Bluetooth 4.2 to Bring Direct Internet Connectivity and Increased Speed

[ssspinball]

Have you ever tried exchanging files (photos etc.), contacts etc. with non-Apple devices wirelessly? Obviously not.

Do you understand that one of the goals of iOS from the beginning was to NOT have a general use file system that a user has to maintain? Obviously not.

I also disagree that cloud storage isn't a sufficient and often superior solution. That doesn't have any hardware requirements at all.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Do you understand that one of the goals (of iOS from 2007 was to NOT have a general use file system that a user has to maintain? Obviously not.

Do you understand that iOS also has

- Camera Roll to store incoming photos in / serve as a source for outgoing photos

- a Contacts database acting both as an input / output

- etc?

So much for "there's no point in having OBEX" on an OS not supporting direct access to the file system... importing to / exporting from the above system databases would certainly be feasible without a visible filesystem. Too bad iOS doesn't support even this.

 

[RooooG]

It works like this does it?

my device says go away your not tracking me.

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

some controller watching the beacons looks at the logs and sees my device spoke to a-z beacons

or is there some encryption that makes me look like 20 other people?

Random address so they don't know who you are unless you've connected.

 

[octothorpe8]

I guess this is somewhat related. Do a lot of people use airdrop? I do not think I have ever transferred a single file over bluetooth.

I do it all the time! Like, getting a picture from my phone to my Mac. I was iMessaging myself for a while, but this is even faster. I have also looked up a location in the OS X Maps app and then sent it straight to my phone just before heading out the door. I believe that's powered by AirDrop as well?

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If this new Bluetooth standard has faster speeds, we can get higher-quality streaming for music, right?

 

[skuban]

I wonder if the increased data transfer will spawn an improved fidelity spec for BT headphones... Because that would be awesome.

 

[avanpelt]

Looks like IPv4 will be going away sooner rather than later. They'll definitely need IPv6 addressing if all kinds of bluetooth stuff will be connecting directly to the internet.

 

[taptic]

Uh... Everyone?

It's been getting better and better and more and more common each day for years, now.


This new 4.2 spec being IPv6-only is also a great thing. It will hopefully get a lot of lazy network people off their asses and get IPv6 working in more places. So many places (especially in the US) have been putting it off and putting it off for years.

Well, I guess it's true then... The sarcasm tag is absolutely necessary. How sad...

 

[Zxxv]

Random address so they don't know who you are unless you've connected.

Like what was meant to be in io8 but only works if you have no SIM card installed and on wifi. That sort of thing?

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I wonder if the increased data transfer will spawn an improved fidelity spec for BT headphones... Because that would be awesome.

You'll be able to walk down the street and an ibeacon will be able to interrupt your music with an ad.

 

[lincolntran]

Too bad iOS users won't ever get a full Bluetooth implementation, unlike those of competing mobile operating systems.

Can you educate me on what you mean by "full"?

 

[mattopotamus]

Can you educate me on what you mean by "full"?

I think he was taking a shot at the faux NFC they gave us.

 

[Menneisyys2]

I think he was taking a shot at the faux NFC they gave us.

NFC has nothing to do with the implemented BT profiles. Unfortunately, iOS lacks in both (NFC can't be used for quick connection establishment and the BT implementation doesn't support OBEX).

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Can you educate me on what you mean by "full"?

See the OBEX protocol, one of the most useful profiles in standard BT and of high utility in almost all other handsets.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

It works like this does it?

my device says go away your not tracking me.

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

my device tells the next beacon to bugger off

beacon says ok

some controller watching the beacons looks at the logs and sees my device spoke to a-z beacons

or is there some encryption that makes me look like 20 other people?

If your phone is turned on, or your face is visible - you are probably being tracked now...

Eg. http://retailnext.net/how-it-works/

 

[rei101]

I guess this is somewhat related. Do a lot of people use airdrop? I do not think I have ever transferred a single file over bluetooth.

I think I did once... so problematic and clumsy. I rather do laundry.

 

[lincolntran]

NFC has nothing to do with the implemented BT profiles. Unfortunately, iOS lacks in both (NFC can't be used for quick connection establishment and the BT implementation doesn't support OBEX).

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See the OBEX protocol, one of the most useful profiles in standard BT and of high utility in almost all other handsets.

That's a useful protocol.

Is it a touch of a button to share files between androids and windows phones?

 

[Solomani]

Hmm…. I don't quite like the idea of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (Hacker Brigade) breaking into my bluetooth-enabled toaster oven.

 

[lincolntran]

Hmm…. I don't quite like the idea of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (Hacker Brigade) breaking into my bluetooth-enabled toaster oven.

Have you seen Transformers? Anything can be transform into a decepticon! Even a toaster #

 

[octothorpe8]

I think I did once... so problematic and clumsy. I rather do laundry.

It's gotten way easier under Yosemite, FYI. You don't need to open that weird window anymore. You can just right-click on a file > share > airdrop and your phone or other Mac should just appear if it has AirDrop turned on.

