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Bluetooth 5 Now Available

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Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#81

Post by joshschreuder »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering every phone I've tested (iPhone 5S, iPhone 6+, Samsung Note, Moto X, Nexus 6P) with 7 different bluetooth headphones (ranging from cheap Amazon ones to expensive LG) I have NEVER found a phone, paired with headphones, that stayed connected especially when the phone is in my side pocket and I'm walking in an open space which seems to make connectivity significantly worse. For instance getting on the BART b…

I picked up a pair of Bose QC35 a couple of months ago, and for my first pair of BT headphones I'm really impressed.

I use them almost every day on my way to and from work (roughly an hour each way) and I can count the number of interference issues I've had on one hand, and definitely not every 30 seconds. This is with an iPhone 7 and iPad Pro 9.7".

They're not cheap, but I'd highly recommend them.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#82

Post by joshschreuder »

askvictor wrote: post #60
drey08 wrote: post #58

Has anyone here had issues with bluetooth interference from.. traffic lights? My Sennheiser Momentum wireless headphones seem to be running into this issue. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does I notice it happens when the traffic lights switch (e.g green to red). There must be some kind of signal interfering with bluetooth that's emitted at that point, though I can't understand why since all traffic ligh…

An increasing number of roads administrations use Bluetooth to track traffic movement. They can get a signature of a car at one intersection, and track that car as it moves through the city. I guess they look for any Bluetooth device in the area. Supposedly it's anonymized, but you never know. I know they do this in Sydney Australia, not certain where else.

Interesting, I'm in Melbourne and at least once I got interference when I was crossing at an intersection. Maybe that's why.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#83

Post by pdx »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering every phone I've tested (iPhone 5S, iPhone 6+, Samsung Note, Moto X, Nexus 6P) with 7 different bluetooth headphones (ranging from cheap Amazon ones to expensive LG) I have NEVER found a phone, paired with headphones, that stayed connected especially when the phone is in my side pocket and I'm walking in an open space which seems to make connectivity significantly worse. For instance getting on the BART b…

Getting 2.4GHz through the human body is hard. The human body is mostly water, and bluetooth is, after all, the same frequency of your microwave oven, which uses 2.4GHz because it's in a band of frequencies from 1-20GHz that water absorbs.

When you're indoors, you don't need to get bluetooth through your body. You're getting reflections off of nearby walls and ceilings which allow your bluetooth devices to communicate across your body, but without going through your body.

When you're outdoors, you no longer enjoy the benefit of reflected RF, and the design of the phone and the headset antennas needs to be very good, so the RF can make it through your body.

It is a hard problem, but a lot of headset manufacturers do achieve it. I'm surprised you still haven't found one that's acceptable. Of course, it's body dependent. Petite women will have less issues then large men, as the RF just has less water to travel through with them.

Today's bluetooth is limited to 4dBm max transmit power for class 2. Bluetooth 5 will be 20dBm, which is a lot more power. This is, actually, the same power that class 1 bluetooth devices now have, so I'm unsure why they brag about the higher power of bluetooth 5, but to be sure, most bluetooth devices now are not class 1.

The higher power will make even bad antenna engineers be able to get bluetooth through your body, but more importantly, you'll enjoy larger range when you are at the gym or in your home. Also, if you worry about RF effects on the human body, your worry can increase now as well!

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#84

Post by mrb »

jwr wrote: post #20
lasryaric wrote: post #9

Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.

Bluetooth is complex. Lots of devices have crappy software which gets things wrong. And it doesn't help that the 2.4GHz band is full of radio noise, either. But most of the problems aren't with transmission, they are with setting things up and turning things on and off. Crappy software. Also, it doesn't help that everything in Bluetooth until BLE (Low Energy) arrived was pretty bad. BLE changed everything and turned…

"not even radio-compatible"

Bluetooth 1.0 uses GFSK at 1 Msym/s, just like BLE / Bluetooth 4.0. So it's the same r/f modulation protocol (it's the higher layers that are incompatible.) Is it the actual GFSK parameters, eg. frequency shifts, that are different?

