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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

#211

Post by jkestner »

blackhaz wrote: post #114
rjzzleep wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a link to remove the album[1] but it seems like they shut it down. So the only way for you to remove the album from your account is to contact apple support. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540#:~:text=Apple%2... .

I also have an alarm set up I cannot delete. It says "pick up Matt from school." It migrated all the way from iPhone 7 to this X. But he has grown up since and I don't need to pick him up anymore. I'll include this in my request.

Sir, have you tried picking Matt up and putting him down, narrating your actions for Siri?

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

#212

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

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…

That's an iPhone problem. All our Androids (OnePlus, Google, Samsung, LG) have been connecting perfectly well to my TomTom navigator. Only my iPhone Xs refuses to connect. It's a well documented problem with iPhones and TomTom for many years. Similar story with my AirPods which won't connect to my Thinkpad running Linux - while all other BT headphones (Bose, Sony, Anker) do connect.

Also the article seems to primarily refer to Apple products.

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

#213

Post by jeffhuys »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #141
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…

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;…

There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs

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

#214

Post by kretaceous »

Someone should make a Bluetooth alternative just for audio transmission with a sane, forward-compatible spec.[1]

More than half of Bluetooth woes will disappear.

When I was annoyed to no end by my headphones, I searched upon Bluetooth alternatives and why are they not in widespread use. I did not find much.

Bluetooth needs a rebirth.

1: No. Don't reply with xkcd 926.

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

#215

Post by DoingIsLearning »

cedivad wrote: post #200
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.

> No, you had a bad test setup.

I was not in a test chamber at all and I had all sorts of real world background noise. Not sure what you mean, if bad setup means real-world with all sorts of automobile RF noise then yes, it was a bad setup?

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

#217

Post by johnwalkr »

donatj wrote: post #12

I have a pair of Anker Bluetooth ear buds I really like. Fit nice, decent noise canceling. They are just a fricken nightmare to sync. It took me half an hour of fiddling with them to get both of them to sync at the same time to my phone when I bought them. My wife's headphones died and without asking she borrowed them. She messed with them and was unable to get them to sync to her phone. Since then I have now been un…

I have a cheap but good bluetooth headsetthat I like. Sometimes I have trouble using it because it connects to a device I don't actually want to use first. If I made a headset I would put a switch for multiple devices on it, like some mouses have.

Anyway it has a nice feature: long press the pair button to forget all pairings. It solves almost any issue, and it's more convenient to re-pair things that you want to use, than switch to a device you are not using to disconnect

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

#218

Post by NikolaNovak »

aliqot wrote: post #199
NikolaNovak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

I don't think I can fully imagine; I prefer my ergonomic keyboard and massive monitor to be sure, so I dislike phone-first solutions (GRRR Whatsapp GRRR), or phone-priority design, and computers are definitely my hammer of choice.

But between Winnipeg winter storms and kids and experience of civil war and strife in a previous lifetime, mobile phones as a safety lifeline were a strong priority for me early in my life in late 90's; and then I was one of those nerdy guys with Palm Pilot (I used to read entire books... many many books... on a 320x320px screen - which is why I find it hilarious when people so righteously proclaim "Retina or bust" :), then Palm Treo then HTC G1 then Galaxy S2 and so on. I am too self-absorbed or something to worry about social media (I genuinely don't care what anybody else had for lunch or the cute picture of their cat or the latest copy pasted platitude that's 5 words but 3MB overcompressed JPEG grr!), so scrolling Facebook or twitter notification etc are not a real threat vector in a portable phone for me. Which is to say, I don't care one iota if anybody else has a portable phone or not, but I personally find it much too convenient; and I can see it impacting me if somebody else doesn't have a phone, not from status perspective but from practical perspective - there's a change of plans, but oh, Bob is still going to the CoolCafe and we can't tell him to meet us at the NiceRestaurant; or my tire is blown, how am I going to call anybody; etc. How do you handle stuff like that?

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

#219

Post by meltyness »

faeriechangling wrote: post #59
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #8

I do find it a frustrating technology. As the article says, pairing can be quite hit and miss. I generally have to search how to pair devices when I have to set it up on a new device, even for devices I've had for years! They're all different, and it can be unreliable. I have read that it suffers the interoperability issues because the spec is complex with many optional bits in it, although I don't know how true that…

Pairing is my main issue with the technology as I’m frequently using one device across multiple devices. The ideal for me would be latency free crystal clear audio that can fuse maybe four different simultaneous input streams, but since that’s likely impossible, I would just like to spend less time in the hell of trying to force my headphones to stop autopairing to the wrong device every time it turns on. Nobody offe…

I hadn't thought about it, but yeah this headline captures it for sure.

The music / voice / connect construct of the spec seems to have improved this in the past few years so that it's possible in software to connect.

I downgraded from a flagship to a dirtpile phone, and now when I turn off Bluetooth from the Android Quick Settings, it turns itself back on exactly once, every. single. time.

Sending interactions is pretty reliable too for switching between devices. Pressing the call button on my car or my headphones signals my phone to instantly change audio contexts, but it's inconsistent, and some devices send "pause" signals at will.

It's probably an accident, but my car displays correct, up-to-date, scrubbing and metadata, and I can get audio from my ANC headphones at the same time.

Bottom line, I've seen the "Connect" button work, and there was even a Quick Settings panel listing paired devices for you to plug/unplug at your pleasure, but only if you've paid for an expensive phone.

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

#220

Post by gruez »

dcx wrote: post #180
consp wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I don't think they use the 2.4 GHz band.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mobile_Radio_Service

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