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Nokia's Wibree Takes on Bluetooth
narramissic writes "Nokia has developed a new, short-range wireless technology, called Wibree, that it says is a lot more power efficient than Bluetooth, which means it could be used in smaller and less costly devices. It can also use the same radio and antenna components as Bluetooth, helping keep costs down further. Wibree could compete with Bluetooth in the workplace as a way to link keyboards and other peripherals to computers. But it could also have more interesting applications for consumers, in devices such as wrist watches, toys and sports equipment." What does this say about Bluetooth, considering Nokia is a member of the Bluetooth Promoters group?
The network effect is cementing bluetooth in place. I can buy bluetooth keyboards, mice, earpieces already. OTOH, like Sony's memory stick, this may just be a way of locking dumb Nokia customers into a proprietary solution.
Deleted
Sounds like they are trying to succeed in a non-existant market. The actual applications of Bluetooth are few and far between. The 'wireless' office never amounted to much and you know you look like an idiot with that earpiece and talking to yourself at Starbucks.
So what is a company to do? How about rebrand the technology with a worse name than it originally had? That's the ticket!
Uh, that Nokia would rather sell a technloogy that's all their own than promote one they don't completely control?
The same can be said about just about any new tech that is to replace and not be compatible with old tech. USB, IMHO, did it right. USB2.0 is backwards compatible with USB1.1
Nintendo Wiibree anyone?
c++;
... there is going to be one more application in the ISM band. Not that it is overcrowded already, no.
Perhaps in the same way USB 2.0 emerged, Bluetooth 2.0 is due? Faster, lower power requirements, backward compatibility. Seems like the natural and sensible thing to do.
From the summary:
It says that Bluetooth is years old and now some that is (possibly) better has come along, nothing more.
What does this say about Bluetooth
It says that the stupid Trademarkable Name(TM) thing wasn't a one off, and we can expect all future networking interfaces to have some stupid name in the future. Not only will that be insanely annoying, but it will allow companies to collect royalties to be able to claim compatability with 'open' protocols indefinatly. Yes, technology companies have finally found a direct revenue way to exploit the previously harmless trademark laws, and to bypass that pesky patent term length limit.
I'm kind of tired of talking about this. We talk about it every week. Let's talk about something else.
One can only hope they've invested more time in securing the communications channel than in Bluetooth. Bluesnarfing for the win! Or something. =/
James
I know BT and ZigBee (about ZigBee), but never heard about Wibree. I'm pretty disappointed that Nokia wants to go with this proprietary approach.
Anyway, there's a lot going on in IEEE 802.15 (Personal Area Network).
I have a Nokia phone, and it has Bluetooth.
When I bought the phone, I also bought a Bluetooth headset. I gave up on the Bluetooth pretty quickly: The headset would only run for about five hours before needing to be recharged, and the phone's standby time was cut down massively.
This isn't a complaint about Bluetooth as such. It's more that current devices, as delivered, don't provide long-enough standby time, never mind talk time, when Bluetooth is enabled.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
SOme nokia handsets/headsets keep the bluetooth connection on continously. This was a major complaint about the Nokias.
Sony Ericssons tend to pulse/ping the connection, only turning on the full link when there is a call, giving far greater standby times.
Again, its more a case of different devices doing different things. Each has its advantages and disadvantages
Have a nice day!
Quoting, Wibree sensors could also be placed in a gold club and used to upload data to the Internet about a player's swing, again via a mobile phone, where a golf instructor could offer advice about improving his or her game.
Would that gold club be an iron or a wood? Maybe its a putting club?
Anyway, I guess any rich golfers that have a gold golf club won't mind the extra expense of a radio linked computer sensor... but it would spoil their boast of "My club is solid gold!".
I attended the press conference Nokia held this morning in Finland and published Wibree. It sounded very interesting. Nokia is very often innovating new technologies which make their phones different from competitors. Making them wide known hasn't always succeed, but I think this will. And you in North America, understand if you don't agree but your mobile phone offering and services are a bit behind Europe.
