123g987 »

yosito wrote: post #150
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?

We just learned that any Bluetooth device can detect it easily.

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

#174

Post by npteljes »

moonchrome wrote: post #124
jacquesm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like phone chargers before USB. No, it's like phone chargers before EU regulators stepped in.

>No, it's like phone chargers before EU regulators stepped in. When did this happen ?

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply

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

#175

Post by wildrhythms »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #67
andy_ppp wrote: post #66

I’m building something that uses Bluetooth and largely for the classes of device I’m using everything seems to work fine? Isn’t all this like everything, largely Apple and premium devices work well and cheap crappy stuff barely works? Sort of implies it’s not necessarily the the standard at fault…

AirPods Pro still randomly fail to connect to my iDevices. Other devices will randomly connect and disconnect to othet devices in my house, announcing the connect and disconnect every time even though the connection isn’t used

I commute with the Bose Soundsport bluetooth headphones, which I actually like, but randomly they will announce that they've disconnected from this or that device, despite continuing to play audio and all of the other features with that device just fine.

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

#176

Post by ben-schaaf »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #155
saiya-jin wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what the hell did I just read... but yes Apple's implementation of Bluetooth is quite subpar compared to most peers, even though not sure if Lexus is 100% innocent here

If you consider Apples to be sub par. What’s your standard for decent? I’ve never had any BT issues with Apple stuff. And most of the other things I own have terrible BT implementations. But maybe because I can’t tell how to check for a good implementation?

Devil's advocate: Couldn't Apple's BT implementation be bad but still work well with itself?

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

#177

Post by criddell »

saiya-jin wrote: post #123
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…

what the hell did I just read... but yes Apple's implementation of Bluetooth is quite subpar compared to most peers, even though not sure if Lexus is 100% innocent here

I think the blame has to lie with Lexus. My current phone is an iPhone and my previous phone was a Pixel and both work perfectly in my Subaru, although the head unit was replaced 3 times because it was triggering some type of SOS signal to Subaru.

Frankly, I've had fewer BT issues with my iPhone than I had with my Android phone, but the Android was from three years ago and I think things have probably improved since then.

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

#178

Post by wildrhythms »

bluescrn wrote: post #170
sgt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithium-ion, should last a long time

If you're an audiobook or podcast enthusiast, you can get through a lot of charge cycles (and deep discharges) rather quickly. If you're using them frequently, expect to notice significantly degraded battery life in less then 2 years of use.

I've started to notice my ~2 year old Bose earbuds only charge to 90% battery (it announces this when powered on), even after a full night's charge.

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

#179

Post by causi »

blackhaz wrote: post #146
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;…

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.

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

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

#180

Post by dcx »

consp wrote: post #161
toxik wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I’ve noticed is that Bluetooth breaks down around major construction sites, like infrastructure projects. It’s very strange, I wonder if they have some kind of high power BT transmitters for some reason.

Any high power 2.4ghz transmitter will destroy Bluetooth communication, this is all in the same 2.45ghz ISM band. I guess they use some devices communicating on that band.

They certainly do - walkie-talkies!

Edit: Yes, they do exist - you can google this. But on reflection, a commenter below is probably right that it's more likely wireless security cameras, given typical site requirements (range, penetration depth)

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