I know that Bluetooth 2.0 and 3.0 use different r/f modulation (π/4-QPSK and 8DPSK at 1 Msym/s), but why do people say Bluetooth 4.0 is so different when it seems to be the same as Bluetooth 1.0?

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#85

Post by mrb »

drey08 wrote: post #58

Has anyone here had issues with bluetooth interference from.. traffic lights? My Sennheiser Momentum wireless headphones seem to be running into this issue. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does I notice it happens when the traffic lights switch (e.g green to red). There must be some kind of signal interfering with bluetooth that's emitted at that point, though I can't understand why since all traffic ligh…

Actually, the majority of traffic lights being installed these days are controlled wirelessly.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#86

Post by robotjosh »

lasryaric wrote: post #9

Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.

Bluetooth drivers in both ios and android never work right. You might get random undocumented error codes on some devices. Some of your connection/transmit functions will just get lost never activating a callback so every single thing needs a timeout handler. I've seen on older androids a callback inexplicably starts getting called twice in a row. I've seen the bluetooth object suddenly is null so you get a hard crash next time something tries to use it. These smartphone drivers fail in every way imaginable and in ways you can't imagine. Be impressed when a bluetooth app works reliably.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#87

Post by pkulak »

joshschreuder wrote: post #81
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #75

Considering every phone I've tested (iPhone 5S, iPhone 6+, Samsung Note, Moto X, Nexus 6P) with 7 different bluetooth headphones (ranging from cheap Amazon ones to expensive LG) I have NEVER found a phone, paired with headphones, that stayed connected especially when the phone is in my side pocket and I'm walking in an open space which seems to make connectivity significantly worse. For instance getting on the BART b…

I picked up a pair of Bose QC35 a couple of months ago, and for my first pair of BT headphones I'm really impressed. I use them almost every day on my way to and from work (roughly an hour each way) and I can count the number of interference issues I've had on one hand, and definitely not every 30 seconds. This is with an iPhone 7 and iPad Pro 9.7". They're not cheap, but I'd highly recommend them.

Second on the Quiet Comforts. I've owned more than a dozen BT headphones over my life and these are the best. Well, best BT implementation at least, I'm not much of an audiophile.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#88

Post by smegel »

lasryaric wrote: post #9

Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.

Having to constantly repair my car with my phone and GPS is one of the frustrations of daily life. It's ridiculous - both the car and phone "remember" each other by their list of previously paired devices, yet they don't connect. Only when I repair do they suddenly "find" each other. Crazy.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#89

Post by nsxwolf »

lasryaric wrote: post #9

Why is general bluetooth connectivity so "buggy"? Why am I always struggling connecting my iPhone 6s to my bose bluetooth speaker? I would love to understand that.

The only thing I've seen work reliably with Bluetooth, ever, is the PlayStation 4 controller. And only when pairing with the PS4 and not a PC. Sony seems to have gone out of their way to add some magical layer to establish and maintain those connections without the end user having to know or see anything about it.

Re: Bluetooth 5 Now Available

#90

Post by kenjackson »

moron4hire wrote: post #73
WhitneyLand wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car integration has been a killer app. The ability to talk handsfree, stream music without wires, etc. Even if you swear by a headset in your car BT still allows call control via steering wheel buttons so you don't have take yours hands off.

Sure, if I can get the damn things to pair. But if my phone has paired to something else, or my wife has paired her phone to the car again, then it's ALL BETS OFF!!!

Don't get me started on this: "or my wife has paired her phone to the car again"

Why is it that with my car, while it presumably supports having like 8 phones paired to it, I have to re-pair everytime someone else pairs?

If I'm in the car, but my wife isn't use my phone. If my wife is in the car, but I'm not use hers. If we're both in the car, pick one phone (I don't really care how). How hard is that? Rather it just seems to want to pair to whoever paired last even if that phone isn't around anymore.

This just kills me.

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