- 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it...
- 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable.
- 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.1: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.2: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 5.0: More range, more bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
I have the latest Apple "Magic" Trackpad, hooked up to a Mac Pro. At least once a day, latency will take a dive, or it will completely disconnect. I have to turn the trackpad on and off repeatedly, to see if it will finally re-pair by itself. No other recourse, you can't easily access bluetooth settings on a mac with only a keyboard. (Which I made sure to get with a USB plug, since my last bluetooth keyboard had the same issues.)
I also have a Samsung Level BT headset, paired with a Samsung Note 5 phone. I can listen to Google Music or Player.fm for between 1 and 10 minutes until the headset will suddenly blast noise at full volume, and become unresponsive until I turn it off and back on again. Left my ears ringing on more than one occasion.
I've replaced my "magic" keyboard with a USB one, and recently hooked the trackpad back up via USB. I've stopped using the Samsung Level and went back to an old pair of headphones with a 3.5mm plug (that Apple is now trying to get rid of.)
I had a past without wires. I am moving to a future with them.
I used the Bluetooth Audio in my new car for about two weeks.
It was actually pretty reliable, and felt like the future. I'd get in, turn the car on, my phone would pair itself and pick up where it left off, and I never once had to take it or my keys out of my pocket. Then I started to actually listen to my music.
The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune. I'm a musician, so I can definitely hear this and it's infuriating. VLC on Windows had the same problem for years and everyone told me I was crazy, but the car was at least twice as bad. It sounded like an old cassette player, if anyone remembers those. Googling reveals this to be a common issue with many different varieties of bluetooth speaker. I can only imagine it's doing some sort of time stretching to "hide" latency in the packets but, well, it's not hiding it well enough for my ears. Trying to listen to anything melodic, especially piano pieces, was just awful.
Fortunately, I discovered that my car also has a shockingly excellent USB Audio implementation, so I copied the Music from my phone onto a large USB drive and have been happy ever since. More wires for me please, the future isn't ready.
I'm so glad this is the top comment, and matches my experience 100%. If a product brags about its Bluetooth support, I immediately start losing trust in it. So many devices have such bad UX for pairing too, so I can't even get any communication about what I'm doing wrong. I think BT-enabled cars are the worst offender here. Some of them don't even provide obvious alternatives to the voice menu.
The only positive bluetooth experience I've had lately was playing the mobile game Spaceteam. Why is a 6-year-old free app the only example that comes to mind? My 1st-gen Pebble is still okay-ish; it does frequently disconnect but it usually manages to reconnect without intervention or disrupting itself.
(This rant bookends nicely into talking about how shitty smart TVs are too, but I'll try to restrain myself.)
In my experience, after my Bluetooth devices are paired, they seem to be rock solid. (I know - YMMV, "works on my machine", etc.)
Where things have gotten the messiest for me is when you connect multiple devices and the system has to make arbitrary decisions - e.g. when my wife and I are both in the car, whose phone should the car sync with? These are design decisions for which there is no exact answer.
That's not my experience at all. My Magic keyboard and mouse work fine. I've used them with my Mac mini and my Macbook without any problems. They paired without any trouble. Pairing my phone with my car was a pain, but I've got an after-market Bluetooth adapter so you have to press the 3 button on the radio or something to pair the first time. After that it just worked.
I used to be in this camp. My Jawbone Big Jambox would never pair, never stay connected, the whole deal. But I then replaced it with a Marshall bluetooth speaker and it's just a dream. It connects immediately, on the first try, every time. It never disconnects. If it hasn't received audio in a while, it goes to sleep. Press the "wake" button and it immediately connects again.
I used to loathe bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if it's shoddy implementations that are to blame?
Just an aside: if you have Full Keyboard Access turned on (in System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts) then the Bluetooth prefpane is fairly usable with just the keyboard. You can use Spotlight to open it, then tab between the controls and activate them with the space bar. You can toggle it on and off this way, and even remove devices. You may also be able to navigate the Bluetooth Setup Assistant to re-pair, but I didn't take it that far.
If you prefer wires, the new trackpad will work as a wired device as well if you just leave it plugged in. For some incomprehensible reason, Apple placed the Lightning port on the bottom of the new mouse so that one can't be used wired, but they weren't so catastrophically stupid with the trackpad.
