Bluetooth 4.0 Devices To Make the Scene Later This Year

Engadget is reporting that new Bluetooth 4.0 devices could be hitting the scene later this year, and it looks like Bluetooth low energy has been added to the spec. "But don't expect any dramatic changes in battery life for most of your gadgets: while the low energy spec introduces connectivity to a host of lower-power devices that have in the past relied on proprietary technology (such as watches, pedometers, and cats), your traditional Bluetooth devices, such as phones and laptops, will consume roughly the same amount of power. Indeed, the low energy spec is merely throwing smaller devices (with smaller amounts of data to transfer) in to the mix: if you want Trans-Siberian Orchestra to sound as glorious as ever on your wireless headphones, you'll need to push as much data (and hence draw as much power) with version 4 as you would with version 3."

Comments

Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[willoughby]

If I go to the Logitech website & check out wireless mouses I see 12 wireless of which 2 are Bluetooth. At the Kensington website there are 17 wireless mouses but only 2 are Bluetooth. Obviously I haven't kept up with wireless technologies but I thought Bluetooth was developed mainly with mouses & keyboards in mind. Are manufacturers shunning the technology or are users avoiding it? Are there problems with Bluetooth devices which a shopper should be aware of?

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Cyko_01]

because those low-power proprietary cats are just so efficient.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Gertlex]

My first logitech mouse was a bluetooth one. It worked nicely, but I always had troubles with the pairing, e.g. having to partly redo it in some way or another. There was also the delay when "waking up" the mouse.

Their more recent mice with the extremely small usb receivers work flawlessly and are plug and play. I carry one around my college campus for use with campus computers (the mice on campus suck, and it helps me remember not to forget my usb drive...).

I also use bluetooth headphones with my laptop, and connection quality is much better when I only have one device paired at a time.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[sconeu]

You mean these?

I don't think so.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Yaztromo]

All of Apple's wireless mice and Bluetooth.

I think the biggest problem for hardware manufacturers and consumers is that, outside of Apple, Bluetooth often isn't available as an option for most PC buyers. Apple puts it into every laptop and desktop system they sell.

Joe PC User on the other hand, just wants a mouse and keyboard to work, and when they buy wireless, they expect that it will come with everything they need for a wireless experience. For many years now, manufacturers simply ship with a USB-based dongle.

Now as to why that USB dongle isn't Bluetooth, my guesses are a) licensing, and b) drivers. Up until somewhat more recently, Bluetooth on Windows was a serious PITA. Official Windows Bluetooth support didn't appear until XP SP2, and prior to that manufacturers of Bluetooth add-ons had to provide their own drivers. Because they couldn't guarantee for some years what SP level you were at, they continued to ship those drivers. Having the manufacturers drivers and SP2 installed simultaneously was a huge mess -- I remember in 2006 helping a friend setup a Bluetooth headset with Skype on XP SP2, and there was a massive and conflicting mess of OEM drivers and Microsoft's stack that would have sent lesser mortals running for the hills (or at least to the store to return their Bluetooth devices).

Microsoft's late support seems to have driven PC manufacturers to waffle on shipping with built-in Bluetooth, and to try to keep costs down, many still apparently don't (especially outside the portable sector). I've been running Bluetooth mice and keyboards (and other items) for nearly six years now on my Macs -- with standardized support and no driver issues, it's been way easier to sell Bluetooth to the Mac-using public, and that's still the market where you seem to find the majority of consumer-grade Bluetooth devices for PC's aimed towards.

Yaz.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[DigiShaman]

Logitech makes the Bluetooth Mouse M555b model. After breaking my Mac Might Mouse into three pieces out of frustration, I purchased the M555b. So far, I haven't experienced any cursor lag our connectivity dropout. I'm very pleased with Logitech.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[dgatwood]

Sounds like the mouse sucked, yes. That's certainly not normal. With good hardware, you have to explicitly hit a button to cause it to repair.

