

Bye Bye Bluetooth - mayank25may
http://techdusts.com/2009/10/15/wifi-direct-in-2020-will-replace-bluetooth-wifi-alliance/
Come 2010 and no longer would you be using Bluetooth for short range file transfer. Apple, Intel, Cisco (and other major players) along with WiFi Alliance have together come with a set of standards for WiFi Direct. This will convert you Wifi gadget into a access point.
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ugh
I always thought Bluetooth was optimised for low power wireless transfer of
modest amounts of data (e.g. mouse and keyboard, voice or music), not full on
file transfer.

Don’t get me wrong, I would really like to say bye to Bluetooth and switch
everything over to Wifi, but I don’t think Wifi is optimised for low power
(the typical Bluetooth use cases) just yet. Or is it?

File transfer with bluetooth was always very slow. I use a USB thumbdrive for
any kind of short range data transfer. Heck, even sending files over the
internet (IM or E-Mail) seems always much more convenient than bothering with
bluetooth.

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slim
the main advantage of bluetooth is not it's "direct" connectivity. It's its
low power consumption. Which makes it suitable for mobile gizmos. So it wont
vanish anytime soon.

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roc
Indeed. We're probably only a standard or two away from Bluetooth officially
becoming the 'low power' wifi standard and a spec that allows devices to
initiate connections with lower overhead and scale up to higher bandwidths if
and when necessary.

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mayank25may
i will not agree here... The battery life is incresing at a very fast pace and
it wont be long when the amount of power wifi sucks will be very small when
compared to the over all battery life.

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TrevorJ
Battery life historically has been an issue, and solutions historically have
been just over the horizon. We are seeing improvements however, low power
consumption is still a factor.

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numair
Does anyone know about the royalty situation for this stuff? Bluetooth would
have been far more useful if the rights holders hadn't been so greedy in its
early days.

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tptacek
Zigbee, a simplified successor to Bluetooth, has become pretty important to
industrial and power grid computing; WPAN wifi was around when those standards
were drafted. I don't think direct wi-fi is an automatic win.

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foenix
This is such a poorly written article. Is it translated?

I much preferred the BBC's description, even if it was a little "layman":
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8307977.stm>

The one paragraph in their story about the "threat" to bluetooth was far more
fair than all the other stories I've seen on HN about Wifi Alliance.

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johannchiang
It will be interested to see how Bluetooth 3.0+HS (Bluetooth+WiFi, backed by
Broadcom/CSR) and WiFi Direct (My WiFi, backed by Intel) compete with each
other.

But I think Bonjour may be the biggest winner if WiFi Direct wins since,
unlike Bluetooth profiles, WiFi Direct doesn't include any application layer.
Bonjour will fit in the need of service discovery protocol.

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tsuraan
The only thing I've ever used bluetooth for is audio; my cell phone has it, my
iPod has an adaptor for it, and I have a pretty acceptable set of headphones
that receive it. I'm also planning on getting a car stereo that supports it.
Has file transfer every really been a use-case for bluetooth?

~~~
CaptainZapp
\- Automated connectivity between your cell phone and the hands free set in a
car. \- Backing up the cell phone

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m_eiman
Does anyone know how this will work in practice? Will I have to disconnect
from my WLAN to connect to the device's? What's the benefit compared to an ad-
hoc network, in the peer-to-peer file transfer case?

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santani_krishna
bluetooth 3.0 HS (High Speed) standard is going to provide high speed transfer
in comparision with Wi-Fi without consuming lot of power. So can't say bye bye
to blurtooth so early. Have patience..

