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The Death of Bluetooth?
Aaron Cherrington writes "Bob Frankston
has written an article
in which he declares that Bluetooth has
failed. The article states that despite the fact it is wireless, it still
has all of the limitations of wires. Is it too early to declare the death of
Bluetooth, or can we can expect more out of it?"
I think its way too early to rule out Bluetooth.. it is still a relatively new technology, and its only now starting to see wider adoption - things like the Microsoft Bluetooth cordless desktop and the like have only been out for a few months!
Also heard about things like Bluetooth capable printers which sounds like a great idea.
I don't really see any suitable alternatives to Bluetooth as yet for short range wire-free communication between devices. The only thing that lets it down is the high cost of Bluetooth components in devices - on larger items like printers and expensive mobile phones this isnt too bad, but for smaller cheaper devices it kinda keeps the prices a little high!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
I agree that syncing a PDA over the internet or larger distances could be useful, and in that case 802.11 is your man. Bluetooth's goal is to replace short range connections, such as the near-useless IR (ever try aiming a PDA at your phone while as a passenger? I did, and I used velcro for the occasion...)
I was hoping this article wasn't going to be another Bluetooth vs 802.11 non-argument. guess I was wrong.
Read my lips.
THAT IS NOT WHAT BLUETOOTH IS FOR.
Bluetooth is for personal (that is, on your person) area networking.
It is, by design, a short-range, low-powered protocol. Your mobile phone is a radio with a range of two or three miles...why the hell do you want ANOTHER radio with a range of 30 feet (with the commensurate power consumption which maps directly onto weight) to communicate with a device that should be in your pocket anyway?
Bluetooth, when properly implemented, is great. It's not designed to be the only wireless protocol: It's narrowly designed to do one thing. Replace wires. That, it does well.
The article criticizes BT because it does exactly what it's designed to do. That's silly.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This story sounds like a wrap-up of an SNS issue, written by analyst Mark Anderson about half a year ago. Yes, Bluetooth has essentially failed to deliver promises on its wild popularity, and Wi-Fi is the NBT (Next Big Thing). However, it's important to remember that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi were designed for different reasons.
If Bob Frankston were writing for an automotive magazine, he'd probably write a subheading 'Why has car business flourished while bikes have essentially failed? Should we even care about bikes?' If you want to connect to the Internet and have wireless access within your house or in the hotel room, use Wi-Fi. But what if all you want is to have devices talk to one another? Remote control to your car computer, telephone handset to the telephone base, PDA to the laptop, etc.? In some cases Bluetooth makes sense more than 802.11b, if you consider cost of deployment and power consumption issues.
Thus Bluetooth is not really a competitor, it's a niche technology that's out there and that's getting more attention from manufacturers. Wi-Fi is immensely bigger and more marketable, but in the nutshell Bluetooth has its own applications and will persist in hardware design for next few years.
I use Bluetooth to connect my PDA to my GSM phone. Now I have access to Internet about everywhere through GPRS. I can do it at the restaurant table while dining with friends or while walking on the street when coming back from work. I like it. This is a fine utilisation of a PAN and as long as Bluetooth is faster than GPRS, none of its limitations matter. Low power low distance is acutally an advantage because it reduces the risk of interference. No big deal for now but what if the technology become pervasive?
The reason Bluetooth doesn't take off is it is poorly marketed. It is waaay overpriced to get any widspread adoption.
I don't understand the reluctance of US cell phone carriers to offer Bluetooth-capable phones...
I don't understand US cell phone carriers in general, they don't actually seem to understand the capabilities of their own kit. They especially don't seem to understand why cell phone usage hasn't changed t he US culture as it has in Europe (and perhaps especially the UK).
The fact that any eight year old over here, who probably owns at least two cell phones if they're British, could tell them doesn't seem to sink in.
Oh well, until you guys finally catch up we can all make lots of money selling you five year old technology that we've all gotten bored of...
