Bluetooth 5 has been confirmed and will be released in late-2016/early-2017, but when will it come to your smartphone? Let us reveal all.
We spoke to an industry expert to find out when Bluetooth 5 will start featuring on mainstream devices – and it looks like we'll be waiting until 2018 and handsets like the iPhone 8S/9 and Galaxy S9 to enjoy the new standard.
At least, that's what Philip McAleese, CEO and co-founder at award-winning cycle tech company SeeSense, disclosed to us when we spoke to him at an exclusive Bluetooth SIG event in London recently.
McAleese, an MWC 2016 keynote speaker – Jimmy Wales, Mark Zuckerberg, and Brian Krzanich were some of the others – told us that based on his knowledge of product development, we could expect to see the first consumer products sporting Bluetooth 5 connectivity in 2018.
Quizzed on when handsets made by big name manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony and HTC would start introducing the new standard, McAleese said:
"It will take around about two years – we'll start to see them in 2018. The standard needs to be be fully launched by Bluetooth, then the chipset manufacturers need to produce their offerings, [companies] need to prototype and get it on to their product roadmaps, and then following that we'll see it reach consumers."
That means our first taste of Bluetooth 5 is likely to come in the form of the iPhone 8S or 9 – it's thought that Apple will ditch the 'S' moniker in 2017 and jump straight to the iPhone 8 – and the Samsung Galaxy S9.
Obviously if Apple sticks with its odd-year 'S' naming, we'll be talking about the iPhone 7S or 8 instead.
