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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways
- The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) released Bluetooth 6.0 successful Sept. 2024.
- Its notable features pave the mode for cosmopolitan instrumentality tracking, little latency, and much businesslike wireless connections.
- Although recently released smartphones person adopted the caller wireless standard, headphones and earbuds person not yet caught up.
Bluetooth and headphones spell unneurotic similar peanut food and jelly; it's the exertion that allows you to spell wireless, but wireless listening isn't its lone characteristic. Bluetooth versions are liable for audio compression and transmission, arsenic good arsenic latency and transportation stability. As the exertion advances, you tin look guardant to getting much retired of your headphones and earbuds.
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Despite the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) releasing the Bluetooth 6.2 halfway specification successful precocious 2025, galore headphones released arsenic precocious arsenic this twelvemonth inactive diagnostic Bluetooth 5.3 oregon 5.4. Not each specification delivers mind-blowing features, and caller features for extremity users aren't guaranteed by Bluetooth versions alone.
Still, determination are connectivity, latency, and show improvements to look guardant to wrong the 6.0+ specifications. This year, respective smartphones are debuting with Bluetooth 6. As you expect to spot much Bluetooth 6 products successful 2026, present are its astir notable features and what they could mean for you.
Connection efficiency
Bluetooth 6 introduces improvements to however Bluetooth-enabled devices find and brace with 1 another, creating faster and smoother instrumentality pairing. Hopefully, this betterment volition beryllium astir noticeable to radical who similar Bluetooth multipoint, a diagnostic that allows 1 Bluetooth instrumentality to prevention aggregate connections and power betwixt them.
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If you presently usage Bluetooth multipoint, you whitethorn announcement it's sometimes unreliable, glitchy, and frustrating, particularly erstwhile switching a brace of headphones from a smartphone to a laptop oregon tablet. Bluetooth 6 features Decision-Based Advertising Filtering and Monitoring Advertisers, which amended interoperability and alteration faster reconnections to antecedently paired Bluetooth devices.
Bluetooth's usage of the word "advertising" has small to bash with influencing your buying decisions and much to bash with however devices broadcast their beingness wrong a Bluetooth network. With improved advertizing methods successful Bluetooth 6, your headphones broadcast smaller, low-power signals to your devices to denote their quality to connect. Then, your telephone tin easy observe this transportation for instant pairing without utilizing overmuch artillery power.
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Your headphones and smartphone indispensable person Bluetooth 6.0+ compatibility to instrumentality vantage of these features. Fortunately, galore smartphones released successful 2025, specified arsenic the Google Pixel 10 lineup and Apple iPhone 17 family, are equipped with Bluetooth 6. You'll conscionable request to hold for headphone manufacturers to drawback up.
Latency gains
Older Bluetooth versions experienced issues with audio/video latency, wherever a hold occurred betwixt the audio you perceive and the video you watch. Although much caller Bluetooth versions reduced latency for video-watching, arsenic mobile gaming and AR/VR proceed to evolve, truthful does the mode we acquisition audio via Bluetooth.
As a result, Bluetooth offers improvements to the Isochronous Adaptation Layer (ISOAL), which is liable for transmitting real-time data, specified arsenic audio. Enhancing this exertion optimizes aggregate Bluetooth layers, enabling faster transmission speeds and larger information transfers tailored to your audio needs.
Thus, mobile gamers whitethorn not request to ligament their headphones oregon earbuds to their instrumentality for unnoticeable latency. Additionally, console and PC gamers whitethorn find much flexibility successful their mundane headphones and earbuds, uncovering that they tin grip the audio demands of single-player games.
Universal instrumentality tracking
Bluetooth Channel Sounding is simply a highly anticipated diagnostic of Bluetooth 6, acknowledgment to its imaginable to democratize Find My Device technology. It offers centimeter precision for instrumentality tracking, allowing users to find devices, specified arsenic headphones, that are not equipped with an ultra-wideband (UWB) chip.
UWB chips besides connection precise instrumentality location, but they are much costly and much analyzable to integrate into each device's motherboard. Earbuds similar Apple's AirPods see a UWB chip, which enables them to beryllium detected wrong your Find My network. However, astir headphones don't person a UWB chip, truthful Bluetooth aims to connection Channel Sounding arsenic an alternate solution.
Channel Sounding utilizes Phase-based Ranging (PBR) and Round-trip Time (RTT) technologies to transmit and cipher the region and absorption betwixt 2 Bluetooth devices. Given that Channel Sounding operates connected Bluetooth's Low Energy (LE) network, and astir instrumentality chips are already compatible with Bluetooth, the request for UWB chips successful headphones and earbuds importantly decreases.
With Channel Sounding, your smartphone from 1 shaper could find your earbuds from different manufacturer, provided some devices are equipped with Bluetooth 6 oregon higher. There aren't galore mainstream headphones and earbuds disposable successful the US with Bluetooth 6, but this volition apt alteration successful 2026.
The adoption of newer wireless technologies is typically slower for headphones and earbuds compared to smartphones. Case successful point: the iPhone 17 has Bluetooth 6, but the AirPods Pro 3 person Bluetooth 5.4.
However, you shouldn't expect Apple to follow these technologies anytime soon, arsenic the institution prefers its proprietary wireless technologies. The latest real-world applications of Bluetooth's innovations are easier to usage with Google's Pixel devices.
Earlier this year, Google expanded Bluetooth Auracast support to much smartphones, headphones, earbuds, and proceeding aids, enabling users to stock audio with different devices that besides enactment the Bluetooth standard. So, if you're successful the US and privation to beryllium an aboriginal adopter of Bluetooth's latest technologies, an Android telephone is the mode to go.
When volition I get these features?
Implementing the latest features is up to manufacturers' discretion. For example, Bluetooth LE Audio requires a instrumentality to person Bluetooth 5.2, but respective devices with that mentation don't enactment it. That determination is up to manufacturers, but arsenic newer Bluetooth technologies summation much manufacture adoption, you'll spot them amusement up successful user devices, dilatory but surely.
Another illustration is Channel Sounding, which received important fanfare erstwhile the Bluetooth SIG announced it wrong Bluetooth 6. As of aboriginal 2026, respective smartphones enactment Bluetooth 6 but bash not notation Channel Sounding. It's imaginable these devices person the hardware to enactment Channel Sounding, and could person it successful an over-the-air bundle oregon firmware update successful the future.
Also: Why your adjacent brace of headphones volition look precise antithetic - and your speakers, too
As a result, the Bluetooth SIG encourages consumers not to get excessively excited astir a device's Bluetooth mentation alone, arsenic devices with the latest Bluetooth features volition apt advertise them. So, if you spot a instrumentality with Bluetooth 5.4 but nary notation of Bluetooth LE Audio oregon with Bluetooth 6 and nary notation of Channel Sounding, presume those devices aren't compatible with those features.
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