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
This focus on the Bluetooth headset is shortsighted. BT headsets might be the only currently useful thing to do with BT, but they get BT on devices. When BT gets on devices then you build a base of devices. When you have a base of devices then people start leaving their BT on all the time and they start thinking of interesting ways to use them.
I want:
- my BT headset to interface with my VOIPed home phone
- my BT cell phone to act as a wireless remote control for my TV
- a BT wireless remote to allow separate control over two identical cable boxes (try that with IR)
- a BT keyboard and mouse to interface with my BT smartphone
- to have all my wireless keyboards and mice work with all my computers and all my devices
- to have automatic sync between all of my devices simply by walking up to them
I'll get all of these things with BT because it's low powered, physically small and very cheap to implement in quantity. I'll never get all of these things if I try to get them with 802.11.
TW
This article is mislead in so many ways. People here have covered the fact that BT and WIFI are ment to co-exist, so I'll skip that.
Anyone who have seen an Apple intergrate with an Ericsson t68i will be convinced that BT is a killer app. It works seamlessly and is so beautifully integrated that I could cry with joy when I get to send an SMS on-screen "just like that".
BT suffers from ONE thing only. Bastard companies that love proprietary devices. Like Nokia. Nokias BT headset twists the BT regulations by transmitting the audio through data profiles, not audio profiles like it is supposed to. So you can't get cheat headsets for Nokia until someone makes a data-only headset. This is killing BT, not lack of usage. BT along with Airport is a marriage made in heaven.
Visit us in Europe, and see that BT is in daily usage mr. Frankston.
BONUS: Try the Bluetooth pic-swap-game! The rules are simple. Be sure to have a cool picture of yourself on your fancy-schmancy phone. Nudeness optional, but recommended. Keep Bluetooth enabled on the phone (Notice how this does not drain your batteries like you were jump-starting an F-16) When bored, search for other phones in public places. When you finde a phone, transmit the picture and it will pop up like a message on the other phone. If the other person is cool and tech-savvy like you, (s)he will transmit a pic back. Yay!
I don't want a PDA/phone. That means I can't use the PDA and talk on the phone at the same time. And devices that try to comprimise between PDA and phone functions are generally not that good at either.
What I do want is a phone headset that I can use without risk of garroting myself. And I want to browse the web using a portable device I already own and am familiar with: a Palm m515.
If the restriction to Bluetooth applications is, "The phone must be in your pocket, not on your desk," I think I can live with that!
Bluetooth by itself is not a big deal. But combined with technology like Apple's Rendezvous, it's really cool. Apple seems to be imagining a future where you can walk around with your laptop, and services like printers become available immediately when they come within range, then disappear when you go out of range. To Apple, Bluetooth seems to be all about service discovery.
I think we're just waiting for the killer app. Syncing your cell phone may be fun, and cordless keyboards and mice may be cool, but neither are as big a deal as wireless Internet access on your front porch.
I haven't given up hope, though. Since Bluetooth is cheap and low-power, it's not going anywhere soon.
There were approximately 10m PDAs sold worldwide in 2002. Of those, around 4m were sold in the United States. That's somewhere around 1.5% of the population. Even assuming that many people already had PDAs, that's maybe 3% of the population. In short -- only rich businessmen (and technophiles who always buy the latest gadgets). And that's PDAs sold. PDAs used is probably much lower -- while I only two 2 people who use PDAs, I do know around 10 people who have PDAs (most got them as presents and haven't used them since the initial tinkering around). Hell, I myself have a PDA (Dell Axim X5) I got for free, but I haven't really used it, because I just don't see what it's good for.
Where am I basing my personal observations? A computer science department at a university, of all places. One prof. and one departmental secretary has a PDA, the rest don't. And that's much higher than in the non-CS departments, where absolutely nobody has one. It's the same many other places. My dad's company gave away free PDAs to their engineers, but only around maybe 10% of them actually use their PDAs.
Cell phones have a much greater market penetration.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10