Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?

Anybody who knows me knows that I have been a supporter and promoter of Bluetooth technology since it first started to poke its head above the parapet, way back in 1998. But there is an elephant in my room, and its tusks are blue! Despite all the good work that the Bluetooth SIG and all its responsible member companies have done, it is still the case that Bluetooth phones, headsets etc sometimes don't work the way they should.

Example - I use a Nokia N96 with a Jabra JX20 headset - both high-end products from respected companies. The two are paired and work OK on first connection. But, if I go out of range, or switch the headset off for some reason, they then will not reconnect. I have to switch the headset off and re-boot the phone. In a given day this can happen several times. Most frustrating.

After 11 years of Bluetooth development, and with two products from a couple of the most respected manufacturers, this really shouldn't be happening. And this isn't isolated. A lot of kit passes through our hands, and similar things happen all the time. I'm in the industry, so I keep using this kit, but what will consumers be thinking?

I've put the question to the wireless community, and Peter Hauser, CEO of The Quality Factory came back with these observations?

I'm surprised nobody is willing to comment here!

Your question: "Why does Bluetooth still not work the way it should?" is more a question about "Quality" than it is about "Conformance to the Bluetooth standard" and therein lies the problem...

First of-all, there will always be a struggle between innovation and conformance to a standard. Every company wants, and needs to innovate. This implies that every company seeks to use the standards in new and interesting ways, and when they do, they make "assumptions" as to how other, compatible products, will react, thus creating the first problem...

For instance, the Bluetooth standards speak little about timing tolerances for commands and responses (beyond the standard timeouts). Some devices can respond very quickly to a command, while others cannot. If, however, a device is EXPECTING a delayed response and instead receives a very rapid one, if the firmware is intolerant, it could cause the device to lock-up.

Also - the Bluetooth standards do not currently address most multi-profile scenarios. It is only recently that the common "HFP, HSP, A2DP, and AVRCP" in a single device scenario was examined more closely for integration into the specifications AND the play/pause behavior (you know, where Play means Play, and Pause means Pause) has changed between the whitepaper and the specifications.

In short, unless companies are willing to invest in clarifying and standardizing their assumptions, these types of problems will continue.

And then, there's the issue of QUALITY.

With Bluetooth technology's pull towards commoditization, this complex technology is now in the hands of implementers who don't understand its intricacies and are building products based on new assumptions. Couple that with reduced development budgets for commodity products, and you have all of the makings of a reduction in product quality.

Teams are no longer "expected" to attend such events as UPF and to conduct extensive interoperability tests. Instead, they are expected to keep development budgets as low as possible.

All the while, new platforms are opening-up APIs that enable 3rd party applications to affect the Bluetooth performance. For instance, a mobile phone may have three separate music players on it. If one of those music players interacts with the Bluetooth A2DP/AVRCP (music) stack in an unexpected fashion, it could damage otherwise solid interoperability with wireless stereo headsets.

So - I guess the answer to your very simple question is quite complex.

If companies are going to do a really good job making their solutions "work" in the real world, they need to take the time to understand the assumptions made by products that already exist in the marketplace (of which there are many), find the similarities in these assumptions, and design accordingly.

Then, they need to TEST, TEST, and TEST again.

Thanks, Peter. Other contributions on this topic are very welcome. In the meantime, I may just have to change my own gadgets on a more often basis to check whether this situation is getting better, or worse.

After all, a Nokia N96 has been around for quite a while now ....

Don’t believe the UWB rubbish

Paraphrasing the great Mark Twain, the rumours of UWB’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. I admit that I am lucky enough to have a set of contacts in the wireless industry that give me a bit of an advantage over the average, broadstroke tech journalist, but it does get my goat when I read the guff currently being distributed by a lot of august members of the technology press.

If we are to believe what the media is saying, UWB is dead or dying. Now, I admit that I am no engineer, and that my view is more commercially than bits’n’bytes -based, but this is just not the case. For all sorts of reasons of which I do have a sound-enough understanding, UWB has an important and valuable role to play in the medium and long-term high speed wireless market.

Why is UWB struggling, and why is it currently on the back foot? Well, there are various reasons, some relating to a shortage of funding for UWB companies that are within a frustratingly short time of shipping product out of the door. Others are political. One industry luminary, for example, puts the failure of UWB to make it into Bluetooth 3.0 squarely at the door of one other individual. Nobody wants to name names at the moment, though, so I have to sit on this one. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi proponents rub their hands.

One thing is for sure though. The remaining UWB companies have failed to keep the PR going. Nobody has been saying anything positive, and so it is no wonder that the media has made assumptions, jumped to conclusions, and has broadcast to the world that UWB is an ex-factor.

The passage of time could prove me wrong, but I believe that UWB/Wireless USB will succeed and I’m ready to eat my hat if it doesn’t happen. Real products are hitting the streets – the Leyio and other products in the June issue of Incisor - and that really is the proof of the pudding. And the UWB companies are waking up to the need to let the world know that they are still here. Staccato Communications was one of the original trailblazers, and it is with great pleasure that I welcome the San Diego company back as an Incisor sponsor. Read Staccato’s take on the UWB market in the June issue of Incisor.

My message? Don’t believe everything you read in the press. Unless it is in Incisor.

Why is Wi-Fi still so hard??? And long live the USB cable!

You would think that somebody who has been writing about wireless technology for 10 years would know their way around a piece of kit, wouldn't you?

Well, today's experience proves otherwise.

Why? Well, I bought a new HP all in one printer, scanner fax thingy this week, and for the first time I had the option to print over a Wi-Fi connection. I already have a Wi-Fi router and my laptop accesses my broadband connection using that. No problem.

So, you would think that in this day and age it would be fairly simple to hook up a laptop and printer via Wi-Fi. It is heck as like! I've now spent two and a half hours trying to make this work and am still getting nowhere.

I can hear you saying - RTFM - well I have, and that didn't help because I don't have a degree in computer engineering and this FM would be no help to anyone with less than that level of expertise. Try the HP web site, you say. I did, I say. And got nowhere. Salvation seemed to be at hand when I saw that there was a link to a page where I could actually speak to somebody on the phone. Perfect! Just what I wanted. Doubtless I would have to pay somebody to tell me how their piece of kit should work (don't you just think that is criminal?), but I don't mind. I've already wasted a huge chunk of my day trying to achieve what should be a simple task. But no - when I click on the link the HP site just freezes, the progress bar stops at two green boxes and the message says at the bottom says 'waiting to connect to ....'. AAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! I often think these companies just don't want to have to face up to their responsibilities as happens when they get a frustrated punter on the phone. Yes, I've seen the stats about how one tech support call to a network operator wipes out the profit on the customer's cellular bill for several months. So they make it as difficult as possible, or even impossible.

It is a travesty that this type of equipment is foisted on the unsuspecting public without proper support. In Incisor last month the WPANel exec committee all talked about the marketing of wireless technology. I think there are still a lot of industry execs out there who are kidding themselves if they think enough is being done to help ordinary people use consumer electronics, and in my case particularly wireless technology.

So, I will continue using my new printer via a USB cable. And the blue Wi-Fi light on the printer (didn't Bluetooth grab the rights on blue LEDs?) will continue to stare balefully at me from across the desk.

There is a lot of work to be done, wireless marketeers.