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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I’ve been designing Bluetooth products for 10years and love answering this question. As a protocol it’s fine. Could maybe be more secure, but overall it’s a great protocol. The problem is a lot of companies/engineers think Bluetooth is easy and add it to a lot of their products. But a lot of care is needs to make Bluetooth rock-solid. I recall even the iPhone 6, they didn’t use the right capacitors to load to a crystal. Basically making the timing flakey on that phone. Bluetooth is a timing based protocol, so bad timing + bad connections.
TLDR: Bluetooth protocol is fine, it’s just most assume it’s easy and don’t take the time to do it well. These companies pollute the reputation of a great protocol
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