All of you who really use Bluetooth daily to connect your car handsfree, synchronize your calendar and contacts, messages etc. on your phone, know that Bluetooth takes quite a lot power out of the battery. This might be a solution for this for everything else as well. I don't want to always disable the Bluetooth on my phone just to save battery.
Hate to bring up the "it just works" thing but Bluetooth works fine on a Mac, with headsets or keyboards or whatever. All new macs come with Bluetooth 2.0 integrated already, and have since the Intel switch (plus a bit before that).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The main problems with Bluetooth in my mind are complexity and cost. Qualifying a Bluetooth chip is a major pain in the butt. You need to qualify the radio part, the stack and profiles separately depending on what kind of product you have. And speaking of profiles, there are something like 30 Bluetooth profiles. Most of which overlap! So often time when you are implementing one profile you also cover all the mandatory features of another so you have to claim that one as well since you are seen as using that profiles IP! It's crazy.
Then there is the cost. 10k to list your product. If you want to add something to it after you listed it...10k please. Not to mention the testing. 30k please.
Bluetooth was going to be less then 2 bucks per radio. It's still almost double that. The Bluetooth SIG is way out of control.
IMO Nokia is smart to jump ship. However, they cant go it alone. If they were able to get Motorola on board and perhaps Samsung, I can see no reason why a lower cost alternative would not work. Assuming that data rates are there.
Maybe they would have more luck trying to integrate this into the Bluetooth standard and proposing this as Bluetooth 2, ensuring that it stays compatible. While I understand Nokia trying to provide a new and improved technology, it needs to be done in a way not to confuse the already semi-confused buying public. By making it work with Bluetooth, in the same way as USB 1 and USB 2 or the B, G and A versions of the 802.11 standard.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
My SE T610 runs for 2-3 days in standby with BT on plus several short calls a day. But since I charge it nightly anyway, that's a non-issue. Phones that can't even standby a single day with BT on have a serious issue.
That way everyone would want to upgrade.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I sync my Nokia with my computer over bluetooth, can't be bothered to use that USB cable all the time, actually only if I want to transfer really big files like movies..
Not to mention you look like some kind of massive dork from a sci-fi movie and are usually perceived by the general public as talking to yourself.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Having seen a few presentations about network standards, and especially wireless network standards, I think that Nokia is just trying to enhance the existing technology. Granted, there may not be a strong commercial gain to it, but the fact remains that bluetooth has been a more or less static protocol since its inception. Wifi on the other hand went through several revisions: 802.11a, b/g, now the upcoming n... There's a lot of development put into wifi. I attended a conference from Intel researchers saying they were working on enhancing the 802.11 protocol to work in a de-centralized manner, so I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking: well Wibre might just push Bluetooth further than it is. Using the same hardware base is also good, because it'll bring down manufacturing costs. I'm willing to bet we'll see the Bluetooth consortium jump on the bandwagon and help nokia widespread Wibre under a label like "Bluetooth 2.0" or something similar. Hardware and software updates all the time, why wouldn't protocols?
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
I must confess that I am a little taken aback by the sight of people who seem to be having conversations with themselves.
Nonetheless, I wanted to try it so I could have recordings of "Champs Elysees" (s French current affairs CD I get every month) play with the ability to interrupt on an incoming call. I thought Bluetooth is expensive in standby, then I tried using it to play MP3s. That was a power hog, let me tell you.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
With Wireless USB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB based on MB-OFDM on the way and backed by big names like Intel, I dont think it stands a chance. The days of proprietary technologies are over. Nobody wants to pay licensing fees anymore.
I'm not totally sure here, but it's my understanding that the "chipset" may (depending on context) not include the radio.
So saying that it uses the same radio as Bluetooth may not mean that it's just a drop-in software change; the chipset which actually decodes what the radio recieves and does useful things with it, may be totally different.
I assume that the radios are basically off-the-shelf items; I'm sure you can go to any number of manufacturers and get them (Motorola, Analog Devices, National, etc.); the chipset is probably where most of the design work, and the intellectual property / patents, goes.