 

[Menneisyys2]

That's a useful protocol.

Is it a touch of a button to share files between androids and windows phones?

With NFC-enabled handsets, just bumping the two phones together. (Also works with NFC-enabled Symbian phones like the Nokia 808 when transferring files from the 808 to any other NFC handset. I've never managed to transfer files from my NFC Android handsets (Note4, Nexus7 2013) to my 808's, though.)

Without NFC, a bit more convoluted (much more taps) but still much easier than sending a mail / setting up a common Dropbox account / whatever.

 

[firewood]

Too bad iOS users won't ever get a full Bluetooth implementation, unlike those of competing mobile operating systems.

iOS supports a full Bluetooth stack, just not for App store apps to access and misuse.

The end of ethernet?

Nope. Wired internet connections will still be faster, since there's no potential shared-band interference as in WiFi or Bluetooth. According to Shannon's theorem, max data rate is all about signal-to-noise ratios.

 

[Mattsasa]

Honest question:

I have been using Bluetooth to connect devices of all kind to the internet for 5 years. How is this different

 

[Crzyrio]

BTW, AirDrop is also available on iDevice models intentionally crippled by Apple. That is, it runs just fine on, say, the iPad3, while Apple, to force iPad3 users to upgrade to a newer model, doesn't enable it. Of course, you need to jailbreak the iPad3 to enable AirDrop...

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Anyone that would like to quickly and effortlessly transfer files over standardized protocols implemented by all other manufacturers? Given that iDevices also lack NFC (lol, it has been implemented in mainstream Nokia / Google / Samsung smartphones for 2+ years), BT would be the only standard file transfer protocol.

Too bad iOS also lacks proper OBEX support. So much for being standards-compliant.

Please, there are plenty of reasons Airdrop isn't supported on older laptops. Just because hardware can carry out a function doesn't mean it should.

First of, Bluetooth is only used to create the wifi connection for Airdrop and bluetooth is HORRIBLY slow for data transfer. I feel sorry for anyone that has to use bluetooth to transfer anything other than contacts.

One of the major reasons for not allowing the iPad 3 to use airdrop is because of hardware. All officially supported hardware is capable of supporting dual stream 802.1n on 2.4Ghz & 5, making the transfer all the more faster.

The iPad 3 does not have this, and while it is possible to still enable airdrop through Cydia the speeds are very slow & not reliable from what I have seen.

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Honest question:

I have been using Bluetooth to connect devices of all kind to the internet for 5 years. How is this different

I think this will assist with all the new bluetooth devices coming out as of recent. All the wireless bands & wireless home automation devices.

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I guess this is somewhat related. Do a lot of people use airdrop? I do not think I have ever transferred a single file over bluetooth.

All the time, it is much more convenient than passing a USB around

 

[AlecZ]

Hilarious, iOS users had Bluetooth 4.0 LONG before the competing mobile OS's and it went completely unnoticed. Yet a profile or two not being supported because the OS offers other methods to do such things is just completely horrible, right?

It doesn't matter when it's useless anyway. Apple runs their non-standard stuff over Bluetooth. Like why can't we use regular Bluetooth game controllers instead of the severely overpriced "MFi" ones?

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iOS supports a full Bluetooth stack, just not for App store apps to access and misuse.

You call this "misuse"? It's apparently against the rules for me to make an app that just scans for nearby Bluetooth devices. I wasted hours, thinking it would be easy. There's the walled garden, which is fine, but this is the anti-competition zone.

 

[name99]

Was anybody able to find any solid benchmarks backing up their 2.5x speed-increase claim (or any specific numbers regarding data rates)? I've been searching their website, but can't seem to find anything on it aside from their original claim (Which should be ~62.5 Mbps if I understand BT 4.0 correctly?)

Don't get too excited.
BT 3.0 High Speed was not "real" Bluetooth in the sense of the low power spec. It was a protocol to hand off high speed connectivity that had been established via BT to WiFi which does the real bulk transfer.
I'm unaware of any interesting real world use cases that exploit this (eg AirDrop connects things up using WiFi directly, it doesn't use BT expecting that it will then do the bulk transfer via WiFi).

You don't, for example, get higher bandwidth for playing multiple simultaneous high quality audio streams in a car, or other situations where BT bandwidth is constrained, but every participant is using standard BT connectivity.

Presumably all that was done was to beef up the underlying WiFi specs that are required for a "BT 4.2 High Speed" certification.

 

[AlecZ]

I guess this is somewhat related. Do a lot of people use airdrop? I do not think I have ever transferred a single file over bluetooth.

AirDrop always gets Shrek'd by whatever restrictive school wifi network I'm on, and then it fails to properly fall back to Bluetooth. So no, I've never successfully used it.

 

[macintoshi]

If bluetooth comes back to iPhone with full support of file transfer among iOS and non iOS devices, i will come back to iPhone