Bluetooth 5 Is Here (betanews.com)

Reader BrianFagioli writes: Today, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announces the official adoption of the previously-announced Bluetooth 5. In other words, it is officially the next major version of the technology, which will eventually be found in many consumer devices. So, will you start to see Bluetooth 5 devices and dongles with faster speeds and longer range in stores tomorrow? Nope -- sorry, folks. Consumers will have to wait until 2017. The Bluetooth SIG says devices should become available between February and June next year.In a statement, Bluetooth SIG reminded the specifications of Bluetooth 5 -- "Key feature updates include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity. Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections."

Comments

15 competing standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections.

It's like he is >implying we don't have practically ubiquitous WiFi coverage.

Re:15 competing standards

[Big Hairy Ian]

Consumers will have to wait until 2017.

Somebody tell them it's December now!

Re:15 competing standards

[Coren22]

I would love to see the peer reviewed medical studies that show any effect of EM on the human body. Since you seem to be asserting something that clearly goes against the laws of physics, you must have some citations to back up your position.

Battery Life

[Anonymous Coward]

With the new standard will my battery life be more than 5 minutes?

Re:Battery Life

[slapout]

Yes. You now get 5.5 mintues

Re: Battery Life

[Anonymous Coward]

5.5 mintues?!? Holy shit! What does that equal in minutes?

Re: Battery Life

[bobbied]

More than 5 but less than 6... On a fully charged battery on a good day when the wind isn't blowing the wrong way... Otherwise, just count on 5.

Audio

[rodrigoandrade]

If it gives me better wireless audio, I'm all for it. Else, it's a gimmick, as I can surely count on one hand the number of times I used Bluetooth (PS3/4 accessories included).

http://lifehacker.com/does-bluetooth-audio-still-suck-1505063323

Re:Audio

[gravewax]

Part of the reason Bluetooth has very limited uses is the shithouse range which is part of what they are fixing. however not sure why they bother as at this point why would you choose Bluetooth when other wireless technologies now do the job.

Re:Audio

[TFlan91]

"however not sure why they bother as at this point why would you choose ____ when other ____ technologies now do the job"

lets play madlibs.

javascript/java/go/php/ruby/python ... programming
dick ... dildo
blah blah blah

As always, there are different tools for different jobs. Bluetooth uses much less power than WiFi for example.

Re:Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluetooth has quite adequate range for the use cases it serves. Game controllers, headphones, connecting to car entertainment/information systems, all these things work flawlessly with only a few meters of range needed. If you need more range than that, you're using the wrong technology.

Re:Audio

[gravewax]

So what you are saying is, Bluetooth 5 will be the wrong technology.

Re:Audio

[bws111]

What other wireless technologies? Wifi? So you want every pair of wireless headphones, speakers, etc to now have to have some way to select what network to use, provide credentials etc?

Re:Audio

[The-Ixian]

Why is it that after so many years, BT audio still stutters and jumps sometimes?

I have experienced this problem across all the different devices and headphones I have owned over the years. It doesn't seem to matter how high end the devices are, this problem eventually crops up from time-to-time. It normally can be fixed by turning off wifi on the device, but that doesn't always do it.

This problem seems to rear its head more often when I am around other people (public transit, restaurants, office buildings, etc) which leads me to believe it is an interference problem.

If that is true then the increased range and speed might solve it, right? But if everyone has higher power BT signals wouldn't the interference be worse?

I guess just wait and see...

Re:Audio

[bws111]

Umm, no it doesn't. Have you ever actually used a bluetooth device?

Re:Audio

[mlts]

I wouldn't mind something better than A2DP to play high quality audio, with the ability to downshift if there are connectivity issues. I also wouldn't mind some sort of block transfer protocol, perhaps upshifting to Wi-Fi (without needing to join a SSID or use an AP) when needed. Wi-Fi Direct tries to do this, but it needs an AP, so it isn't really that useful for allowing a drive to communicate to a laptop while the laptop is already using an AP, and one doesn't want to connect their hard drive to a public hotspot.

