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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

#191

Post by askvictor »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #160
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.

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 which Just Works(TM), thus slowly exacting their revenge on the copycats and/or steering more sales towards Apple.

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

#192

Post by seer »

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…

The general idea I think is that once you start the car, it just send a play command the moment it detects the connection.

And in theory it _can_ provide a really nice experience. For example I'm walking to my car listening to an audio book, the moment I start the car, BT is connecting to the phone and moves the audio playback from my AirPods to my car speaker without skipping a beat, its really impressive.

Additionally since I'm an Apple Music user, whenever I start the car, it just defaults to whatever's I've been listening to there, unless there was a book / podcast or even YouTube video playing before. Which is very often quite nice.

Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice a.k.a. Spotify" is questionable, and why the automatic play is also not configurable is beyond me.

Just wanted to give my 2c how this can lead to a good XP.

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

#193

Post by GoToRO »

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…

I also had similar problems with iPhone and BT. Before it worked very good with an Android. What I've learned over time is that apple seems ti sabotage anything that is not apple. I had connection problems with my car, with my Sony BT headphones, with portable speaker. Alk that went away as I switched back to android.

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

#194

Post by ajdude »

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 before it plays; even when it’s stopped, the moment I take a phone call it starts playing at maximum volume again after ending the call.

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

#195

Post by neurostimulant »

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.

One option is to use your bluetooth headphone exclusively with a usb bluetooth audio dongle (which is detected as a usb headphone when you plug it). Unpair the headphone from all your devices, and plug the bluetooth audio dongle to the device you want to use the headphone with. This is faster than scrambling to find whichever device currently grab your headphone and disable it.

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

#196

Post by hellweaver666 »

criddell wrote: post #177
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

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…

I haven't driven for a few years but my iPhone 4 always used to connect and work with my Peugeot 307 perfectly.

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

#197

Post by jeshin »

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.

the pine phone has end user replaceable firmware for its LTE modem. there exists an unofficial open source alternative for the official firmware (which incidentally has vulnerabilities that quectel seems to be unwilling to patch)

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

#198

Post by ajdude »

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…

> which they generally do Every delayed zoom meeting I’ve been in due to AirPods not pairing correctly would disagree with that sentiment.

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

#199

Post by aliqot »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #188
aliqot wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market wants what the other segment of the market has, that's the purpose of marketing. Phones with no jacks, like laptops with no i/o, is something impractical that people self-justify because of the logo and the clout it affords. You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone . Airpods are just about the worst headphones money can buy and people fight over them, despite…

>> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone. I assumed I was just a grouchy old man (because I am:) but I recently found out what level of social stratification happens for teenagers without iPhone. Immediate judgement, plus the continued dreaded green text box. It is brutal I thought I was exaggerating the iPhone as a status symbol as opposed to actually convenient / t…

Imagine how I feel, I don't carry or use phones, period. The level of outright indignation I experience is pretty high. People resort to levels of disgust when met with someone who openly rejects carrying around a little bother-box in their pocket as if I'm some type of unwashed knave.

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

#200

Post by cedivad »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #162

The biggest relevation I had with bluetooth was seeing an actual pairing sequence and data transmission on an RF spectrum analyser. It really is low-power. Once you realize it is a rat's fart above the noise floor you have a whole new appreciation for the fact that it even works in the first place.

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.
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