Bluetooth 5 with 4x speeds coming on June 16: Here’s what it will offer

According to Powell’s email, Bluetooth 5 will double the range of transmissions, and offer 4x speeds of low-energy Bluetooth. The update will be called Bluetooth 5, with no 5.0 like the previous versions and this is primarily for marketing purposes.

“Veterans of the SIG will note that with this name we have dropped reference to both the version and point number in our marketing messaging. Our new naming approach is focused on simplifying our marketing, communicating user benefits more effectively and making it easier to signal significant technology updates to the market,” notes the email.

Currently, Bluetooth 4.0 and upwards, offer an ideal range of 300 feet and 25 MBps transfer speeds in theory, so Bluetooth 5 is offering a significant upgrade over these features.

Also Bluetooth 5 will offer “significant new functionality for connectionless services like location-relevant information and navigation,” as well as “adding significantly more capacity to advertising transmissions.” As this article on Ars Technica points out “advertising packet” on Bluetooth devices allows devices to send out bits of information to other Bluetooth devices, even if they are not connected.

According to the company, Bluetooth 5 “will further propel the adoption and deployment of beacons and location-based services to users around the world.”

With Bluetooth, we’ll also expect new hardware to come in which will support the latest standard.