You may be right to be annoyed that your regular headphones won’t work with new devices, including the Moto Z family, that don’t have a regular 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple has already received plenty of criticism after rumors suggested the iPhone 7 will also lack a standard audio port. But wireless tech is about to get a lot better, making wireless accessories, including headphones, a lot more interesting.
Bluetooth 5.0, the latest version of the ubiquitous wireless standard, is set to be announced on June 16, according to an e-mail sent by Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Mark Powell.
“Two of the most frequent questions I receive are, ‘What will the next version be called?’ and ‘What will it make possible?’ I’m pleased to tell you that on 16 June we will formally announce that the next version of Bluetooth will be marketed as ‘Bluetooth 5,’” he wrote in a news update. “Our new naming approach is focused on simplifying our marketing, communicating user benefits more effectively and making it easier to signal significant technology updates to the market.”
The update will apparently be called "Bluetooth 5" without a point number in an effort to "[simplify] marketing." It's primarily of interest because the update promises to double the range and quadruple the speed of Bluetooth 4.2. It also adds "significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions," which is more exciting than it sounds because it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you normally think of when you think of "advertising."
In the Bluetooth spec, an "advertising packet" allows Bluetooth devices to send small snippets of information to other Bluetooth devices even if the two aren't actually paired or connected to one another. For instance, when you go to pair a Bluetooth keyboard or speaker with one of your devices, advertising packets can let you see the name of the device before you've paired it so you can distinguish it from all the other Bluetooth devices that are within range. The same technology is used by wireless beacons to transmit information about the location you're in and by Apple's AirDrop and Handoff features to let your Macs and iDevices know what your other Macs and iDevices are up to.
“Bluetooth 5 will also provide significant new functionality for connectionless services like location-relevant information and navigation,” the exec wrote. “By adding significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions, Bluetooth 5 will further propel the adoption and deployment of beacons and location-based services to users around the world.”
Current Bluetooth 4.x devices offer a theoretical range of over 100m, and wireless transfer speeds of up to 1Mbit/s. Bluetooth 4.0 could be updated to 4.1 using software, but usually a new Bluetooth version requires new Bluetooth hardware. In any case, at the current rate of adoption, we can probably expect Bluetooth 5.0 laptops, tablets, phones, and accessories to start appearing at some point next year.
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