As for me, I won't buy wireless hardware that isn't Bluetooth. Bluetooth gear, in my experience, works reliably at 20-30 feet on average. Non-bluetooth gear gets jammed by random environmental noise and barely works at a foot or two from the receiver. I've seen this with many, many wireless keyboards and mice from many companies (including the major ones).

Proprietary communications technology SUCKS. A few bad devices notwithstanding, Bluetooth devices will always be more reliable than proprietary hardware because Bluetooth has hundreds of companies all working together to design the communication protocols and hardware instead of one company hacking something together on their own. When it comes to keyboards, mice, trackballs, etc., if it's not Bluetooth, as far as I'm concerned, it isn't really wireless.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Dynedain]

I only have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for my HTPC.

For all the desktops I use, I stick with wired keyboards and mice. No messing with batteries. No messing with whether the device is properly synched or not. Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.

The two cables from a keyboard and mouse really isn't that bad. Bluetooth headsets or microphones I'd be much more likely to consider, and game controllers (like the Wiimote) make a lot sense. But it's a bit of a solution in search of a problem on the desktop, IMHO.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Tycho]

Oddly enough I had nothing but trouble with the Toshiba stack. I have an older Microsoft keyboard that uses Bluetooth 1.1 along with a high powered Class 1 Bluetooth 2.0 adapter from Cambridge Silicon Radio and it dropped keystrokes like crazy and the connection would frequently break and need to be reconnected manual with the Toshiba stack. The keyboard seems to work fine with the Bluetooth stack in Windows XP, but the stack in XP is limited, but actually works as intended. This computer does have an Intel ICH7 southbridge, which has trouble connecting to USB bluetooth adapters behind a USB hub, however, my BT adapter is connected directly to the computer and is not behind a USB hub.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[dgatwood]

You're grossly underestimating how hard it is to get the physical layer working with sufficient noise immunity. When designing a cheap device, you can't spend a lot of money on R&D. You have two choices:

• Custom hardware. With custom hardware, you first have to make a reliable physical layer that moves the bits through the air reliably even in the presence of interference. Then, you have to write custom drivers for the transmitter silicon, custom drivers for the device on the other end, and custom firmware for the device.
• Bluetooth hardware. With bluetooth hardware, the physical layer is basically designed and debugged for you except for the antenna. The drivers for the transmitter are written for you. So you just have to write some very minimal custom firmware for the device to map electrical inputs to buttons and *maybe* write a custom driver for the device if you're doing something particularly unusual (e.g. handlers for extra buttons).

If your hardware sucks and you can't reliably get a signal through the noise (which has been the case with almost every non-Bluetooth wireless device I've seen), you're pretty much screwed. By contrast, if your firmware sucks in the first rev, it's no big deal. You just flash the thing with new firmware. That's the advantage to using Bluetooth. The hardware layer is already completely designed and debugged for you, so you can focus on the protocol layer above it and get that right instead of having to do that *and* build your own (usually awful) hardware.

I view these things basically the same way as companies that write custom crypto algorithms. The results are almost invariably worse than if they used off-the-shelf technology underneath and focused on the upper layers instead.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[peppepz]

Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.

By the way, if you have a Bluetooth dongle with HID support, a Bluetooth keyboard will work even in the BIOS. It will be seen as a standard USB/HID device. Just tested it with Apple's wireless keyboard on two different PCs.

What are...

[ironjaw33]

Bluetooth cats?

Generally, BlueTooth labelling sucks

[weston]

Because you often have no idea what profiles a given multipurpose bluetooth device supports from looking at its manufacturer specs or packaging.

Particularly phones.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[TigerTime]

PS3 is bluetooth. And after using the Sony BlueRay remote with it, I beg for the day that all TVs, Cable Boxes, and receivers are bluetooth. No pointing, hoping that the IR picked up your signal. Wherever you are. How ever you hold the remote. Your clicks count.

I'm shocked that those $100 Logitech remote controls don't have bluetooth built in. And i'm shocked that the $2000 TVs don't come with Bluetooth remotes that also have IR as a fallback option. All high end electronics should have Bluetooth as an option for their remotes.