I couldn't agree more. I have never used a Bluetooth device that didn't have connection issues at least daily. And that's not even taking into account the madness of pairing a device with multiple other devices (e.g. phone & PC) or the fact that you can't use USB and Bluetooth at the same time, because USB3 jams the 2.4GHz frequency. If USB and Bluetooth are going to be mutually exclusive, I know which one I'm going to pick. (But that doesn't mean that making USB3 jam 2.4GHz WiFi & BT wasn't an idiotic design choice, so much so that I wonder if it wasn't an intentional attempt at killing competition.)
I'm pretty sure the crappyness you're experiencing is software related.
I've got a lot of tech, bt stuff everywhere and the ones that work the best have the best switching software.
one of the most solid pieces of bt management software is in the Samsung necklace headphones.
these things flawlessly switch between devices, rarely ever skip much less drop a signal.
they're now about 30 bucks, crappy physical design makes them too uncomfortable sadly.
compare with a set of headphones with supposed latency software built in, avantree makes a set of these headphones.
avantree couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag, so they ruined a perfectly great pair of headphones because they hired some random company who doesn't know bt programming and so those headphones are great for about 15 minutes and then memory leak or something and they start sucking like all the other bt devices with crappy software.
IMO bt sucks because people can't code and there isn't a OSS client software bt solution that fixes it, so far. and getting Samsung to hook it up with their headphone code base is probably not gonna happen.
I can't up vote you enough. I don't even want Bluetooth to improve anymore. I have given them enough time and energy as well as money for them to improve. All Bluetooth SIG provided was disappointment, frustration, one after another.
I want something to completely replace it. Hopefully coming from WiFi 802.11.
Sadly I am not aware of anything coming.
Good point! I've been having similar experiences pairing my phone (6s) with my dad's brand new Honda CRV. Takes a minute of sitting and pressing buttons after every stop to get it to resume the pairing. The car is equipped with a computer that auto steers within the lane but still can't get this to work instantly
I ran into connection problems with any Bluetooth devices I have used.Currently I have fitbit which has all sorts of connectivity and syncing issues with Bluetooth both with windows phone and android. Previously I had Nokia Bluetooth headset which dropped connections from time to time again with Android or windows phones I tested.Before that I had an expensive Bluetooth wireless mouse from Microsoft which had issues with multiple laptops I tested.It cant be driver issues every time.
While I definitely still have issues with Bluetooth keyboards and mice, I have three pairs of bluetooth headphones (two of which are BT4, one is BT3) and they work great.
The only real problem is switching between devices is still much more annoying than it should be (I ought to be able to just select the device from the drop-down on the desired device).
The power of Bluetooth is set to explode when the next version of the wireless technology is released at the turn of the year. Bluetooth 5 will offer eight times the broadcasting capacity, have four times the range, and run twice as fast as current Bluetooth technology, the organization responsible for development of Bluetooth announced on Thursday. The increased broadcasting capacity could pave the way for the introduction of "connectionless" data transfers, meaning that the need to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset or wireless keyboard with a mobile app or computer program may become a thing of the past. Longer range means that it will be possible to use Bluetooth devices throughout the home, and higher speeds will make these devices more responsive."
I use a pair of Presonus bluetooth speakers daily, and have for months. There's never been a bluetooth problem. Maybe you've got bad firmware or something?
Yes 1000x. I always prefer proprietary wireless devices over Bluetooth since it's been such crap since inception. My first taste of Bluetooth was with a Nokia 6600 and a Sony Ericsson HBH-660 more than a decade ago. It dropped the connection all the time, the caller ID didn't work, the audio would be choppy, etc. This was in 2004 or 2005. The headset didn't work with any other future phone I had, even though it was "compliant" with this "standard".
These days, I have a DualShock 4 controller which Windows 7 and 10 don't like, using 4 different Bluetooth radios. It also won't pair with my FireTV, though this is possibly a purposeful limitation because Amazon wants to sell me their controller.
Speaking of that FireTV, the Bluetooth remote doesn't work the majority of the time, and eats a pair of Energizer lithium AAAs about every 3 weeks. It's nice that it's not IR, and I usually just use the Fire remote app instead of the physical remote, but it annoys me to no end that we've replaced something which was simple and reliable with something which is complex and wonky; same problem with touchscreen everything in cars and everywhere these days, but that's a rant for another time.
