Wibree, Nokia's new standard, to replace Bluetooth
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Oct 3rd 2006 3:01PM
posted Oct 3rd 2006 3:01PM
We all love Bluetooth, given that, among other things, it powers our lovely cordless headsets and nicely syncs our Treos with our laptops. But just as we were snuggling into a long-term relationship with this fantastic short-range technology, Nokia has to come out with a new wireless connectivity standard called Wibree (no, not WiBro). Nokia claims that Wibree maintains a data rate of 1Mbps (not as good as Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, which tops out at 2.1Mbps) at a range of up to 30 feet (yes, Class 1 Bluetooth can go up to 100 meters), operates in the 2.4 GHz band, but says that it's "10 times more energy efficient than Bluetooth," according to Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia Research Center. Nokia also said that it's working with Broadcom, CSR, Epson, Nordic Semicondutor and other companies to further develop the standard so that Wibree products can be released by the second quarter of 2007. It seems like Nokia is gambling pretty hard on this Wibree standard, given that the industry and consumers have invested tons of cash in Bluetooth-friendly products already and will no doubt be reluctant to get a whole new set of Wibree-friendly devices. That said, Reuters reports that "Nokia expects devices currently connected by Bluetooth will get a dual Bluetooth-Wibree chip, while devices that are currently not connected will use a Wibree-only chip." That smells like a huckster's gambit to us -- for all this hoopla about efficient power usage, that extra radio will no doubt draw additional power, which will certainly undermine some of Nokia's claims.Read - Nokia press release
Read - Reuters
Great, so now instead of picking up a wireless headset and knowing it's going to work, now you have to wonder if it's bluetooth or something else...
:-( You guys suck. I was the one who tipped you off on that like an hour ago. No mention. :-( Next time, I won't go out of my way to help Engadget outttttt. :-( :-(
how much energy does bluetooth actually draw? I dont notice a difference in battery life if I leave my bluetooth on all day (in my cell phone) and use my headset for calls or if I leave it off. I dont see this as worth the transition
Let's see, so nokia is offering more efficency but less speed/range. Yippy, lets all start throwing out our obsolete 100watt bulbs and fit spanking new 40watt ones. So what if we can't see to read, it's more efficent. Infact, I'm cancelling my DSL and going back to Dial-Up right now.
Nokia - "The future is backwards".
Didn't the electric car of the 90's promise similar things? Can't go as fast, can't go as far, no market penetration, but it gave better power/fuel capabilities.
You were right on target when you said "It seems like Nokia is gambling pretty hard"...
Does everybody remember how long it took for Bluetooth to finally start showing up in devices? It seemed like forever before they hit the market.
I think makers were wanting it to hit the magical $5 cost to add it to a device before they starting adding it into devices. I don't know the current build cost, but I would guess it is less than $5.
If they are pushing a new "standard" they better push hard, quick, and CHEAP or it will die on the vine.
Another wireless standard? This is starting to become as bad as memory card formats.
BT, UWB, Zigbee, and now Wibree. Crazy.
WiBro always sounded to me like something from the "men's bra" episode of Seinfeld. WiBree sounds even worse... