The next generation of the wireless transmission standard, which will be called Bluetooth 5 ,will officially be unveiled on 16 June. Compared to the already available standards, the successor to Bluetooth 4.2 promises to offer better range, faster speeds for transmission through low energy.
Most mobile phone users are unaware of the importance of a new Bluetooth version. They consider it simply as another feature baked in which enables connection to accessories wirelessly and for file transfer. However, the new standard promises to be much more than that.
Bluetooth 5 claims to offer double the range of existing versions. Ideally, the current generation devices should offer a minimum range of 200 feet. Powell announced that the upcoming standard will offer a range double of this, meaning, the range offered by the new version and WiFi Direct will be similar.
Speed offered by Bluetooth 4.0 is a mere 25Mbps (Mega Bits) as opposed to 250 Mbps promised by WiFi Direct. Bluetooth 5 now promises to have 4x (four times) the speed of current 4.2. This will bring about an improvement in performace and may also make
Bluetooth a more common way to transfer large files wirelessly. 😀
The most interesting feature of the bunch is the ability to employ larger Advertising Packets. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean more ads! Advertising has a whole other meaning in the Bluetooth world. An advertising packet has the ability to send information to
devices even if they are not paired with each other. It helps users to detect, identify and connect to different devices. As the new version will have larger packets, more information can be shared among Bluetooth devices.
It will also offer new functionality for connectionless services. These will mostly comprise of location info and navigation.
Mark Powell also mentions that
“By adding significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions, Bluetooth 5 will further
propel the adoption and deployment of beacons and location-based services to users around the world”
, where Google and Apple
have already started venturing.
What might interest people the most is improvement in Bluetooth audio, which might gain a massive upgrade in quality. It isn’t to say that current gen implementations are bad, but there’s scope for improvement as they aren’t perfect either! With features
such as faster speeds and higher bandwidth transfer capabilities, wireless audio can compete head to head with audiophile equipment’s, only to better wireless audio solutions.
It might not be possible to update current hardware to suit the Bluetooth spec, as with every version new hardware is required. There is no word on backward compatibility yet. Chances are, we might get to see Bluetooth 5 enabled devices at the end of the year!
Will it really deliver what it claims? Will it see early mass adoption? What do you guys think? Let us know in the comments below.
[Source: AA]