Re:Audio

[bobbied]

Why is it that after so many years, BT audio still stutters and jumps sometimes?

Two reasons... #1 usually the devices are cheap, underpowered and cannot keep up with blue tooth's overall processing demands and do all the other glitzy things that attracted all the people who where willing to purchase the device.... And #2, Bluetooth is not very robust in it's interference resistance as implemented on most low end devices (see #1).

Re:Audio

[Locke2005]

You can already get much better wireless audio by going over WiFi, at the cost of greater power consumption, of course. The other day, I was contemplating installing a Google Chromecast Audio in my car. It could in theory run off the WiFi Hotspot in my phone.

Re:Audio

[gravewax]

plenty of devices use wifi/wireless tech in exactly the same way that Bluetooth is used. Bluetooth authentication is usually hidden to make it easier to understand for the average clueless user, just like it is hidden for other wireless tech devices like mice etc that don't use Bluetooth, simply because you don't see the network selection and authentication doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Re:Audio

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Have you ever actually used a Bluetooth device?

In Putinist devices, Bluetooth uses you!

. . . and please don't tell that joke about Helen Keller's parents punishing her by moving the furniture.

Have you ever actually seen photos of Helen's loving parents . . . ?

Neither did she!

Re:Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

#3 Bluetooth uses public spectrum and is subject to interference from all kinds of other electronic devices, including other bluetooth devices in the immediate area.

Re:Audio

[plover]

Interference seems to be a big problem with Bluetooth. There are certain intersections in my city where the signal craps out while crossing the street; certain sections of the train and bus routes, and other places where music simply stutters or dies. I assume there's a local point source of interference to blame in each of those areas. I ended up fixing the problem by shelving my collection of Bluetooth headphones and going back to using wired headphones. The sound quality and reliability are far superior, and the wire just isn't a problem. I'm also not careless enough to ever have dropped my phone in water, so that's never been a real issue for me, either.

So while Apple said "everybody just use Bluetooth", it was obvious they never have. I'll be hanging on to my older iPhone for quite a while yet.

Re:Audio

[p0p0]

I've had this problem using my Android phone and PowerAMP to play. It turns out the problem is caused by turning the screen off and the phone trying to go to sleep. Getting an app to keep the screen on works, but then you're wasting a ton of battery.

Leaving the screen on for me stops all those problems, and I've tried it on 3-4 different affordable bluetooth speakers.

Re:Audio

[Red_Chaos1]

I've seen this complaint before, but I don't understand what people are talking about. I bought a Sony "mechless" head unit for my car so I could use BT for playing music, and it sounds fine to me. FWIW I'm not one of those that thinks 128K CBR MP3 sounds fine, I can usually tell up to at least 192K MP3 that it *is* MP3, ie I can hear the compression artifacts. The MP3s I put on my phone are compressed to VBR0, J-Stereo. It sounds quite decent in my car, plenty of "punch" as you put it. Granted I do have the bass and treble hiked a bit, but no different than if I were using the line in instead.

So what is this terrible added compression in BT that destroys fidelity that people speak of?

Re:Audio

[Applehu Akbar]

"Interference seems to be a big problem with Bluetooth. There are certain intersections in my city where the signal craps out while crossing the street;"

Usually, this happens about ten milliseconds before the truck you walked in front of slams into you as its grille interferes with the signal.

Re:Audio

[dfghjk]

BLE doesn't use pairing and Bluetooth isn't a "network" that devices need to join.

With bluetooth you don't have to discover a network, join it, and provide one of several login credentials, none of which many bluetooth devices have an adequate UI to implement. Joining a WiFi network during setup of smaller devices is a horrendous, unacceptable process. The equivalent process with bluetooth is either nonexistent (BLE) or a joy in comparison. Often time, even when pairing is needed, the process is entirely automatic. That can NEVER happen with WiFi.

Zigbee is a far better competitor to Bluetooth than WiFi is.

