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?

Comments

What does this say about Bluetooth?

[Reality Master 201]

Uh, that Nokia would rather sell a technloogy that's all their own than promote one they don't completely control?

Re:What does this say about Bluetooth?

[jspayne]

Uh, that Nokia would rather sell a technloogy that's all their own than promote one they don't completely control?

...especially one that was originally developed by rival Ericsson, who is the #1 seller of Bluetooth chipsets?

Re:What does this say about Bluetooth?

[lawpoop]

I got modded down as 'troll' and 'offtopic' for stating this ealier, but aside from the corporate competition, there is also the social/ethnic competition between Swedes and Finns. Actually, I think it is felt more by the Finns that they are in the shadow of Sweden. Sweden ruled Finland for a long time, and Sweden is wealthier than Finland, and Finns sort of have this complex about not being wholly Scandinavian.

I am not just making this up. If you read the Finnish epic, which is said to characterize the finnish temperament, the hero Vainamoinen is actually an anti-hero. He is born old, never in his prime. One of the first stories about him is when he approaches a young bathing maiden and she runs away screaming. In the climax of the story, he rallies the troops to win back a magical device from a tribe of harpies, only to lose it in the sea during the epic battle. He's just not a winner.

The parent I posed my original topic had said that 'a better tech had come along'. What a socially naive geek perspective. Sure, new things just drop out of the sky like clockwork. People are never motivated by petty social identies, like Ohio State vs. Michigan, US vs. Canada, MS vs. Apple, Ericsson vs. Nokia, or Finland vs. Swedend.

So my votes goes for a Nokia vs. Ericsson, Finland vs. Sweden thing.

Re:Bluetooth 2.0?

[Andy Dodd]

Been around for a while.

Higher data rates, higher sound quality for headsets, error correction for headset audio (read: significantly increased range and quality).

They still haven't fixed the compatibility nightmares of Bluetooth. God forbid you might want to use a Motorola headset with a Treo for example! It'll work, but barely, and most functionality (such as picking up a call from the headset) won't work.

The state of Bluetooth stacks for Windows is even worse. Microsoft's stack doesn't seem to support anything other than the serial profile - no headset audio, no AD2P. Only 50% of the stacks available a few months ago supported headset audio, even fewer supported AD2P (high quality stereo audio). Every single Bluetooth stack insists on making the headset the default audio device for the entire system, which is useless (and incredibly annoying) when you only want to use it for a SIP/IAX softphone, Skype, Teamspeak, Ventrilo, or similar stuff. Last but not least, even though most Bluetooth stacks support the majority of hardware chipsets out there, every single one is locked to a specific device vendor. i.e. if you buy a Dell with a CSR chipset, it'll come with the Toshiba bluetooth stack (worthless since it puts all serial devices at COM40 or above which most apps don't support). The WIDCOMM stack works with CSR chipsets, but is locked to whatever vendor's CSR-based dongle you got the stack with. You can't even upgrade to a recent version in most cases. (Buy a dongle with a WIDCOMM 3.x stack, and you can't upgrade to 5.x legally).

From what I've heard, both Microsoft and Logitech BT keyboards/mice don't work well unless you use the dongle and BT stack that came with the hardware - what's the point of being Bluetooth in that case?

About the only Bluetooth device I've ever used that worked well is my GPS receiver. I've tried 3 different headsets with my Treo and 2-3 different BT stacks on my PC for use with those headsets and have never been satisfied with the results.