Bluetooth 4.0 Set to Roll Out This Year

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According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group the new Bluetooth 4.0 standard could start rolling out in devices such as smartphones, headsets and hands free kits in the last quarter of this year.

Designed specifically to be employed in low power devices such as watches, though equally capable of being utilised in other higher powered gadgetry, the new Bluetooth 4.0 standard, unlike its predecessor, will happily run on devices powered by coin batteries whereas previous versions require batteries of triple-A standard or higher.

According to Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research, Bluetooth 4.0 will offer devices such as cameras, portable gaming devices and tablet PCs – where energy usage is critical in terms of device endurance – to ‘exchange low-level information without using much energy’ without all the functionality of the present Bluetooth standard being lost whilst the new specification will allow for the same WiFi connectivity as Bluetooth 3.0 (which, in essence, acts to jump onboard a WiFi connection allowing data transfer speeds of up to 24Mbits per second).