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The new Bluetooth specification will supposedly allow devices to double the speed and quadruple the range compared to Bluetooth 4:
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced that the next version of its nigh-ubiquitous wireless technology is now available.
Bluetooth 5 boasts many improvements over its predecessor. It's said to offer twice the speed, four times the range, and eight times the broadcasting message capacity of Bluetooth 4. This new version is also supposed to work better while other wireless signals like Wi-Fi are active. All of these improvements combine to allow Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other connected products to be far more reliable than they were in the past.
Also at CNET, The Verge, and Engadget.
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Bluetooth 5 to Double Speed, Quadruple Range
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Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:53PM
Bluetooth imo is for "room range " comms. Longer range doesn't add value and only increases congestion and potential eavesdropping
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 08 2016, @07:58PM
The last time I tried to use wireless headphones that operated on the same frequencies as Wi-Fi, it jammed the damn Wi-Fi, making it practically useless. My Bluetooth headphones don't have that problem, and it would be swell if it could work 2-3 rooms away or a floor away. If we can believe the interference statement in the article, there are less interference problems than the previous version of Bluetooth.
If eavesdropping of keyboards and other devices is your concern, then maybe you shouldn't use any kind of wireless technology. Or networking technology. Or backdoored x86 chips.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:21PM
Never had a good experience with bluetooth, from jit-tt-tery audio to paus...ing mouses to battery drain... mobile usage.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:23PM
It depends on what ones you buy, where you're using them and a few other factors. Most of the bluetooth devices I've used worked just fine. The main issues being that they generally wouldn't work properly outside the Win/OSX/phone world. Just last week I tried hooking a pair up to Linux and the sound works fine, but there's a major bug with the bluetooth stack that prevented it from using the mic. When I'm feeling less lazy, I'll look into it, but it appears to be broken for at least 3 years with no sign of being addressed in the future.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday December 08 2016, @08:23PM
It'd be nice if configurable radio output levels were a standard option, but I know BT device makers are exactly a fan of standards.
Sitting here, I can think of situations where I would rather my BT devices have "house range" though, particularly in the case of BT cameras and the like. Opens up interesting new options, especially when you think of BT applications outside of "gadgets you connect to your phone".
I wonder what using all these improvements does to power consumption.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday December 08 2016, @09:26PM
It's mission creep. Bluetooth is slow over a short distance because that's what the situation called for. The current spec already allows way more distance than is really needed, so all this does is make the security problems of it that much worse.
Bluetooth headsets, keyboards and file transfer don't need to be done over more than a bout a 5m distance typically anyways. If you need more than that, then you should be looking at one of the other standards for that. WiFi can handle most of that with specialty software already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:11AM
Thank you, Francis! This is soooo informative!