I’ve been saying I don’t see the point of BT since it came out and that I thought it wasn’t going to be around a very long time…I might be right:

At the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday Intel announced the company was giving up on the deadlocked Ultrawideband IEEE task group and going it alone with a derivative offering they are calling Wireless USB. This initiative, for them, does everything that Bluetooth does and, effectively means that for PCs Bluetooth is all but dead.

I am actually happy because I never saw a future in BT.

Erik

I guess rumors of Centrino 2 having built-in BT weren’t accurate. Let’s see what happens. The fact that Intel will be using the USB OS hooks is great, but I am curious how they deal with security. There are two factors that make me think that rumors BT’s death is exaggerated: Apple, who has a habit of being a standard bearer of emerging technologies in the consumer space (eg. USB, 802.11, FireWire), is embracing the technology and the enormous number of BT-enabled phones and headsets on the market, especially in Europe.

I don’t know if Bluetooth is dead or not but it has been useful for me for the past two years. It definitely didn’t get the best support on the PC platform and there was definitely a lot of confusion in the marketplace with lots of products that didn’t work well together.

It’s a shame that it didn’t pickup the way they expected. The Bluetooth specification should have either mandated at least a certain set of known services/protocols to gain certification or they should have come up with markings to denote what products supported what features. For instance, they could have come up with standard icons to represent what types of devices a given product would support. Therefore, if you wanted HID peripheral support you would look for products with the mouse/keyboard icon. This would simplify things for the consumer and force manufacturers to test their equipment.

And Drachen is right about Apple…if they manage to get their implementation right and get more and more vendors to make products then it’s not going to disappear just yet. PC makers will be forced to keep up and deliver comparable products…
At any rate, I don’t think Bluetooth is dead yet. We keep seeing devices with Bluetooth support shipping so it’s not going to go away too quickly.

I’d like to see what Intel does with USB Wireless assuming they can get that going. It’s a shame that Intel didn’t push Bluetooth themselves when they were a major backer of the technology. Can you imagine if Intel integrated Bluetooth into their Centrino brand? Perhaps they felt it would confuse customers who would see it as a competing with WiFi (as opposed to being a complementary technology).

I doubt Bluetooth will die anytime soon. Maybe it’s a little different in the US as Sony doesn’t seem to put Bluetooth into their laptops for you guys and your behind on your mobile phones a lot of the time too.

Over in the UK however the bulk of mobile phones have bluetooth integrated. Forget about anything else with Bluetooth installed, the phones is where it has really taken off the most. Now more and more laptops don’t have serial or IR on them, a lot of phones don’t support being connected by a USB cable so how are you going to connect to your mobile phone if you don’t have Bluetooth? Intel might be huge but it’s too late now Bluetooth is established in this market to get them to switch to a new incompatiable standard. Bluetooth isn’t going to vanish at all.

Personally I agree that Bluetooth is flawed but I think Wireless USB is going to be the one struggling over Bluetooth.

It is different in the US. I know that my cell phone carrier, Verizon, which is huge, only had 1 or 2 BT phones that I know of, ever. I can count the # of PCs that include BT on my hands and very few PDAs including Sony came with BT. In the US it seems to be a technology people never cared about.

Erik

i am using the bluetooth for example, for the hp 450 wbt printer, which i carry with me, when travelling…wireless printing :D

Yeah, however Bluetooth is well established at least in the European and Asian markets. I imagine many more than those as well.

So while the US is the largest market, the fact that it isn’t established there isn’t going to make it vanish. Also if people in general didn’t care about Bluetooth in the US, why are they going to care about Wireless USB? After all Eric, you sound like you like some nice visable cable between your devices over anything wireless to your phone or PDA.

People in the US might care about Bluetooth but when you cannot buy hardly any Bluetooth products compared to other countries then it’s bound to not do peoples opinions any favours over the technology.

That’s not quite what he’s saying. I don’t think he’s down on the concept, just Bluetooth as it exists now. On Wintel, BT just isn’t well supported. Look at all the nonsense on this board about what profiles driver x supports. He’s got a point that people will probably care about this new technology because it’s entirely backed by Intel. There are only two other companies I can think of that can muscle new tech into the market better than Intel and I have a feeling that both MS and (probably) Apple will be on board.

Well, bluetooth is indeed more established in Asian markets. In Singapore, bluetooth products are rocking, There’s so many of it around!

Actually, I can’t really be bothered whether Wireless USB will supercede BT, or whether BT will disappear. I will just say… if its there… use it! As consumers, the options we have are rather limited right. The big boys just invent something new now and then, the most interesting thing is just to see if products will use these new platforms. And if there are interesting new products, we’ll sooner or later just use it right! Lets just enjoy this flow of technology.