Re:Audio

[KingMotley]

I've seen the complaints before too, and I don't understand them either, but then again, maybe it's because I'm not buying the $5 bluetooth adapters or the $11 kmart bluetooth headphones.

Re:Audio

[Bandraginus]

Yep. Which surely makes "longer range" in the BT5 spec more of an anti-feature, right?

Re:Audio

[Neuronwelder]

Since the old Bluetooth was limited in range. Doesn't that make it harder for someone to listen into your data? Is it me, or is the new Bluetooth defeating it's purpose?

Re: Audio

[cyber-vandal]

In what way is it horrendous?

Re: Audio

[tigersha]

Maybe you are an android with a metal skeleton that interferes. I have never had any problems with BT and I use it every day as a tethered modem with my phone, both from a Macbook, ipad, andoid tablets and another android phone. The headset works fine too, no hassles. In fact, this is posted from an ipad over a BT link in a train

Re: Audio

[tigersha]

Bingo

Re:Audio

[Dog-Cow]

Depends. Higher range requires higher transmission power. So, for the one using the BT device, you'll get less interference from other devices. Until they all upgrade to BT5, of course.

Re:Audio

[nullgreen]

Xperia Z2 and Soundpeats QY7. It's funny that the cheapest pair of Bluetooth headphones I ever bought is the only one that passes this test. The worst reception I can observe is with the Jaybird X2, which I nowadays use only in the gym where there's a clear line of sight between the headphones and the phone.

Re:Audio

[AmiMoJo]

Bingo. 2.4Ghz is hopeless for anything that isn't heavily buffered. Applies to wireless keyboards and mice as well.

Re:Audio

[dave420]

If you assume they all blare out radiation as much as they can as often as they can, sure...

Re:Audio

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I had big time problems trying to use my Logitech bluetooth mouse and keyboard at the same time an external spinning disk was attached via USB 3. Apparently the interference is a known issue.

I also recently purchased a WeightGurus scale that uses lower-power bluetooth to transmit reading to a companion smartphone app. When this happens there's some sort of interference between the WiFi and bluetooth receivers on my phone and I have to turn off bluetooth, then turn WiFi off/on and finally turn bluetooth back on. If I don't do that I won't be able to reconnect to my WiFi router.

More bandwidth for advertising! Yay!

[Bugler412]

Just what we've all been clamoring for in our technical standards right?

Good hardware, bad software.

[Ostracus]

Unfortunately for BT the software stacks will still suck.

Re:Good hardware, bad software.

[labnet]

Unfortunately for BT the software stacks will still suck.

I've given up on BT mice. Even the Microsoft branded ones, on different computers with different MS OS's eventually un-pair and become unusable.

Re: Good hardware, bad software.

[tigersha]

The problem with newer BT peripheralw is that, for some reason, they are all now using bluetooth 4LE which is entirely another protocol which was not designed for HID devices. Why mice need to hack HID over BLE if the original standard worked better is a mystery to me.

My MS BT 4 mouse sucks. The apple magic mouse is OK, but the logitech non-BT mice are much better.

Audio

[ITRambo]

Bluetooth audio should finally sound like a cable was used, instead of the existing weakened dynamic range, which removes any "punch" from mucic.

Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[swb]

I mean where I can pair a set of headphones to, say, a phone and a computer at the same time and get audio from both at the same time? Or send the audio from one device to multiple devices at the same time? Two headsets paired to one phone at once?

Is this a hardware restriction of the radios, a limitation of the BT protocol or just the retarded nature of the implementation?

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[unixisc]

Good point. Bluetooth allow one-many pairings - the computer can pair w/ Bluetooth speakers, mice, keyboard, all simultaneously. But it doesn't allow many-one pairings, such as two phones accessing the car stereo. I'm not sure whether a phone being able to connect to just one headset is true or not, and if it is, why.

