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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

#211

Post by nitrogen »

rcthompson wrote: post #167
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…

I couldn't agree more. I have never used a Bluetooth device that didn't have connection issues at least daily. And that's not even taking into account the madness of pairing a device with multiple other devices (e.g. phone & PC) or the fact that you can't use USB and Bluetooth at the same time, because USB3 jams the 2.4GHz frequency. If USB and Bluetooth are going to be mutually exclusive, I know which one I'm going…

Do you mean wireless USB3 (is that a thing?), or that the USB3 copper cables leak that much interference?

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

#212

Post by freehunter »

XaspR8d wrote: post #172
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…

I'm so glad this is the top comment, and matches my experience 100%. If a product brags about its Bluetooth support, I immediately start losing trust in it. So many devices have such bad UX for pairing too, so I can't even get any communication about what I'm doing wrong. I think BT-enabled cars are the worst offender here. Some of them don't even provide obvious alternatives to the voice menu. The only positive blue…

My first generation (non-Time, non-Steel) Pebble has refused to connect to my iPhone 6S since the day I got the new phone. Pebble doesn't seem able to help, the official answer I got was "use the old app" which won't pair to a watch with the Time firmware that their app upgraded mine to. Pairs just fine with my iPhone 5S that I use for work.

The damn thing has been sitting on my desk for months and I don't even know where the charger went. You'd think if your whole hardware experience is based around Bluetooth, you'd be able to iron out the rough edges.

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

#214

Post by freehunter »

_ea1k wrote: post #186
Dayshine wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have similar experiences. Bluetooth headphones on the phone have never been an issue, but the same devices become unreliable when paired with a PC.

Funny enough, my Bluetooth headphones (LG Tone something or other) has been rock solid, the only Bluetooth device I can reliably trust. My mouse, my keyboard, my Pebble, my literally everything else Bluetooth, all have failed me. My Bluetooth headset is the only thing I've never had a problem with on mobile or desktop.

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

#215

Post by zeta0134 »

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…

I used the Bluetooth Audio in my new car for about two weeks.

It was actually pretty reliable, and felt like the future. I'd get in, turn the car on, my phone would pair itself and pick up where it left off, and I never once had to take it or my keys out of my pocket. Then I started to actually listen to my music.

The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune. I'm a musician, so I can definitely hear this and it's infuriating. VLC on Windows had the same problem for years and everyone told me I was crazy, but the car was at least twice as bad. It sounded like an old cassette player, if anyone remembers those. Googling reveals this to be a common issue with many different varieties of bluetooth speaker. I can only imagine it's doing some sort of time stretching to "hide" latency in the packets but, well, it's not hiding it well enough for my ears. Trying to listen to anything melodic, especially piano pieces, was just awful.

Fortunately, I discovered that my car also has a shockingly excellent USB Audio implementation, so I copied the Music from my phone onto a large USB drive and have been happy ever since. More wires for me please, the future isn't ready.

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

#216

Post by iainmerrick »

digi_owl wrote: post #196
iainmerrick wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardise that and make it ubiquitous and then it's interesting. Apple has the advantage that they own their entire platform so they can adopt a new "standard" immediately.

The standard already exist, and has been with us since 2.1. Now the ubiquity thing is quite another kettle of fish...

I didn't know that, cool! Though also depressing...

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

#217

Post by freehunter »

vhost- wrote: post #18
honkhonkpants wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a matter of fact "more range" is quite the opposite of what I want from Bluetooth. Do I really need to have 5000 keyboards within range of my computer at the office, instead of the 100 I already have? I definitely do not.

I need the range. I routinely grab my phone when I'm cooking dinner and walk to the living room causing my bluetooth speaker to make awful noises.

I am able to leave my phone in my office in the basement and walk upstairs to get a cup of coffee and stay on the call with my bluetooth headphones.

Then again, if I'm biking and my phone is in my right pocket and I turn my head to the left, the audio skips. So I don't know if I can blame than on range, but there's something odd going on there.

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

#218

Post by DiabloD3 »

zeta0134 wrote: post #215
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…

I used the Bluetooth Audio in my new car for about two weeks. It was actually pretty reliable, and felt like the future. I'd get in, turn the car on, my phone would pair itself and pick up where it left off, and I never once had to take it or my keys out of my pocket. Then I started to actually listen to my music. The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune. I'm a musician, so I can definitely hear this and i…

Your phone may already be able to do it on its own: get an OTG adapter for your phone (usually MicroUSB male to USB A female) and plug a USB cable in and use your phone directly.

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

#219

Post by kevincox »

tdkl wrote: post #131

Can't wait for nearby ads[1] to hit me from a far larger distance in the future. [1] https://developers.google.com/nearby/

Yeah...

I think nearby is a really cool idea for many things, but I don't know if it is worth all of the notifications I will have to ignore from every billboard I walk by.

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

#220

Post by ldehaan »

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…

I'm pretty sure the crappyness you're experiencing is software related.

I've got a lot of tech, bt stuff everywhere and the ones that work the best have the best switching software.

one of the most solid pieces of bt management software is in the Samsung necklace headphones.

these things flawlessly switch between devices, rarely ever skip much less drop a signal.

they're now about 30 bucks, crappy physical design makes them too uncomfortable sadly.

compare with a set of headphones with supposed latency software built in, avantree makes a set of these headphones.

avantree couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag, so they ruined a perfectly great pair of headphones because they hired some random company who doesn't know bt programming and so those headphones are great for about 15 minutes and then memory leak or something and they start sucking like all the other bt devices with crappy software.

IMO bt sucks because people can't code and there isn't a OSS client software bt solution that fixes it, so far. and getting Samsung to hook it up with their headphone code base is probably not gonna happen.

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