Bluetooth 5 With 2x More Range and 4x Better Speed Coming Next Week (arstechnica.com)

Bluetooth is about to get more powerful. Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group noted in a newsletter that Bluetooth 5 will debut on June 16. The new incarnation of wireless standard offers "double the range and quadruple the speed of low energy Bluetooth transmissions." From an Ars Technica report: It also adds "significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions," which is more exciting than it sounds because it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you normally think of when you think of "advertising." In the Bluetooth spec, an "advertising packet" allows Bluetooth devices to send small snippets of information to other Bluetooth devices even if the two aren't actually paired or connected to one another.It's currently unclear whether existing devices will be able to support the new standard.

Comments

Have they fixed the stupid problem yet?

[bluefoxlucid]

Have they fixed the problem where X-Ray, UV, and visible light are stopped by walls, and yet people are still too dumb to figure out microwave bluetooth signals aren't high-energy enough to cause cancer or brain damage? Do we have a patch that at least informs them that light is also EMR, the same kind of radio waves as bluetooth and wifi, but stationed between your cell phone's signal and cancer-causing ultraviolet rays, so these people all panic and go running into the sea like lemmings?

3X Less reliability

[Nethemas the Great]

Can we have 3X less reliability though please. I really hate how rock solid previous versions were.

Yay!

[Opportunist]

No more having to sit next to that insufferable twat for an hour to crib his contacts because he's too stupid to secure his bluetooth connection. Now I can do it from the table over in less time than I need for my breakfast!