Bluetooth 3.0 on its way

By Nicole Lee on 14 April 2009

(Credit: Bluetooth)

It's official: Bluetooth 3.0 is coming.

The Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) will officially announce Bluetooth 3.0 on 21 April. It will be significantly faster and will enable the transfer of entire media libraries at the touch of a button. It also promises a new feature called Enhanced Power Control that reduces the number of disconnects.

The most interesting part of Bluetooth 3.0 is that it uses a combination of technologies that lets it operate at Wi-Fi speeds. For example, you can pair a phone with a laptop via Bluetooth, but then the data transfer between the two devices will be handed off to Wi-Fi, which makes transfer speeds a lot faster. Both devices need Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for this to happen; otherwise it will just use the Bluetooth for data transfer.

More details on actual hardware will come next week when the spec is made official.

Topics: bluetooth, Bluetooth 3.0 , wifi, 3.0, wi fi

Related Articles

Comments (6)

  • BruceY commented on 23/11/2009 16:38 Report abuse

    Bluetooth is a Hardware feature in your phones..i highly doubt that it will be upgradeable

  • Horrorendous commented on 12/09/2009 23:25 Report abuse

    i also want to noe if we can upgrade our 2.0 bluetooth phones to 3.0.

  • Alex commented on 01/05/2009 20:46 Report abuse

    Is it possible, as this runs on around a 2.4GHz frequency, extremely similar to wifi in many ways that mobiles equipped with wifi such as the Nokia Nseries will gain this feature via a firmware update?

  • CJBoO commented on 23/04/2009 19:49 Report abuse

    I believe that this will require a hardware upgrade. I don't think that the current devices are capable of supporting the faster transfer rates. Just as for Wifi, where if you wish to access a 'n' network that is a lot faster than other 'b' and 'g' networks, you need to have a 'n' wireless router.

  • smallie. commented on 19/04/2009 21:02 Report abuse

    how to we upgrade to 3.0???

  • ClydeO commented on 15/04/2009 10:32 Report abuse

    Are we able to up-grade our 2.0 bluetooth phones 3.0 or somthin?

Post your own comment

You must read and type the 6 chars within 0..9 and A..F

You must read and type the 6 chars within 0..9 & A..F

Submit

Enter your personal information to the left, or sign in with your Facebook account by clicking the button below.

Connect

The Explain Series

Must read

Popular Phones & Plans

Powered by WhistleOut

1) Apple iPhone 3GS 32GB35 plans 1%
2) Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB35 plans 3%
3) Nokia N9742 plans 3%
4) Sony Ericsson Satio6 plans 1%
5) Nokia 5800 XpressMusic35 plans 1%
Three Virgin Mobile Vodafone
« 1 of »
1) Apple mobile phones 4%
2) Nokia mobile phones 6%
3) Sony Ericsson mobile phones 1%
4) Samsung mobile phones 1%
5) Blackberry mobile phones 1%

Compare: Mobiles | Broadband

CNET Australia Partner Services