latest
OnePlus actually delivers on Bluetooth LE Audio promise for the Buds Pro 2
A rare case of timely delivery of features promised at launch
Audio gear is always a complicated purchase if you’re easily swayed by compelling marketing, and that’s especially true if you have anywhere in the neighborhood of $200 to spend on the best true-wireless earphones. OnePlus is the newest brand targeting that price with its OnePlus Buds Pro 2, unveiled alongside the OnePlus 11 earlier this month. The launch-day marketing mentioned upcoming support for the Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio specification, and it looks like it's here already.
Bluetooth LE Audio is finally ready to start delivering on the dream of longer-lasting headphones
Plus hearing aid support, multi-device broadcast audio with Auracast, and more
The fight for the headphone jack is long-lost, but Bluetooth continues to add new improvements to its technical standards hoping to make the experience even better with time. One of those improvements is the new Bluetooth LE Audio spec, which was finalized just today. This new technology brings audio streaming to low-energy Bluetooth, improving battery life — one of the banes of Bluetooth existence. On top of that, it adds support for the Auracast broadcast audio standard, so multiple people tune in to the same audio feed, and introduces long-awaited support for Bluetooth hearing aids.
Samsung SmartThings Find uses other people's phones to locate your lost devices
The new service uses Bluetooth LE and ultra-wideband tech
Phones are (usually) always connected to a network, so tracking them when they are lost isn't too difficult, but the same is not true for most other devices. Apple has been experimenting with using Bluetooth and ultra-wideband wireless signals to track the location of devices without Wi-Fi or cellular connection, and now Samsung is introducing similar technology with its own products following a few months of testing."Samsung Electronics today announced the launch of SmartThings Find," the company wrote in a news release, "a new service that helps you quickly and easily locate Galaxy devices. After 6 million users across Korea, the U.K. and U.S. signed up for early access to the service, SmartThings Find is ready for a global launch on devices running Android 8 or later." Besides the company's Android devices, SmartThings Find also works with Galaxy Watches running Tizen 5.5 or later, Galaxy Buds+, and Galaxy Buds Live.The service uses a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband wireless to determine the location of devices. Bluetooth LE is common on smartphones these days, but the ultra-wideband functionality is only available on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold2 right now. Once you complete a quick registration process, you can use the SmartThings app to select the device you want to locate, which should display a map.[EMBED_YT]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGCHpFJl6Hs[/EMBED_YT]The functionality can also optionally use crowdsourced data from other Samsung devices. The company said, "SmartThings users can now opt in to securely use their Galaxy smartphone or tablet to help others locate their lost devices. [...] If you report your device as lost via SmartThings Find, any nearby Galaxy smartphone or tablet that has opted into helping find misplaced devices can alert the Samsung server about its location, which will in turn notify you. All SmartThings Find user data is encrypted and securely protected, ensuring that the device’s location is not revealed to anyone except its owner."Samsung also revealed that it will release a tracking tag "early next year" that will support SmartThings Find, presumably similar to products like Tile. It's unclear if the upcoming tag would support both Bluetooth LE and ultra-wideband, or just stick with Bluetooth to keep costs down.Source: Samsung
Bluetooth audio accessories market kicked into high gear as headphone jacks began disappearing, and soon got flooded with more options than ever. While the Bluetooth 5.0 standard brought significant functional improvements even to the cheapest earbuds, the Bluetooth SIG wants to make further strides with LE Audio. The upcoming wireless standard will keep power consumption in check using a new lower-power codec, while also adding multi-stream audio and native support for hearing aids.
There's one area where Apple has always led the way when it comes to the never-ending conflict between its and Google's mobile operating systems: accessibility. While the Cupertino company already has been supporting direct Bluetooth streaming to hearing devices from many different manufacturers for a long time, Google is only now introducing a similar feature with Android 10. In cooperation with GN Hearing and Cochlear, the company has just announced the first hearing devices to support low-energy Bluetooth streaming on the new OS.
With so many phone-makers dropping physical headphone jacks in favor of a Bluetooth-dominated music experience, we're all the more aware of the sacrifices we make going the wireless route. Beyond concerns over latency, battery life, and sound fidelity, it's also important to consider issues with setup; while it's effortless to plug in a pair of wired headphones and immediately get listening, Bluetooth pairing isn't always as straightforward. Last year Google took steps to simplify things with the introduction of its Fast Pair system, and today we get word of the latest Fast Pair enhancements.
