The next generation of Bluetooth will help users stay more secure and could allow devices like AirTag trackers to have better battery life.
The new standard, called Bluetooth 6.1, has just been announced and builds off Bluetooth 6 from September 2024. The new format uses randomized address changes which make it harder to track Bluetooth devices.
It also offloads those changes to the Bluetooth chip instead of your device’s CPU, which will help save some battery life. When you take these power savings down to the scale of a fitness tracker or wireless earbuds, they can add up.
This is the first Bluetooth announcement since the organization behind the standard announced that it was moving to bi-annual releases. This ideally will make it easier for manufactures to adopt the new tech faster, but since this is the first announcement, that remains to be seen. We’ll see the next update hit closer to the end of the year.
Since these updates are tied to physical Bluetooth chips, however, we likely won’t see these updates work their way into any devices until at least 2026.
You can read more about the Bluetooth 6.1 core by downloading a full breakdown on the Bluetooth website.
Source: Bluetooth, Bleepingcomputer
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