If we think of a wireless device as a chain, going (antenna) -> (radio) -> (decoding chipset) -> (computer), they are using the same antenna and radio, which are basically generic, and inserting their proprietary gear instead of the BT parts behind it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not sure what you've been using, but I've used a variety of Motorola phones and they all seem to "just work" fine. Address Book sync, Object transfer for photos and video ... getting it working as a data modem was a bit of a pain but 95% of that was T-Mobile's fault; the phone talked to the Mac from the first moment onwards without problems. The computer doesn't give me crap about using some crummy generic USB BT dongle, either. (Unlike Windows where I'd need to install vendor-supplied drivers.)
Then again, the phone has also worked pretty well with my IBM laptop and its BT implementation, so maybe more credit is due to Motorola than Apple.
In either case, the whole system worked well enough to convince me that my next computer will be a Mac, and my next phone will be a Motorola.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That Bluetooth isn't cheap or power efficient enough for certain devices.
:)
That's about all
Not that Bluetooth isn't good and that Nokia don't like promoting it or using it, but Bluetooth is not a panacea - just a standard.
Well, since the geniuses that came up with bluetooth used the exact same frequencies as 802.11g and they don't work together I'll be glad to welcome someone else into the market. I don't care what anyone says, it doesn't work. If I turn on bluetooth and wireless at the same time then every 5 seconds my bluetooth mouse stops working for a second or two. How clever.
Again IRC CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) and BroadCom are the leaders in this market, with regards to features and sales volume.
--
Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
Another acronym to confuse users. Wich BTW still don't get that a BT device may not have the same services as another BT device. For example, a BT camera phone may let you use its camera as webcam while another one won't. But still both advertise as BT devices. Why do they/us let them do this??
- Syncing my address book with my computer.
- Syncing my calendar with my computer so I can check appointments while mobile.
- Connecting to the Internet from my laptop while I am mobile.
- Transferring pictures from my 'phone to my computer.
Activating Bluetooth doesn't have much of an effect on the standby time of my 'phone, although it was a bit worse on my last one.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I thought this was for Nintendo's new cheese-based controller. The WiiBrie.
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I'm a scizophrenic, hiding behind a bluetooth headset, you insensitive clod!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm not sure why you were having problems, I use only bluetooth mice/keyboards with a Mac and have not had a problem for months - that includes turning them off and on with great regularity, so it's not like the connection is constant and easy to maintain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
- Bluetooth is used a lot more outside the US. Most US operators cripple bluetooth on the phones they sell. Try buying direct.
- Despite this, it is already the preferred method for phone sync, phone management, wireless keyboards and some mice, headsets, sending business cards and photos mobile to mobile and for using your phone as a modem to your laptop.
Bluetooth is not perfect for lots of low power cheap devicesBluetooth is dying... ...as it has been for the past 4 years ...at least here on Slashdot ...only
That it is software driving the radio most likely that makes the difference. That means a BT device can support Wibree in all likelyhood simultaneously. Just like the degradation of WiFi connection when a WiLAN has mixed 11 Mbps and 54 Mbps ... So keep the BT support for ahtw is there already and have a gentle migration through attrition.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Harald Bluetooth the king is also dead - his grave's at the cathedral in Roskilde, near the music festival and the Viking ship museum, and you can get there with a Copenhagen city bus/train pass, so you don't need to burn Eurail/Scanrail pass trips.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why don't they just make it Blue Tooth 3 since it uses all the same hardware and save a bunch of confusion
Well you can't really say "switch to a mac" to millions of windows users if they want to use bluetooth, no?
Why not? They could still run Windows.
It's obvious that it's not mac is better than windows, but it's bluetooth that sucks.
If the only place Bluetooth falters is in fact on Widnows, I think you can draw your own conclusions about the origins of the sucking.
If 100 million people use the same brand of vaccuum cleaner, it doesn't mean that wouldn't suck either. In probabalistic terms were talking independant trials here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yup. Ericsson is hardly a player these days. CSR and Broadcom are the biggies.