I have a nice pair of Logitech Ultimate Ears UE9000 headphones which have audio glitches every 1-60 seconds when connected to my PC. This makes gaming on them basically impossible. The range for a good connection is about 6'. I usually just plug them in, negating why I bought wireless headphones.
My Automatic OBD dongle works well -- except for the super unreliable Bluetooth connection, which pairs about 80% of the time anywhere between 5 seconds after I start my car to 10 minutes into a drive. Trying to get it into the actual "connected" mode where it can work (poorly, at a slow and highly variable update rate) with Harry's Lap Timer is an exercise in frustration, killing the iOS app multiple times, trying to re-pair it, toggling Bluetooth, etc.
My Suunto Ambit 3 watch works unreliably with Bluetooth, and the messaging "smart"watch feature is so annoying to use that I just turn it off and sync it manually with a laptop. Bluetooth again here. Their proprietary fitness band (which can also do Bluetooth) works fine with the watch.
A Polar fitness band did so poorly with pairing that I replaced it with the Suunto belt mentioned above for use with the watch. Pairing to my phone would work about half the time. These fitness bands are also annoying since they have no status light to indicate power or Bluetooth connection state; you just have to get it wet so it conducts and hope it's on and that the battery isn't flat.
In my car I have a Pioneer aftermarket radio with Bluetooth. It doesn't support a profile which lets me play audio, only hands-free phone call mode. The USB connection mis-pairs with my iPhone about half the time. The Bluetooth feature for syncing the phone book is worthless.
I also have some Jaybird Bluebuds X Bluetooth headphones. These mostly work fine, and switch connections better than almost any other BT device I've owned. The audio does drop occasionally, but they're pretty good for listening to directions on a motorcycle.
By far the BT device I've been most pleased with has been the Logitech Megaboom speaker. It never drops connection and switches pairing flawlessly between multiple phones and a PC. The only problem I can think of is that many phones don't account for a Bluetooth device which may be in range which you don't wish to immediately attempt to pair with, so they'll "steal" the Megaboom from a good connection whenever they have some audio (like an unlocking the phone sound) to play.
On the proprietary side, we have an XBone Elite controller with an expensive dongle which works perfectly, aside from the Windows store requiring about 4 hours of tinkering with registry settings and "repair" tools to get it to download the controller settings program from MS. The latency is great and it never drops out.
I have a few Logitech Unifying RX-compatible devices. They all work flawlessly. By comparison, a Logitech BT backlit keyboard I have loses pairing, doesn't connect, etc with various PCs, phones, and the FireTV.
Bluetooth is infuriating and has been for over a decade. I really hope that they address the pairing and reliability issues, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
That's nice, but the biggest UX problem with Bluetooth is still the pairing misery. It's 2016 and it's still nearly impossible to use any one Bluetooth device with multiple other devices. Try switching a Bluetooth headset from an iPhone to a Mac or convincing your car to switch from one phone to another.
It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental problems that nobody seems to worry too much about, apart from a small number of vendors (Apple did a decent job solving the pairing problem with the Apple TV: http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-lik...).
I realise it's pretty hard to beat the intuitive action of plugging physical cables into devices to connect two things, but if we really want to get rid of cables, things need to be easier.
So true.
At first I couldn't believe it, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to completely remove a paired bluetooth device from windows.
After having connected my wireless keyboard to my mac for a day, I tried to reconnect it to windows.
It fails silently and doesn't show up any more in available bluetooth devices. The connection to my mac obviously changed the pairing code, while windows still tries the old one.
I googled for hours, tried everything from uninstalling bluetooth drivers to removing entries from the registry.
Windows always silently re-adds the keyboard to the installed devices and fails at pairing.
So I've got 2 choices left: Buy a new keyboard or reinstall Windows. Yay!
I couldn't agree more. I have a set of headphones that I love using with my phone and several computers. It's such an annoyance to connect it from one to the other and it doesn't appear that ANYONE is even working on making this better anymore. There was that brief period where some bluetooth devices included NFC where you could take it to the device to pair which was actually interesting but it only happened to such few products I have no idea if it ultimately ended up being usable or not.
I don't need more range or more speed. I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range of each other, and stop breaking every time I upgrade anything. Unfortunately that would require making it less complex, which is about as likely as a broken egg spontaneously reassembling.
