BlueTooth needs a dentist

4/28/2007

It is amazing that BlueTooth has been around this long, yet still is plagued by such usability and incompatibility problems. If USB had these issues, RS-232 would still be commonly used.

Pairing

BlueTooth devices have to be paired. This makes perfect sense, however why is it that many BlueTooth devices make it such an exercise to pair them? Pairing should be simple, and for some devices it is. But for many devices pairing is like trying to get North and South Korea back together. Does BlueTooth pairing really have to be this difficult?

Drivers

BlueTooth was not supported by Windows until XP SP2. Prior to this users had to rely on external drivers. Big names supported BlueTooth, but it seemed that nobody could actually hire a software developer to write the drivers. Instead they seemed to have had the hardware engineer who had a C++ course in school write them to save money. Prior to SP2, every BlueTooth driver and stack I tried was highly unstable often requiring reboots after use, or just randomly crashing the system. Companies that stick in my mind are Toshiba, Sony, and the like.

Fortunately XP SP2 has been out a few years now and Microsoft finally added native BlueTooth support.

(In)Compatibility

Pairing is bad in many devices, but the drivers have been fixed. Does that mean BlueTooth is usable? Well not quite. BlueTooth suffers from massive compatibility problems. BlueTooth devices only work with certain other BlueTooth devices. So when buying a BlueTooth device, you better check that the BlueTooth dongle or chip that your computer has, actually works with your BlueTooth. Think I am crazy? Then why does every vendor explicitly have to list (Examples: Wiimote, Palm, more) what BlueTooth chips their devices work with? When you buy a USB device, do you have to check it for compatibility first? No! USB just works! Is that too much to ask of BlueTooth?

This has caused a horrid mess for people who actually use more than one BlueTooth device. I know several users that have more than one (and in some cases more than 2) BlueTooth dongles installed on their computer just so they can use the BlueTooth devices they have.

The Future

One can hope that BlueTooth will improve. But I am not hopeful. The issues that have been fixed have taken years to fix, and BlueTooth is not a new technology.

There is another newer technology called Zigbee. Zigbee is lower power, and lower cost. In fact they seem to be targeting BlueTooth directly, Zigbee's slogan is "Wireless control that simply works". Zigbee is focused on lower power and lower cost, but because of this is also has lower data transfer rates.

There is also Wireless USB for the applications where Zigbee will not fit. I am very excited about Zigbee for thermostats, mice and other low speed devices. But for printers and other higher speed devices, lets hope Wireless USB takes off.

With luck, the combination of Zigbee and Wireless USB BlueTooth can finally be laid to rest with TokenRing.

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