For ~20 years now, basic USB and WiFi connection have been in the category of “mostly expected to work” – you do encounter incompatibilities but it tends to be unusual.
Bluetooth, on the other hand, seems to have been “expected to fail or at least be flaky as hell” since Day 1, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten better over time. What makes the Bluetooth stack/protocol so much more apparently-unstable than other protocols?
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The main reason why Bluetooth is more flaky than other protocols is because of its design. Bluetooth was designed to use very low power, as well as to be small in size. This means that the antenna used in Bluetooth devices is smaller than the ones used in other protocols, making it less efficient and more prone to signal loss.
Additionally, Bluetooth is a real-time audio protocol, meaning that it cannot tolerate any buffering or lag. As a result, if the signal is lost for even a split second, the audio will drop. Other protocols like USB and WiFi can buffer data and can tolerate some data loss, making them less prone to signal issues.
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