As a matter of fact "more range" is quite the opposite of what I want from Bluetooth. Do I really need to have 5000 keyboards within range of my computer at the office, instead of the 100 I already have? I definitely do not.
Yup. Bluetooth is kind of a nightmare for operability. I do think it could benefit from a bit more speed, in terms of opening up what it can do, but in terms of range.... if I need range, I'll use WiFi. What I need is for bluetooth to just work, dammit. I get that it is hard, but work on that before you work on anything else. Heck, I've found that using WiFi instead of bluetooth for a wireless hotspot/link is more reliable. How is that possible?
I have a Nexus 6p, which I connect to my car via Bluetooth for music and navigation.
The dropped audio, stutters, and need to reconnect are driving me crazy. I've now switched back to a generic audio cable.
Bluetooth reliability really is dire, the phone is within 10m of wherever the car transceiver is and in the designed hotspot too (inside the car) and it still fails.
I'd also like it to consume less power. I know the current standard touts itself as "low-energy" but I can see a very noticeable increase in battery drain when I have it enabled on my phone. So I always keep it disabled.
> I don't need more range ... I need it to reliably connect and stay connected while devices are well within range
You might need more range.
I have connectivity problems (short drop-outs) with a little BT receiver I use with the bone-conduction headphones (not BT themselves) I use when running if I have the receiver clipped to my shorts on the side opposite the arm I have the phone arm-band on but not if it is clipped to the other side or higher up.
The problem presumably is that the 10m range is an "up to" figure achieved in ideal conditions and having my body between the two devices is not ideal conditions.
Of course if the interference is of the "no signal at all is going to get through the noise floor" variety then increasing the range (presumably by increasing power output?) isn't going to help.
You know there's a problem when a majority of the comments (on a website filled with software engineers and other technologically inclined people) are all claiming that Bluetooth simply sucks in terms of usability. Imagine how hard it would be for someone like my parents to debug a Bluetooth pairing issue.
I think they need to focus 100% of their efforts on addressing some of these issues which seem to have been a problem since the beginning.
Bluetooth is “almost there” in my opinion. It’s incredibly convenient (when it works), and I can envision how great it will be once they work all the kinks out. It has been getting better and I’m confident it will keep improving.
Let me just add another data point:
I have a 2013 Android phone and a 2011 car. Luckily, the car supports playing audio through Bluetooth which is really cool when it works. However, every time I get into the car, there’s a 50/50 chance that BT audio will actually work. The phone always pairs with the car, but it seems like it doesn’t reliably “negotiate” the audio capability. Sometimes I can make a phone call which seems to reset the system and can cause it to start working, but other times I have to actually power cycle the phone.
The other issue is that every once-in-a-while, there will be this spontaneous audible crackle. After the initial crackle occurs, there will be periodic crackles about once every 10 seconds from there on out. The only way to get it out of this state is to make a call or restart the phone. It seems almost like there’s some kind of memory leak in a buffer or something which causes it to eventually run dry and bounce off of being empty.
These issues seem more software related and probably have nothing to do with the Bluetooth standard itself, but I won’t let that stop me from ranting.
Working with Bluetooth on a project last year was a gigantic pain in the ass.
Linux support was reasonably good, though with bizarre quirks and changes of tooling between libbluetooth versions. OSX was a total nightmare.
The project is currently stalled because three days before I had to head off (I was doing all of the programming and troubleshooting on the software side) my collaborators decided to inform me that they would be using a different laptop to what they'd been using for the rest of the project, and when we tried our software with that version of OSX and hardware, it refused to work nicely. We eventually came up with a bizarre pairing ritual that involved removing devices, then quickly adding them, and in a specific order, and then that mysteriously stopped working and now I don't have access to hardware to fix it.
Knowing what I now know, if I'd had my time again I would have recommended ESP8266 based boards instead of the LightBlue Beans we were using. Even though one of our requirements was low power usage (which we certainly got through Bluetooth 4), it probably would have been less hassle to just make the WiFi modem sleep for a period and then transmit in bursts.
I think a lot of the comments here could be attributed to the terrible Bluetooth software stacks that are around (Car head-decks, Android (all versions), Windows 8-10 default stacks).
I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with speakers and mic won't work.
Bluetooth is very easy to hate. It never ever just works: the pairing rituals, the flakiness. It's annoying.
