“Bluetooth 5 will be the successor to Bluetooth 4.2, which was released at the end of 2014, suggesting a notable release this year,” Zac Hall reports for 9to5Mac. “The new standard will be announced next week.”
“Bluetooth 5 will increase the range of the wireless connection standard by 4x and greatly increase transfer rates for low energy connects with a 2x boost in speed,” Hall reports. “The Bluetooth SIG also shared that Bluetooth 5 will open up some new possibilities (that could boost iBeacon usage)… ‘Bluetooth 5 will also provide significant new functionality for connectionless services like location-relevant information and navigation.'”
Hall reports, “Apple is a Promoter Member of the Bluetooth SIG and has an officer within the group.”
More info and links in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bluetooth 5.0 for the next-gen iPhone? After all, Apple’s iPhone 4s was the first phone to ship with Bluetooth 4.0.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
Tim Cook is interested in Apple Car, not Bluetooth.
Will it be just as insecure and flaky and battery-hogging as all prior versions of BlueTooth ???
It will undoubtedly require more power in order to provide wider bandwidth and wider range.
As for solving flakiness, we can dream.
We don’t have the details yet, but the bandwidth won’t change—it’s still 1MHz per channel (2 for BLE) in the ISM band 2402 to 2480 MHz. The power to transmit quadruple the range will likely be the SAME as for Bluetooth v4 in class 2 devices like smartphones. Don’t ask how I can be so certain. Also, knowledgeable observers insist we won’t see Bluetooth 5 in the iPhone 7.
We shall see my friend. We shall see. 😉
OTG. About bloody time Bluetooth Special Interest Group!!!