I have 2 phones and 2 tablets. Sometimes, I may have 1 phone and 1 tablet in the car, making the tablet one of the music sources. Normally, if I am listening to the radio and a call comes, the radio is interrupted and I can answer over the car stereo. But there is no way I can listen to the tablet over the Bluetooth w/o preventing the phone from being transferred to the speaker should a call interrupt. Bluetooth needs to have a many:many capability w/o having to manually disconnect and connect particular connections

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[thegarbz]

Think about your problem for a moment especially when combined with frequency hopping and other features intended against hardening a protocol against interference /attack. There actually few if any wireless standards which support this for data.

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[swb]

I guess I'm asking "why not?"

If two devices can share information about frequency changes, key rotation or whatever, why can't three or more? The assumption is that you go through manual pairing/peering verification on the devices themselves, so there seems to be no reason that the protocols couldn't replicate this data among more than two devices.

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[swb]

How is the headset/speaker supposed to know which audio stream should be played. Assume you have two phones connected to your car via BT, listening to music from phone #1 and phone #2 gets called. Is the car receiver supposed to figure out which audio to mute and which to play, or just play both streams over each other and let the driver/user pause one?

Mostly that's a logic problem. Usually calls are prioritized over music in bluetooth, so if you were playing music on device 1 and a call came in on device 2, why wouldn't it make sense to pause playing on device 1 and play audio on device 2? That would be the "logical" choice for a relatively dumb playback device, but on a platform like a PC or something with a control plane for configuration choices it could be something that was configurable.

Mute playback on all devices, reduce volume to x% and continue playback, bridge audio to call and set playback to x%.

You could have choices for incoming calls similar to the call waiting prompts now on phones -- ignore incoming, accept and hold current call, or merge calls.

And the last obvious (to me anyway) option would be volume mixing choices for simultaneous audio streams to set levels for each audio device. I may want audio from the PC at 25% but my phone at 100%, for example.

Obviously simultaneous pairing presents some choices and not every device would or even needs to have options for every possible combination, but mostly I think there's default behaviors that would make sense most of the time for simple devices. But IMHO there's no reason not to have more configuration options if the device itself has some kind of control interface anyway.

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[dave420]

It does have that functionality. Seemingly not in the devices you purchased, but it exists, so you should blame the products (or the purchaser thereof :-P) instead of bluetooth...

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[unixisc]

I think that this indicates the need to allow not just 'master-slave' pairings, but 'gay' pairings, like multiple masters (not sure that slave-slave pairings would work). Like the phones should be able to connect to multiple devices, while the car stereo should be capable of controlling which phone handles it. For this sort of logic, I think the phone's Bluetooth would have to work as well, so that if phone A is playing music and phone B gets called, phone A pauses and releases the car stereo to phone B.

This is probably beyond the mandate of Bluetooth, and probably a function of another agent, probably the car. In fact, given how we're now talking IoT everywhere, we should have an embedded computer underpinning the car stereo that handles which external device - phone, tablet - is handling the phone, and being able to hand off control b/w devices depending on whether something is being called. There's also the issue of whether the phone being called is the driver's phone or a passenger's phone: that would probably be addressed by the computer knowing, in case of a family, which driver is driving and therefore which phone to disable. Of course, there are sometimes cases of the spouse picking up the phone, in which case the computer would have to be notified someway so that it doesn't make things too complicated than it already is

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[swb]

I don't think multi-phone pairing with most Bluetooth receivers would be that hard. Nearly all the reasonably modern ones have track skip control and pause/resume functionality. Cars in particular seem to know when a call is coming in since the in-dash display usually shows incoming call status. It doesn't seem unreasonable that the car would just send a PAUSE to the sources playing music if the call came in on another device.

And up to this point, nobody STILL has explained tome whether multi-device pairing/audio mixing is a limitation of the Bluetooth protocol, the hardware/radios or something possible but unimplemented.

Re:Will we get simultaneous pairing?

[unixisc]

From what I understand, the Bluetooth protocol is about converting RF signals into digital signals that can then be interpreted by the receiving baseband. It has nothing to do w/ manipulating the actual signals themselves: that would have to be done in a higher layer beyond the protocol.