But in recent years it has become more and more invisible. You've probably used Bluetooth in the past 12 months without noticing. Invisibility is something that the Bluetooth SIG should strive for.
So much negativity about bluetooth in these comments ... and yet I can happily say that bluetooth has really changed my life. Bluetooth headphones allow me to walk around and exercise without an annoying cord trailing the length of my body. And I can get to the office and sit down with my mouse and keyboard and just start typing without plugging anything at all in. While it certainly had early problems, I'm super happy with it these days and especially the increase in bandwidth will be very welcome.
What I want from my wireless devices is not more range or speed, but total freedom from wires, especially for charging.
I remember from an Intel demo from a while ago, where they showcased a number of peripherals using their inductive charging tech, where you can just dump them onto a large inductive charging pad along with your phone and tablet without having to fumble with plugging wires into each one. That's the killer feature for a wireless device, in my opinion.
A USB dongle that somehow pairs to my Apple Keyboard and Touchpad
and presents itself as a standard USB keyboard and mouse to the OS.
I could plug said device to my cinema display's USB hub.
This way both me and my wife could use the same
workstation by simply plugging in the computer.
Try going from having bluetooth off on your phone to bluetooth being on in your car that has bluetooth capable device. It sucks. Every car I've been has trouble pairing if bluetooth wasn't on prior to me entering the car. For one car, I had to turn the engine off for it pair. WTF?
Its really exciting to see that kind of capabilities and potential that bluetooth 5 brings to the table for IoT. However, what excited me even more is the capabilities put forward by bluetooth 5 to boost beacon adoption and location-based services. Given how Google's recent updates such as Google Nearby and Android Instant Apps are also ones with location-based services at its core, bluetooth 5 onces it's launched will definitely boost beacon adoption to a significant extent.
I guess that is with the same power usage, as it would be disingenuous if that were different, but it would be nice to have that confirmed.
Also, I guess that, for many IoT devices, keeping range and speed the same while decreasing power usage significantly (although, as a third guess, I expect 'double the speed' means that devices can go to low power mode quicker, potentially halving power usage of the entire device) might be more useful.
The only reason I like Bluetooth at all is because the alternative is a bunch of USB receivers plugged into my NUC.
But I have to admit that it seems to work pretty well on my iPhone while years ago on other phones I had a lot of disconnects. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point.
I'd like to see more BT headsets for PC hit the market. The only ones I could find were from Turtle Beach.
My hope for the future of phone/car interfaces is that once you've paired a phone, the touch screen basically becomes a display for the phone... I have a brand new (less than a week old) car, and the UI feels sluggish, and looks very dated at this point. I'd rather my N6P managed the whole thing. Hopefully BT5 can allow that to happen.
[+] [-] creativeembassy|9 years ago|reply
- 1.0 to 1.2: Hard to pair, and very unreliable. First major version, I'm sure they'll fix it...
- 2.0: More bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 2.1: Adds "Simple Secure Pairing". Still hard to actually pair. Still unreliable.
- 3.0: More bandwidth. More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.0: Bluetooth Low Energy released. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.1: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 4.2: More features. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
- 5.0: More range, more bandwidth. Still hard to pair, still unreliable.
I have the latest Apple "Magic" Trackpad, hooked up to a Mac Pro. At least once a day, latency will take a dive, or it will completely disconnect. I have to turn the trackpad on and off repeatedly, to see if it will finally re-pair by itself. No other recourse, you can't easily access bluetooth settings on a mac with only a keyboard. (Which I made sure to get with a USB plug, since my last bluetooth keyboard had the same issues.)
I also have a Samsung Level BT headset, paired with a Samsung Note 5 phone. I can listen to Google Music or Player.fm for between 1 and 10 minutes until the headset will suddenly blast noise at full volume, and become unresponsive until I turn it off and back on again. Left my ears ringing on more than one occasion.
I've replaced my "magic" keyboard with a USB one, and recently hooked the trackpad back up via USB. I've stopped using the Samsung Level and went back to an old pair of headphones with a 3.5mm plug (that Apple is now trying to get rid of.)
I had a past without wires. I am moving to a future with them.
[+] [-] zeta0134|9 years ago|reply
It was actually pretty reliable, and felt like the future. I'd get in, turn the car on, my phone would pair itself and pick up where it left off, and I never once had to take it or my keys out of my pocket. Then I started to actually listen to my music.
