14 DAY TRIAL // As expected, Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has just announced the Bluetooth 5 specifications. This is a big move, and it doesn’t often happen, since the last version arrived about six years ago. Bluetooth 5 comes with quadruple range and double speed, aside from other major improvements.
Just recently, Bluetooth SIG’s Executive Director Mark Powell announced that the new Bluetooth version would be unveiled on June 16. Today, Bluetooth SIG has introduced the new Bluetooth 5 and mentioned that the version will become available sometime between late 2016 and early 2017.
Bluetooth 5 includes significantly increased range, speed and broadcast messaging capacity. The focus is to deliver reliable Internet of Things (IoT) connections. Bluetooth 5 will quadruple the range and double the speed of low-energy connections, and it is thus a significant advancement from Bluetooth 4.0, not to mention that it implies the range would increase to 200m and four megabits per second.
Bluetooth 5 has five times the broadcast messaging capacity
It will also increase the capacity of connectionless data broadcasts by 800%. The company aims at performing data transfers that don’t require apps paired with devices but can rather be done through a connectionless IoT model, where there’s no need to download an app or connect it to a device.
The press release also reveals that more than 371 million Bluetooth-enabled beacons are projected to ship by 2020.
Bluetooth 5 comes with five times the broadcast messaging capacity, and the beacons will allow users to receive custom information without limits imposed by Internet connections or applications paired to devices. Bluetooth 5 comes with improved indoor location tracking and increased broadcast capacity.
Bluetooth SIG targets significant market advances and hopes Bluetooth 5 will be in more than one-third of all installed IoT devices by 2020. It’s a realistic prediction, considering that Bluetooth SIG partnered with more than 30,000 companies from around the world.