The multi-device pairing/switching is something that would have to be done by another controller - maybe the baseband can do it, but I'm not sure whether it's on the to-do list of the baseband processor

Re: Longer range?

[Anonymous Coward]

I ride motorcycles and use an intercom to talk to fellow riders using Bluetooth. It works very well up to 1km as long as there are no buildings or whatever in between. At the same time, the device is paired and connected to my GPS and phone which plays music. Battery lasts more than 8 hours. Look up Sena 20s.

It *may* not exist. I can eavesdrop on keyboards

[raymorris]

> it is hidden for other wireless tech devices like mice etc that don't use Bluetooth, simply because you don't see the network selection and authentication doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If you can't see it, and don't know what standards are used, don't assume there is any authentication or confidentially. I can eavesdrop on wireless keyboards sold by Microsoft and other companies.

iPhone support

[Jason1729]

Well, now we know what the flagship feature will be for the 2021 model iPhone. Plus model only, of course.

Re:iPhone support

[seoras]

iPhone 7 & Air Pods (ie W1 chip) already support BT5 (in hardware anyway).
Today they just ratified the standard and set it in stone (which allows the hardware to get a software update on todays spec).
Perhaps this is why the Air Pods were delayed until now.

Re:iPhone support

[ilsaloving]

I was actually wondering this when the iphone 7 came out. Apple literature kept saying "custom bluetooth chip" which, to me, is code for "don't touch it with a 10 foot pole". But if it really is just pre-released BT5 (which will be presumably be updated with new firmware), then the iphone 7 suddenly becomes a whole lot more attractive.

Re:"Consumers will have to wait until 2017"

[Jason1729]

You're new to technology circles, aren't you?

"have to wait until 2017" means you'll be lucky if they dump out a half-baked buggy, premature model right on December 31st, 2017. They'll try patching it in software but it will never work right until version 2.

Confidentiality requires authentication

[raymorris]

Confidentially and authentication go together because over the network you can't have confidentiality without authentication. You have to know whether or not you're talking to a man-in-the-middle.

Was quite surprised that iPhone 7 doesn't have thi

[AbRASiON]

Considering the removal of the headphone jack, surely this would have been a nice olive branch to say they have the latest and greatest.
Plus they generally adopt new tech very quickly

Bluetooth: Implemented to disapoint

[normandr]

I just want my phone to connect to my car reliably!

Re: EH!

[tigersha]

And that was a reasonable reply to thos forum how? I dont own a car and i dont comment in car forums. Imdont own a dildo and i dont comment in dildo forums. Thanks for wasting a part of my day.

PS no one gives a fuck what you do, luddite

Re: "Consumers will have to wait until 2017"

[tigersha]

Well, we are already at v5 here...

Re: where are the angry nerds?

[tigersha]

No. Really.

Re: Was quite surprised that iPhone 7 doesn't have

[tigersha]

If 'very quickly' means 'before it comes out' i think your standards are maybe a bit too high. Even Apple cant buy a time machine

That's why the public key is signed, for authentic

[raymorris]

> public key from a website to encrypt your information too it

The reason that the web site's public key is signed by a party you trust, such as VeriSign, is to authenticate the web site. Without authentication, the public key you use to encrypt your bank transfer might be the bad guy's key, or it might be my my key, rather than the bank's key.

Without authentication, you don't know who you're securely sending your information TO. Authentication allows you tell the difference between these three scenarios:

You -> Bank
You -> Me -> Bank
You -> Me

Re:Bluetooth.

[Hognoxious]

I've never owned one that worked.

Re:a2dp

[nightfire-unique]

Troll? Is there literally anyone familiar with the protocol who disagrees?

Re:a2dp

[Coren22]

Totally agree. I hate that when using bluetooth to my headset, it drops back to the headset protocol to use the mic. Why can't a2dp offer bidirectional audio for devices that have speakers and microphones?

Also, the quality is terrible, but you mentioned that already.

Re:Because of acronyms...

[Coren22]

After Bluetooth 4 disappeared without a trace, they needed to come up with another standard to replace it?