The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune. I'm a musician, so I can definitely hear this and it's infuriating. VLC on Windows had the same problem for years and everyone told me I was crazy, but the car was at least twice as bad. It sounded like an old cassette player, if anyone remembers those. Googling reveals this to be a common issue with many different varieties of bluetooth speaker. I can only imagine it's doing some sort of time stretching to "hide" latency in the packets but, well, it's not hiding it well enough for my ears. Trying to listen to anything melodic, especially piano pieces, was just awful.
Fortunately, I discovered that my car also has a shockingly excellent USB Audio implementation, so I copied the Music from my phone onto a large USB drive and have been happy ever since. More wires for me please, the future isn't ready.
[+] [-] XaspR8d|9 years ago|reply
The only positive bluetooth experience I've had lately was playing the mobile game Spaceteam. Why is a 6-year-old free app the only example that comes to mind? My 1st-gen Pebble is still okay-ish; it does frequently disconnect but it usually manages to reconnect without intervention or disrupting itself.
(This rant bookends nicely into talking about how shitty smart TVs are too, but I'll try to restrain myself.)
[+] [-] theorique|9 years ago|reply
Where things have gotten the messiest for me is when you connect multiple devices and the system has to make arbitrary decisions - e.g. when my wife and I are both in the car, whose phone should the car sync with? These are design decisions for which there is no exact answer.
[+] [-] KevinEldon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dayshine|9 years ago|reply
I've never had a good experience with desktops and bluetooth devices however.
I wonder why drivers are so much better on mobile?
[+] [-] city41|9 years ago|reply
I used to loathe bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if it's shoddy implementations that are to blame?
[+] [-] mikeash|9 years ago|reply
If you prefer wires, the new trackpad will work as a wired device as well if you just leave it plugged in. For some incomprehensible reason, Apple placed the Lightning port on the bottom of the new mouse so that one can't be used wired, but they weren't so catastrophically stupid with the trackpad.
[+] [-] rcthompson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ldehaan|9 years ago|reply
I've got a lot of tech, bt stuff everywhere and the ones that work the best have the best switching software.
one of the most solid pieces of bt management software is in the Samsung necklace headphones.
these things flawlessly switch between devices, rarely ever skip much less drop a signal.
they're now about 30 bucks, crappy physical design makes them too uncomfortable sadly.
compare with a set of headphones with supposed latency software built in, avantree makes a set of these headphones.
avantree couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag, so they ruined a perfectly great pair of headphones because they hired some random company who doesn't know bt programming and so those headphones are great for about 15 minutes and then memory leak or something and they start sucking like all the other bt devices with crappy software.
IMO bt sucks because people can't code and there isn't a OSS client software bt solution that fixes it, so far. and getting Samsung to hook it up with their headphone code base is probably not gonna happen.
[+] [-] ksec|9 years ago|reply
I want something to completely replace it. Hopefully coming from WiFi 802.11. Sadly I am not aware of anything coming.
[+] [-] SonicSoul|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hitr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stormbeta|9 years ago|reply
The only real problem is switching between devices is still much more annoying than it should be (I ought to be able to just select the device from the drop-down on the desired device).
[+] [-] nwah1|9 years ago|reply
The power of Bluetooth is set to explode when the next version of the wireless technology is released at the turn of the year. Bluetooth 5 will offer eight times the broadcasting capacity, have four times the range, and run twice as fast as current Bluetooth technology, the organization responsible for development of Bluetooth announced on Thursday. The increased broadcasting capacity could pave the way for the introduction of "connectionless" data transfers, meaning that the need to pair a Bluetooth device like a headset or wireless keyboard with a mobile app or computer program may become a thing of the past. Longer range means that it will be possible to use Bluetooth devices throughout the home, and higher speeds will make these devices more responsive."
http://ccm.net/news/27500-bluetooth-5-promises-an-end-to-pai...
[+] [-] dghughes|9 years ago|reply
Except every other BT device around you, just not yours.
[+] [-] recursive|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanp2k2|9 years ago|reply
These days, I have a DualShock 4 controller which Windows 7 and 10 don't like, using 4 different Bluetooth radios. It also won't pair with my FireTV, though this is possibly a purposeful limitation because Amazon wants to sell me their controller.
