Apple's Beats brand in April unveiled the Powerbeats Pro, a redesigned wire-free version of its popular fitness-oriented Powerbeats earbuds.
Bluetooth 4.2 to Bring Direct Internet Connectivity and Increased Speed
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) today announced the new Bluetooth 4.2 specification, which promises enhanced privacy measures, increased speed of data transfers, and an update that will allow Bluetooth Smart sensors to directly access the Internet.
The group emphasizes connected home scenarios as being able to take the most advantage of Bluetooth 4.2's new direct Internet access feature, promising low-power connectivity using the standard and with IPv6 support available by year's end.
The new privacy features also take aim at lowering power consumption, while protecting consumers from being tracked through their Bluetooth devices. As more retail stores and public places accept Bluetooth beacons and similar applications, Bluetooth SIG hopes to be at the forefront for protecting every user's personal and private information.
The group emphasizes connected home scenarios as being able to take the most advantage of Bluetooth 4.2's new direct Internet access feature, promising low-power connectivity using the standard and with IPv6 support available by year's end.
“Bluetooth 4.2 is all about continuing to make Bluetooth Smart the best solution to connect all the technology in your life – from personal sensors to your connected home. In addition to the improvements to the specification itself, a new profile known as IPSP enables IPv6 for Bluetooth, opening entirely new doors for device connectivity,” said Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG. “Bluetooth Smart is the only technology that can scale with the market, provide developers the flexibility to innovate, and be the foundation for the IoT.”The new 4.2 spec also promises speedier data transfers between devices, up to 2.5 times faster than previous versions. Bluetooth SIG promises that "increased data transfer speeds and packet capacity reduces the opportunity for transmission errors to occur and reduces battery consumption, resulting in a more efficient connection."
The new privacy features also take aim at lowering power consumption, while protecting consumers from being tracked through their Bluetooth devices. As more retail stores and public places accept Bluetooth beacons and similar applications, Bluetooth SIG hopes to be at the forefront for protecting every user's personal and private information.
The new privacy features put control back into the hands of the consumer by making it difficult for eavesdroppers to track a device through its Bluetooth connection without permission. For example, when shopping in a retail store with beacons, unless you’ve enabled permission for the beacon to engage with your device, you can’t be tracked.The standard Bluetooth 4.2 specification is available now, with the new direct Internet access feature due within a month.
[ 91 comments ]
Top Rated Comments
(View all)
57 months ago
Too bad iOS users won't ever get a full Bluetooth implementation, unlike those of competing mobile operating systems.
57 months ago
Too bad iOS users won't ever get a full Bluetooth implementation, unlike those of competing mobile operating systems.
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?
57 months ago
Who uses bluetooth anymore?... oh, wait, never mind.
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.
57 months ago
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?
Have you ever tried exchanging files (photos etc.), contacts etc. with non-Apple devices wirelessly? Obviously not.
57 months ago
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, in combination with file sharing. House full of Macs :D
57 months ago
The end of ethernet?
Ethernet has been an astoundingly durable and long lived standard. As such it will be very slow to kill. If 802.11ac didn't do it, Bluetooth 4.2 certainly will not.Ethernet on your smartwatch and thermostat? :D
57 months ago
Yup, AirDrop is useful and I've occasionally used it. Nevertheless, I seriously miss standard OBEX file transfer from iOS so that it can talk to other phones / tablets using standardized protocols to talk to mobile phones with significantly better cameras than on any iPhone (Nokia 808, Samsung Note 4 etc.).
Regrettably, the only way of having it on (JB'n only, of course) iOS, the absolutely excellent AirBlue Sharing, is currently incompatible with iOS8 and the new iOS may never get a working implementation any more.
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...
----------
Who uses bluetooth anymore?... oh, wait, never mind.
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.
57 months ago
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. :rolleyes:
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.
57 months ago
I was just thinking...
The day the Internet of Things prevents my coffee pot from making coffee in the morning, because the network is down is the day heads will roll.
The day the Internet of Things prevents my coffee pot from making coffee in the morning, because the network is down is the day heads will roll.
[ Read All Comments ]
Ousmane Bah, an 18-year-old from New York, is suing Apple for $1 billion for false arrest, reports Bloomberg.
According to Bah, Apple's in-store facial recognition software mistakenly...
The latest version of Apple's "Hey Siri" feature works hands-free without being plugged into power, and it can be found in several recently announced Apple mobile products, including the...
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming macOS Mojave 10.14.5 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after launching the second beta and a month after the launch of macOS Mojave...
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming watchOS 5.2.1 update to developers, two weeks after seeding the second beta and almost a month after the release of the watchOS 5.2 update, which...
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming tvOS 12.3 update to developers, two weeks seeding the second beta and three weeks after releasing tvOS 12.2).
Designed for the fourth and...
While Apple has built out a significant network of data centers to support iCloud and other services, it still relies on other companies to help support those services. According to CNBC, Apple has a...
In a recent interview with TechRadar, Beats president Luke Wood discussed how the company has changed under Apple's leadership, and the upcoming Powerbeats Pro headphones.
The new...
Bowers & Wilkins today unveiled a new Formation Suite of high-end home audio products with support for Apple's wireless streaming protocol AirPlay 2.
The new line includes five...
