Bluetooth 6 promises new features and higher efficiency… someday

It’s fair to say that Bluetooth made people’s lives much easier over the years by evolving from the basic level of direct wireless communication between different devices to a smart protocol that hundreds of millions of consumers use – one way or another – all over the world. Every new version of said protocol, then, like the Bluetooth 6 one recently revealed, is noteworthy… even if these announcements often make promises that most Bluetooth products seem unable to keep.

No wonder, then, that yours truly went somewhat cautiously through the Bluetooth 6.0 press release and technical whitepaper the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) recently published. The standout feature among those revealed is Channel Sounding, which promises to bring “true distance awareness” to Bluetooth-compatible devices. In theory, it could bring about welcome changes to the wireless ecosystem as a whole, greatly improving the effectiveness of that “Find My” type of services: it promises “centimeter-level precision over considerable distances”, allowing users to pinpoint the exact location of devices and accessories with high accuracy.

All Channel Sounding functionality is supported by “a robust security layer” – which is just as well, because one of the ways the technical paper describes it being used is to “ensure that only authorized users can unlock doors or access secure areas” in buildings equipped with wireless security systems. There’s not a single word mentioned regarding the privacy of the data transmitted and received through such functionality, though, which is kind of concerning. The Bluetooth SIG will probably be leaving that to manufacturers – which, depending on how one looks at all this, is even more concerning – instead focusing on the “numerous opportunities for creating new applications” that this precise location awareness opens up for developers.

Other features of the Bluetooth 6.0 standard offer improvements in data transmission and delivery efficiency. Decision-Based Advertising Filtering, for instance, will allow the Bluetooth Low Energy Extended Advertising feature to enhance scanning efficiency by reducing the time spent scanning secondary channels. The Monitoring Advertisers feature improves energy efficiency when the host is unable to determine if a device is still within range, while the Isochronous Adaptation Layer “makes it possible for larger data frames to be transmitted in smaller link-layer packets” via a new latency-reducing framing mode. That should increase the reliability of e.g. audio peripherals or game controllers, let alone gaming earbuds meant to be used along with game controllers, such as Sony’s recent PlayStation Pulse Explore.

All of that sounds nice, but there’s this thing about the actual timeline usually followed between Bluetooth SIG’s version announcements and the release of actual products based on said Bluetooth versions. Simply put, wireless chip designers don’t seem all that eager to implement the latest Bluetooth versions in their solutions, so manufacturers do not offer them quickly enough in their new products. Case in point: the Bluetooth 5.0 specifications were announced in 2016 – mainly focused on the Internet of Things craze of the time – and subsequent updates were published in 2019, 2021 and 2023. The current Bluetooth version, though, 5.3, is still not widely adopted, while the previous version – offering important new functionality in the form of Bluetooth LE Audio – is only now finding its way to mainstream products.

There will probably be a good 18-24 months, in other words, before we get to see the first Bluetooth 6.0-certified headphones, earphones and speakers, let alone laptops, tablets, audio receivers or game controllers. The Bluetooth SIG did not mention anything about the possibility of current Bluetooth 5.x devices being upgradeable to Bluetooth 6.0 via firmware updates, as this depends on each manufacturer’s roadmap and marketing strategy. If history is any indication, then, the vast majority of said manufacturers will only introduce Bluetooth 6.0 with new products in order to drive unit sales in late 2025 or 2026 at the earliest. Surprised?