Speaking of that FireTV, the Bluetooth remote doesn't work the majority of the time, and eats a pair of Energizer lithium AAAs about every 3 weeks. It's nice that it's not IR, and I usually just use the Fire remote app instead of the physical remote, but it annoys me to no end that we've replaced something which was simple and reliable with something which is complex and wonky; same problem with touchscreen everything in cars and everywhere these days, but that's a rant for another time.
I have a nice pair of Logitech Ultimate Ears UE9000 headphones which have audio glitches every 1-60 seconds when connected to my PC. This makes gaming on them basically impossible. The range for a good connection is about 6'. I usually just plug them in, negating why I bought wireless headphones.
My Automatic OBD dongle works well -- except for the super unreliable Bluetooth connection, which pairs about 80% of the time anywhere between 5 seconds after I start my car to 10 minutes into a drive. Trying to get it into the actual "connected" mode where it can work (poorly, at a slow and highly variable update rate) with Harry's Lap Timer is an exercise in frustration, killing the iOS app multiple times, trying to re-pair it, toggling Bluetooth, etc.
My Suunto Ambit 3 watch works unreliably with Bluetooth, and the messaging "smart"watch feature is so annoying to use that I just turn it off and sync it manually with a laptop. Bluetooth again here. Their proprietary fitness band (which can also do Bluetooth) works fine with the watch.
A Polar fitness band did so poorly with pairing that I replaced it with the Suunto belt mentioned above for use with the watch. Pairing to my phone would work about half the time. These fitness bands are also annoying since they have no status light to indicate power or Bluetooth connection state; you just have to get it wet so it conducts and hope it's on and that the battery isn't flat.
In my car I have a Pioneer aftermarket radio with Bluetooth. It doesn't support a profile which lets me play audio, only hands-free phone call mode. The USB connection mis-pairs with my iPhone about half the time. The Bluetooth feature for syncing the phone book is worthless.
I also have some Jaybird Bluebuds X Bluetooth headphones. These mostly work fine, and switch connections better than almost any other BT device I've owned. The audio does drop occasionally, but they're pretty good for listening to directions on a motorcycle.
By far the BT device I've been most pleased with has been the Logitech Megaboom speaker. It never drops connection and switches pairing flawlessly between multiple phones and a PC. The only problem I can think of is that many phones don't account for a Bluetooth device which may be in range which you don't wish to immediately attempt to pair with, so they'll "steal" the Megaboom from a good connection whenever they have some audio (like an unlocking the phone sound) to play.
On the proprietary side, we have an XBone Elite controller with an expensive dongle which works perfectly, aside from the Windows store requiring about 4 hours of tinkering with registry settings and "repair" tools to get it to download the controller settings program from MS. The latency is great and it never drops out.
I have a few Logitech Unifying RX-compatible devices. They all work flawlessly. By comparison, a Logitech BT backlit keyboard I have loses pairing, doesn't connect, etc with various PCs, phones, and the FireTV.
Bluetooth is infuriating and has been for over a decade. I really hope that they address the pairing and reliability issues, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
[+] [-] micheljansen|9 years ago|reply
It's a huge mess and its not just a matter of the technology not working as designed. These are fundamental problems that nobody seems to worry too much about, apart from a small number of vendors (Apple did a decent job solving the pairing problem with the Apple TV: http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/29/new-apple-tv-os-offers-nfc-lik...).
I realise it's pretty hard to beat the intuitive action of plugging physical cables into devices to connect two things, but if we really want to get rid of cables, things need to be easier.
[+] [-] sdl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobolus|9 years ago|reply
Too bad this method can’t be more generally used.
[+] [-] modeless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honkhonkpants|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbsmith|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|9 years ago|reply
The dropped audio, stutters, and need to reconnect are driving me crazy. I've now switched back to a generic audio cable.
Bluetooth reliability really is dire, the phone is within 10m of wherever the car transceiver is and in the designed hotspot too (inside the car) and it still fails.
[+] [-] aphextron|9 years ago|reply
This is such a great analogy on so many levels. The natural tendency of software projects to exhibit the effects of entropy.
[+] [-] tlrobinson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enraged_camel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xexers|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dspillett|9 years ago|reply
You might need more range.
I have connectivity problems (short drop-outs) with a little BT receiver I use with the bone-conduction headphones (not BT themselves) I use when running if I have the receiver clipped to my shorts on the side opposite the arm I have the phone arm-band on but not if it is clipped to the other side or higher up.
