What I find a bit uncomfortable is the lack of detail regarding power consumption. One of the primary benefits of Bluetooth is how little power it consumes. I don't care how much faster or far the signal goes if the wattage goes up with it.

Range etc. are fine with Bluetooth 4.1 and 4.2. I'm disappointed that there aren't any improvements for audio compression at this stage. I guess they're trying to get Bluetooth at the stage where it can reach round a whole house potentially creating competition to Wi-Fi.

I'm disappointed that there aren't any improvements for audio compression at this stage. I guess they're trying to get Bluetooth at the stage where it can reach round a whole house potentially creating competition to Wi-Fi.

Improved audio compression is kind of implied. With double the bandwidth, they can effectively double the sound quality. But, I am currently unaware of any BT5 headsets/speakers so only time will tell. Generally, I've been satisfied with Bluetooth compression quality, but not all of them are equal. For example, playing music via my old "dumb phone" through my car's sound system had overwhelmingly better sound quality than my current Android phone. Don't forget that if you're using the A2DP protocol, you lose a lot of quality. Bluetooth likely won't compete with Wifi considering that BT5, to my understanding, has a maximum speed of 2Mbps. That's slower than 802.11b speeds. That came out in 1999.

Never had any luck with BT on phones, trying to pair two phones and transfer something relatively small like a photo, either takes a ridiculous amount of time, or fails Yet to pair two phones that happily transferred files over BT

Are they basically just trying to change it into Wifi. My old Galaxy S3 has a pretty good range anyway, my Pebble watch works at a range of about 5+ metres through a brick wall and in an environment with 20+ laptops with wifi and Bluetooth in the vicinity with a lot in-between us.

I agree with Nick, just curious what is the range for Bluetooth 5

Range I'm sure will be good but will it suffer from the same issues as Wi-Fi regarding penetration of walls etc.

Improved audio compression is kind of implied. With double the bandwidth, they can effectively double the sound quality. But, I am currently unaware of any BT5 headsets/speakers so only time will tell. Generally, I've been satisfied with Bluetooth compression quality, but not all of them are equal. For example, playing music via my old "dumb phone" through my car's sound system had overwhelmingly better sound quality than my current Android phone. Don't forget that if you're using the A2DP protocol, you lose a lot of quality. Bluetooth likely won't compete with Wifi considering that BT5, to my understanding, has a maximum speed of 2Mbps. That's slower than 802.11b speeds. That came out in 1999.

They did mention audio improvements would be a few years down the line which is why I said it's a bit of a shame. Especially since top end phones are now ditching the 3.5mm jack.