Back in June, the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) announced Bluetooth 5.0, which promised improvements across the board for this wireless protocol, mostly for the Low Energy (BLE) transfers: 2x speed, 4x range, and 8x broadcast message capacity. As more and more devices and things in our lives become connected, from the fridge to the lamp to the clothes we're wearing, this new version should make Bluetooth more reliable as a low-energy and universal communication and data transfer standard.
Contextual awareness is one of the pillars of Google's recent push in mobile communications. You don't have to look far to see that: Google Now has been getting better and better at "guessing" the information that you need before you even look for it. But when it comes to location, we all know that it can use some help. Not just Google Now, actually. Most current location techniques are quite lacking indoors, underground, or simply fail to differentiate between you standing in front of a bus on one side or the other of the street. That's where beacons, which are small Bluetooth Low Energy devices, come into play by providing a quicker and more granularly precise location information. But that's not all. Beacons can help transmit location-specific data to your phone, trigger a certain functionality in an app, or show relevant information.
With Android 4.3, Android implemented the idea of always-on WiFi where, even if you had Wi-Fi toggled off, the device and apps could still scan for WiFi networks to improve the location's accuracy. Along with using network triangulation, it's another way of getting your current position as quickly as possible without having to rely too much on GPS signals.
Bluetooth Low Energy is the current preferred method of communication between multiple accessories and Android devices. I can count 4 objects on my body right now that connect to my phone through BLE, not to mention the various accessories strewn across my desk and in other locations around me. Each of these has its own app on my phone that connects to the device every now and then and retrieves data, which, you can easily guess, has a toll on the battery.
Blue Maestro doesn't want you to make the mistake of believing that Bluetooth is only for connecting to cars, syncing with a smartwatch, or pushing information to a fitness band. No, think of the children. With the company's upcoming Bluetooth-enabled smart pacifier (yes, pacifier), you can check your baby's temperature and track their location as they learn to walk. You can even have an alarm go off if your child gets more than 20 meters away, and the buzzer will apparently also sound if the device gets hidden or misplaced.
Buried deep in the list of new features revealed for the L release of Android, whenever that comes out and whatever it will be called when it is, was BLE Peripheral Mode. This addition to Android is part of the Bluetooth Low Energy profile. Previous versions of Android could use BLE-enabled devices, but only as a primary device. The newly-enabled Peripheral Mode should allow apps on any Android phone, tablet, or what have you to send data to other devices.
It's no secret that Bluetooth has been a problem child for Android, plagued with poor audio quality and connectivity issues. I've already covered a handful of common problems in a previous post, but another issue has been emerging in the last few months that threatens to virtually kill all Bluetooth operation on a device in the right conditions. The culprit is a nasty little oversight in the Bluetooth Low-Energy code added with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. Once a device has been within range of enough BLE devices, the entire Bluetooth service will begin crashing.
Blackberry may be having a rough time of it with flagging sales performance and complications with a certain carrier partner, but that hasn't stopped the company from courting app developers. In an effort to bring in more talent from the much larger and flourishing Android ecosystem, the Blackberry 10.3 SDK has bumped the Android runtime support up from API Level 17 to API level 18 (a.k.a. Android 4.3 Jelly Bean). The update will also brings some additional features and enhance integration with the operating system.
[Rant] Reality Check - HTC Has Plans For Bluetooth LE And OpenGL ES 3.0 But It Doesn't Make Them "Android 4.3 Features"
It's 4 a.m., I just read the 6th mention of the same misleading story in the last 24 hours, and it's time for a rant. Yesterday, several "independent"
It's 4 a.m., I just read the 6th mention of the same misleading story in the last 24 hours, and it's time for a rant.
[For Developers] Samsung Bluetooth Low Energy SDK Opens To The Public
For quite some time, we've been hearing about the potential advantages of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) spec, and a seemingly endless list of gadgets
For quite some time, we've been hearing about the potential advantages of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) spec, and a seemingly endless list of gadgets that could benefit from it. Unfortunately, while many modern flagship devices are equipped with the necessary hardware, Google has allowed the Android OS to languish without official support for the standard. Most of the top OEMs have built their own proprietary versions for the energy efficient protocol, but until now, only Motorola has freely shared access to its API. However, that changes today: Samsung is taking its BLE SDK public.