The Bluetooth Special Interest Group on Wednesday officially ratified the Bluetooth 5 standard. The new standard offers wireless accessory connectivity of up to four times the distance of the current specs, while offering double the speed.
Key feature updates include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity. Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections. Higher speed enables more responsive, high-performance devices. Increased broadcast message size increases the data sent for improved and more context relevant solutions.
Bluetooth 5 also includes updates that help reduce potential interference with other wireless technologies to ensure Bluetooth devices can coexist within the increasingly complex global IoT environment. Bluetooth 5 delivers all of this while maintaining its low-energy functionality and flexibility for developers to meet the needs of their device or application.
Products integrating the new specifications are expected to hit the market over the next few months. Depending on when they are released, Apple’s new iOS products should make use of the new standard. While much-rumored new iPads could make use of the new specs, the 2017 iPhone, due to be released in the fall of 2017, should definitely include Bluetooth 5 capabilities.
