Since Bluetooth was given an overhaul in 2010 with the 4.0 standard, it's surged in popularity. Now, it's about to get another serious spec bump, providing four times the range, twice the speed and even mesh networking.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group has announced its plans for the future of the wireless standard, and they sound promising. First, it plans to bump its speed by 100 percent without increasing energy consumption. Second, it will increase the range of the low-power Bluetooth Smart standard by up to four times. Elsewhere, it also wants to introduce mesh networking to Bluetooth. That's actually a pretty stunning idea, that would allow devices to used the wireless connection to form building-wide networks, rather than one-to-one links.
All told, those features will make the system way more useful. It's worth bearing in mind that this is just the Interest Groups's plan, and it can sometimes take longer for these features to filter through into commercially available products. But as spec bumps go, this is certainly one to be excited about.
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