The problem presumably is that the 10m range is an "up to" figure achieved in ideal conditions and having my body between the two devices is not ideal conditions.
Of course if the interference is of the "no signal at all is going to get through the noise floor" variety then increasing the range (presumably by increasing power output?) isn't going to help.
[+] [-] NTripleOne|9 years ago|reply
The only things that seems to do this reliably are PS4 controllers with my PC.
[+] [-] Unklejoe|9 years ago|reply
I think they need to focus 100% of their efforts on addressing some of these issues which seem to have been a problem since the beginning.
Bluetooth is “almost there” in my opinion. It’s incredibly convenient (when it works), and I can envision how great it will be once they work all the kinks out. It has been getting better and I’m confident it will keep improving.
Let me just add another data point:
I have a 2013 Android phone and a 2011 car. Luckily, the car supports playing audio through Bluetooth which is really cool when it works. However, every time I get into the car, there’s a 50/50 chance that BT audio will actually work. The phone always pairs with the car, but it seems like it doesn’t reliably “negotiate” the audio capability. Sometimes I can make a phone call which seems to reset the system and can cause it to start working, but other times I have to actually power cycle the phone.
The other issue is that every once-in-a-while, there will be this spontaneous audible crackle. After the initial crackle occurs, there will be periodic crackles about once every 10 seconds from there on out. The only way to get it out of this state is to make a call or restart the phone. It seems almost like there’s some kind of memory leak in a buffer or something which causes it to eventually run dry and bounce off of being empty.
These issues seem more software related and probably have nothing to do with the Bluetooth standard itself, but I won’t let that stop me from ranting.
[+] [-] Niksko|9 years ago|reply
Linux support was reasonably good, though with bizarre quirks and changes of tooling between libbluetooth versions. OSX was a total nightmare.
The project is currently stalled because three days before I had to head off (I was doing all of the programming and troubleshooting on the software side) my collaborators decided to inform me that they would be using a different laptop to what they'd been using for the rest of the project, and when we tried our software with that version of OSX and hardware, it refused to work nicely. We eventually came up with a bizarre pairing ritual that involved removing devices, then quickly adding them, and in a specific order, and then that mysteriously stopped working and now I don't have access to hardware to fix it.
Knowing what I now know, if I'd had my time again I would have recommended ESP8266 based boards instead of the LightBlue Beans we were using. Even though one of our requirements was low power usage (which we certainly got through Bluetooth 4), it probably would have been less hassle to just make the WiFi modem sleep for a period and then transmit in bursts.
[+] [-] voltagex_|9 years ago|reply
I've got a brand new Plugable BT4 dongle that barely works in Win 10 because Broadcom haven't updated their suite so it relies on the default 10 drivers - you can't have a HFP and A2DP service running at the same time so a headset with speakers and mic won't work.
[+] [-] jamesrom|9 years ago|reply
But in recent years it has become more and more invisible. You've probably used Bluetooth in the past 12 months without noticing. Invisibility is something that the Bluetooth SIG should strive for.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danjayh|9 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-comi...
[+] [-] lewisl9029|9 years ago|reply
I remember from an Intel demo from a while ago, where they showcased a number of peripherals using their inductive charging tech, where you can just dump them onto a large inductive charging pad along with your phone and tablet without having to fumble with plugging wires into each one. That's the killer feature for a wireless device, in my opinion.
[+] [-] sly010|9 years ago|reply
A USB dongle that somehow pairs to my Apple Keyboard and Touchpad and presents itself as a standard USB keyboard and mouse to the OS.
I could plug said device to my cinema display's USB hub. This way both me and my wife could use the same workstation by simply plugging in the computer.
[+] [-] tranv94|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _RPM|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0898|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevikaG|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|9 years ago|reply
Also, I guess that, for many IoT devices, keeping range and speed the same while decreasing power usage significantly (although, as a third guess, I expect 'double the speed' means that devices can go to low power mode quicker, potentially halving power usage of the entire device) might be more useful.
[+] [-] BuckRogers|9 years ago|reply
But I have to admit that it seems to work pretty well on my iPhone while years ago on other phones I had a lot of disconnects. I have one of the LG around the neck headsets and it's actually really good at this point.
I'd like to see more BT headsets for PC hit the market. The only ones I could find were from Turtle Beach.
[+] [-] wjd2030|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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