I don’t know if this is going to make any sense to anyone but hear me out. It feels like whenever you have an issue with Bluetooth it’s some kinda goofy ass problem that would only happen with Bluetooth devices.
To give some examples:
– Interactions between multiple Bluetooth devices being janky
– Devices connecting to each other when you don’t want them to, or refusing to connect when you do want them to.
– weird audio glitches in specific scenarios
– audio devices switching back and forth between two other devices they’ve been paired with recently
Obviously I understand at a base level that there’s radio waves carrying information and these can be interrupted by stuff like microwaves. But I’m more talking about issues regarding pairing, and other odd quirks that you don’t experience when using other wireless connections like WiFi.
Can someone explain in layman’s terms why Bluetooth is like this? Or am I just being crazy
In: Technology
The problems you’re describing are implementation failures. Bluetooth is just a wireless protocol, like USB is a wired protocol, however that’s only the delivery method, there’s other protocols that handle the actual data exchanges and processing. For examples, HSP or HeadSet Profile deals with bidirectional audio for phone calls, A2DP is the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile, and there’s plenty others for different tasks (serial port connections, vcard exchange etc). Then there are different versions of Bluetooth (latest is 5.0 more commonly labeled BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)), and different versions of all the profiles. When you’re connecting a device there’s a minimum of 3 handshakes occurring just to connect (“are you there?” “I am here!”/”can I connect?” “yes you can, what’s the password?”/”what profiles do you support? I support x, y, and z.” “Oh, I support only w, x, and y”), and most Bluetooth is implemented on-chip, meaning there’s no software stack that can be patched and updated to handle error conditions gracefully. If anything in that chain isn’t done correctly or messed up along the way, it can result in so many weird issues, not to mention hardware Bluetooth controllers are so straightforward they can be considered “dumb” by comparison to other tech, allowing things like another connection while one is already setting up, or allowing another connection while one already is set up (if it’s a particularly cheap and egregious implementation).
TL:DR; Bluetooth is a protocol of protocols, many different versions with many different versions of the underlying protocols used in the actual data exchange, resulting in a mish-mash of implementations across everyone’s devices with different quirks that might not sit well with other connected devices.
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