Comment: Taking Bluetooth for granted

Almost any standardised component technology goes through several phases of development. First, there's the initial hype while the standards work is being done, usually followed by a lull when people realise the technology doesn't do quite what they had hoped it would.

After this comes a resurgence when the bugs are sorted out, followed by a period when the technology is seen as a must-have feature for every type of system. Finally, there's the stage when the technology is taken for granted, at which point it is so ubiquitous nobody even sees fit to mention it any longer.

Not every technology follows this route, of course, but Bluetooth is one that appears to be playing it strictly by the book.

Over the past year or so there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes activity to make sure that Bluetooth devices interact correctly. As a result, it now seems easier to make your mobile phone talk to your PDA or laptop using Bluetooth than it used to be.

There has also been a subtle change in the way devices with Bluetooth are advertised; for example, we used to hear about a Bluetooth keyboard, now it's a keyboard with Bluetooth.

Many new mobile handsets incorporating Bluetooth have shipped, including about one million Nokia 7650 and the Sony-Ericsson P800 smartphones. The fact that Texas Instruments (TI) announced a new chipset for mobile phones integrating Bluetooth rather than using a separate chip also says a lot for Bluetooth's stability.

All of which suggests that Bluetooth is becoming so mature that it won't be too long before it becomes almost invisible. Even so, there are ongoing advances in Bluetooth's development that may prove significant.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has been busy looking at the next generation of specifications and version 1.2 is said to be close to release. The main new feature will be adaptive frequency hopping, which enables two compliant Bluetooth devices to modify their radio characteristics to avoid local interference.

This is an astute move because backwards compatibility is assured and users will not notice any difference, whereas standards bodies have occasionally introduced new versions of technology that cause earlier versions to be almost obsolete.

Another advance is the formation of the Zigbee consortium, which is developing a new standard for short-range radio. This may turn out to be cheaper than Bluetooth but not as fast. I suspect that Zigbee is too late to make any significant difference to the Bluetooth market, even though it uses tried and tested technology.

All in all, I think Bluetooth is well on the way to attaining that ultimate mark of success - complete invisibility.

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