Faster Bluetooth chips coming early next year

The consortium behind the technology, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, said this week it has united on a standard for Bluetooth 3.0, which will include an option for the faster data transfers. Those could be useful for moving music or movies from a PC to a cell phone or media player.

Three chip companies - Atheros Communications Inc., Broadcom Corp. and CSR PLC - said they had products that would work with the new high-speed option. When the Bluetooth chip is called on to transfer a large file, it borrows a Wi-Fi chip in the same gadget to make the actual transfer. When the Wi-Fi chip isn't needed, Bluetooth turns it off, conserving power. It can then maintain a low-power connection with the Bluetooth chip.

While Bluetooth 3.0 with the high-speed option is 10 times faster than current Bluetooth, it's about 20 times slower than a USB cable, so it will likely be less than ideal for a complete music library or a long movie.

A combination of Bluetooth and a different, and potentially even faster radio technology, ultra-wideband, was announced in 2006, but delays in getting it to work prompted the Bluetooth group to look at Wi-Fi. Then the Wi-Fi-based technology was also delayed: When the Bluetooth group talked about that work early in 2008, it said gadgets could be on the market by summer 2009.

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