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Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range, double the speed

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

#61

Post by phamilton »

buro9 wrote: post #55
modeless wrote: post #4

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

I have a Nexus 6p, which I connect to my car via Bluetooth for music and navigation. The dropped audio, stutters, and need to reconnect are driving me crazy. I've now switched back to a generic audio cable. Bluetooth reliability really is dire, the phone is within 10m of wherever the car transceiver is and in the designed hotspot too (inside the car) and it still fails.

I've got a cheap little Bluetooth kit for my car and mount it right next to my nexus 6p mount. I very rarely, if ever, have issues.

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

#62

Post by shurcooL »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #59
the_watcher wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones are the big benefactor here, for me at least. I can walk to the kitchen with my wireless headphones.

Agree, I look forward to the day I can leave my iPhone in a gym locker and work out with just headphones

Would you be able to pause or control songs though?

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

#64

Post by gambiting »

shurcooL wrote: post #62
r0m4n0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, I look forward to the day I can leave my iPhone in a gym locker and work out with just headphones

Would you be able to pause or control songs though?

Sure, bluetooth had media controls for ages. I have a bluetooth waterproof speaker that I just take with me in the shower - and I leave my phone outside of the bathroom so it doesn't get wet. I can change songs and pause with buttons on the speaker, with the phone safely on the other side of the wall.

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

#65

Post by Already__Taken »

NTripleOne wrote: post #57
modeless wrote: post #4

I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.

I'd just like to have paired devices actually automatically reconnect without having to unpair and repair. The only things that seems to do this reliably are PS4 controllers with my PC.

Thankfully my '08 car does this, but my fathers £400 pilot headsets won't stay paired with anything.

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

#66

Post by cyphax »

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.

Is the bluetooth spec the limit though, or maybe the implementation? I can leave my phone on the table downstairs and my headphones still work fine in the attic, which is through 2 floors of reinforced concrete. I was very surprised to be able to do this, but kitchen-living room should be possible. Unless your kitchen is in the west wing, and your living room is a mile down the hall in the east wing in which case I'm envious of your living arrangement and understand the need for more range in the spec. ;)

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

#67

Post by wirelessfoobar »

cbsmith wrote: post #36
roymurdock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The range increase is for distributed industrial network architectures, such as smart grids/cities. Bluetooth LE is aimed at long range, low power devices that are checking in with telemetry-type data every so often rather than pairing your phone and your keyboard to your computer.

...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.

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

#68

Post by x0x0 »

klagermkii wrote: post #29
voltagex_ wrote: post #19

I think a lot of the comments here could be attributed to the terrible Bluetooth software stacks that are around (Car head-decks, Android (all versions), Windows 8-10 default stacks). I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with…

At what number of terrible Bluetooth software stacks does one start wondering if there isn't something fundamentally wrong with the specification that makes it so incredibly hard to get right? It's been bad from day one with Widcomm and later Bluesoleil on Windows. Mac OS X for years had a Bluetooth where after a couple of hours of using the DUN profile it would need a reboot, on an otherwise nicely reliable operatin…

bluetooth is an extended public alpha

I so can't wait for phones to drop 3.5mm jacks so playing music can become an infuriating ritual too

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

#69

Post by micheljansen »

That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another.

It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental problems that nobody seems to worry too much about, apart from a small number of vendors (Apple did a decent job solving the pairing problem with the Apple TV: http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-lik...).

I realise it's pretty hard to beat the intuitive action of plugging physical cables into devices to connect two things, but if we really want to get rid of cables, things need to be easier.

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

#70

Post by BinaryIdiot »

micheljansen wrote: post #69

That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another. It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental proble…

I couldn't agree more. I have a set of headphones that I love using with my phone and several computers. It's such an annoyance to connect it from one to the other and it doesn't appear that ANYONE is even working on making this better anymore. There was that brief period where some bluetooth devices included NFC where you could take it to the device to pair which was actually interesting but it only happened to such few products I have no idea if it ultimately ended up being usable or not.
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