That’s not quite what he’s saying. I don’t think he’s down on the concept, just Bluetooth as it exists now. On Wintel, BT just isn’t well supported. Look at all the nonsense on this board about what profiles driver x supports. He’s got a point that people will probably care about this new technology because it’s entirely backed by Intel. There are only two other companies I can think of that can muscle new tech into the market better than Intel and I have a feeling that both MS and (probably) Apple will be on board.

Yeah pretty much. It’s a good idea but it was poorly supported and implemented. BT came out and it was silent for a long time. Just look at the difference between BT and WiFi…WiFi has exploded in the US and prices are dirt cheap…BT has been around longer and is still hard to find and expensive and annoying to setup. WiFi is standard and everything works with it {within levels, A,B,G}.

To me I see the difference between a good product with support, and an OK product with no support. For me, BT would have worked if the range was over 25 FT. Anything less is useless to me. The only thing I would like would be BT headphones but no portable audio device that I know of has BT built in.

Erik

Then you’re missing the point of BT entirely. You just need a good pair of wireless headphones . BT was designed as a short-range serial port replacement with a built-in driver set and very low power usage. You aren’t complaining that there aren’t 802.11 headphones. It makes about as much sense to plug a pair of headphones into an RS-232 jack as it does into an ethernet jack.

Then you’re missing the point of BT entirely. You just need a good pair of wireless headphones . BT was designed as a short-range serial port replacement with a built-in driver set and very low power usage. You aren’t complaining that there aren’t 802.11 headphones. It makes about as much sense to plug a pair of headphones into an RS-232 jack as it does into an ethernet jack.

I understand the point of BT…thats what I am saying the one thing I would use it for is a decent set of headphones…but no MP3, CD, or other portable player has BT built in.

Otherwise, if BT had a range of 25 ft or more I think it would have been more accepted.

Erik

There’s a reason nobody’s bothered: batteries. Most MP3 players come with earbuds these days because people don’t want to carry around bulky headbands. Adding a battery to headphones makes them bulkier and heavier and it’s impossible to add batteries to earbuds without a connected clip-on unit or something. People would rather deal with wires over weight, as the popularity (and cost) of proprietary portable RF headphones shows. None of that has to do with Bluetooth specifically.

There’s a reason nobody’s bothered: batteries. Most MP3 players come with earbuds these days because people don’t want to carry around bulky headbands. Adding a battery to headphones makes them bulkier and heavier and it’s impossible to add batteries to earbuds without a connected clip-on unit or something. People would rather deal with wires over weight, as the popularity (and cost) of proprietary portable RF headphones shows. None of that has to do with Bluetooth specifically.

Im talking about something like the Jabra Freespeak but for audio..nothing heavy…lasts hours and no wires…that would sell BT audio devices.

Erik

Apples and oranges. The Freespeak is a low-fidelity monaural device designed to operate in short intervals and stay in standby most of the time. From what I’ve read, you can expect about 2 hours of actual use out of the thing. A pair of headphones would need a higher-quality driver than the Jabra unit and it would need more than one, all of which would most likely require more power. 2 hours won’t cut it for headphones.

Where there is a BT-specific issue is bandwidth. It’s too low for full 16-bit stereo sound (remember that BT is digital), so there will have to be some sort of compression and decompression on both ends. I’ve actually seen products that do this, but it’s a source of fidelity loss and power usage.

Personally I think for what Bluetooth was designed for the range is acceptable. The devices are still supposed to be pretty close to each other, just you don’t need to connect them with cables.

The other factor with range is that bluetooth is extremely low power compared to something like 802.11a/b/g, for devices like mobile phones, etc this is an important factor.

I agree Bluetooth is let down by various drivers, etc. Mainly I blaim Microsoft for not supporting Bluetooth quick enough. Also their own bluetooth stack doesn’t support many of the possibilities.

Yes Intel probably could muscle a new technology in, your right there. I still think it will be a pretty hard fight for them. What you don’t want is yet another wireless standard which needs to be supported in my opinion. I can see you needing 802.11 for your LAN needs, Bluetooth for mobile phone connectivity and wireless USB for your wireless mouse and keyboard. Just another cost increase and battery draining waste if you ask me.

I think what would have been more worthwhile would have been just to improve bluetooth, the v2.0 spec is there and while I haven’t read anything much on it I’d be surprised if it doesn’t make it easier.

EDIT: While I’m sort of on this topic. Is it just me or does it seem that standards are getting weaker and weaker. More companies working on developing rival technologies, etc. Take DVD writers as a prime example. Sure we have + and - writers now but was there really any point in having 2 standards? China want their own DVD standard, etc. I don’t see any of this really helping consumers.