By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Next year’s wireless headphones, fitness trackers, glucose monitors and in-car audio traffic navigators are expected to offer a longer range, faster performance and a larger broadcast message capacity with this week’s adoption of Bluetooth 5. Bluetooth is a low-power, short-range wireless standard that shows up in consumer electronics, home automation, medical devices, automotive and a lot of other product categories. It’s the technology that enabled Apple to eliminate its headphone jack from the latest iPhone models; the company’s coming AirPods ear buds rely on Bluetooth to connect to the device. The new specification, officially approved by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), delivers four times the range, double the speed and eight times the broadcast message capacity of the previous standard, Bluetooth 4.x. Version 5 is expected to provide coverage across a house-sized building and deliver more responsive performance (2 megabits per second compared to 4.x’s one Mbps).
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