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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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Apparently USB3 host implementations cause problem in some early first generation products that also internally implement Wifi and BT.

As in, they are not internally shielding the two from each other. This is largely a problem on Apple products due to their "creative" way of designing hardware internally, but not limited to Apple only.

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

#223

You know there's a problem when a majority of the comments (on a website filled with software engineers and other technologically inclined people) are all claiming that Bluetooth simply sucks in terms of usability. Imagine how hard it would be for someone like my parents to debug a Bluetooth pairing issue. I think they need to focus 100% of their efforts on addressing some of these issues which seem to have been a pr…

In my experience, if the implementation is wrong often enough that most people think the procotol/spec are to blame, than the protocol/spec are usually too complicated.

In my experience, no standard is too simple for someone to mess up implementing.

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

#224

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…

Good point! I've been having similar experiences pairing my phone (6s) with my dad's brand new Honda CRV. Takes a minute of sitting and pressing buttons after every stop to get it to resume the pairing. The car is equipped with a computer that auto steers within the lane but still can't get this to work instantly

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

#225
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Bluetooth is kind of a nightmare for operability. I do think it could benefit from a bit more speed, in terms of opening up what it can do, but in terms of range.... if I need range, I'll use WiFi. What I need is for bluetooth to just work, dammit. I get that it is hard, but work on that before you work on anything else. Heck, I've found that using WiFi instead of bluetooth for a wireless hotspot/link is more re…

It's aimed at low power IoT devices. Wi-Fi is (relatively) very power hungry compared with Bluetooth LE.

Power helps with signal quality and bandwidth maybe, but simplicity and interoperability are all but completely orthogonal concerns.

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

#226
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is what Zigbee should be addressing.

Phone manufacturers universally adopted Bluetooth as the standard wireless protocol for peripheral devices. Zigbee and other 802.15.4 protocols will always be at a disadvantage even for tasks the Bluetooth protocol is not suited for. Bluetooth chips are cheap and more widely supported than anything else because Bluetooth radios are manufactured at massive scale for the phone market.

The original poster was talking about scenarios with industrial devices and NOT for pairing with phones...

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

#227

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…

>The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune.

I agree. I have a Ford, and the interface is as good as any I've experienced with respect to Bluetooth enabled vehicles. But there's a definite drop in "sound quality" compared to USB based devices or CDs. I only ever use it when we're bored of what we've brought and want to stream Google Play.

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

#229

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…

There's an assortment of codecs that can be used by the Bluetooth A2DP stack, the protocol is extensible but the only required codec is SBC. Apple supports AAC and Samsung backs APTX so that doesn't help. You usually end up with the lowest common denominator.

I've tried out a number of in-car bluetooth setups over the years and I've found that the quality varies pretty significantly between both auto makers and aftermarket units. Ford and Toyota are pretty solid where as Chrysler and Honda are pretty awful. As far as aftermarket solutions go, GROM is decent and USA SPEC is horrid steaming crap.

Another unfortunate occurrence I encountered was that Android paired with certain systems (Honda) will prefer to stream audio over the HSP/HFP stacks instead of A2DP or will switch when a call is incoming and stick. This is tons of fun because HSP/HFP use very low quality codecs meant tuned for voice applications.

Now that Bluetooth is high bandwidth, I would like to see them add a new audio streaming stack that just accepted PCM/FLAC/AAC/MP3/OGG in all their glory.

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

#230

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…

Yes 1000x. I always prefer proprietary wireless devices over Bluetooth since it's been such crap since inception. My first taste of Bluetooth was with a Nokia 6600 and a Sony Ericsson HBH-660 more than a decade ago. It dropped the connection all the time, the caller ID didn't work, the audio would be choppy, etc. This was in 2004 or 2005. The headset didn't work with any other future phone I had, even though it was "compliant" with this "standard".

These days, I have a DualShock 4 controller which Windows 7 and 10 don't like, using 4 different Bluetooth radios. It also won't pair with my FireTV, though this is possibly a purposeful limitation because Amazon wants to sell me their controller.

Speaking of that FireTV, the Bluetooth remote doesn't work the majority of the time, and eats a pair of Energizer lithium AAAs about every 3 weeks. It's nice that it's not IR, and I usually just use the Fire remote app instead of the physical remote, but it annoys me to no end that we've replaced something which was simple and reliable with something which is complex and wonky; same problem with touchscreen everything in cars and everywhere these days, but that's a rant for another time.

I have a nice pair of Logitech Ultimate Ears UE9000 headphones which have audio glitches every 1-60 seconds when connected to my PC. This makes gaming on them basically impossible. The range for a good connection is about 6'. I usually just plug them in, negating why I bought wireless headphones.

My Automatic OBD dongle works well -- except for the super unreliable Bluetooth connection, which pairs about 80% of the time anywhere between 5 seconds after I start my car to 10 minutes into a drive. Trying to get it into the actual "connected" mode where it can work (poorly, at a slow and highly variable update rate) with Harry's Lap Timer is an exercise in frustration, killing the iOS app multiple times, trying to re-pair it, toggling Bluetooth, etc.

My Suunto Ambit 3 watch works unreliably with Bluetooth, and the messaging "smart"watch feature is so annoying to use that I just turn it off and sync it manually with a laptop. Bluetooth again here. Their proprietary fitness band (which can also do Bluetooth) works fine with the watch.

A Polar fitness band did so poorly with pairing that I replaced it with the Suunto belt mentioned above for use with the watch. Pairing to my phone would work about half the time. These fitness bands are also annoying since they have no status light to indicate power or Bluetooth connection state; you just have to get it wet so it conducts and hope it's on and that the battery isn't flat.

In my car I have a Pioneer aftermarket radio with Bluetooth. It doesn't support a profile which lets me play audio, only hands-free phone call mode. The USB connection mis-pairs with my iPhone about half the time. The Bluetooth feature for syncing the phone book is worthless.

I also have some Jaybird Bluebuds X Bluetooth headphones. These mostly work fine, and switch connections better than almost any other BT device I've owned. The audio does drop occasionally, but they're pretty good for listening to directions on a motorcycle.

By far the BT device I've been most pleased with has been the Logitech Megaboom speaker. It never drops connection and switches pairing flawlessly between multiple phones and a PC. The only problem I can think of is that many phones don't account for a Bluetooth device which may be in range which you don't wish to immediately attempt to pair with, so they'll "steal" the Megaboom from a good connection whenever they have some audio (like an unlocking the phone sound) to play.

On the proprietary side, we have an XBone Elite controller with an expensive dongle which works perfectly, aside from the Windows store requiring about 4 hours of tinkering with registry settings and "repair" tools to get it to download the controller settings program from MS. The latency is great and it never drops out.

I have a few Logitech Unifying RX-compatible devices. They all work flawlessly. By comparison, a Logitech BT backlit keyboard I have loses pairing, doesn't connect, etc with various PCs, phones, and the FireTV.

Bluetooth is infuriating and has been for over a decade. I really hope that they address the pairing and reliability issues, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

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