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.
(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!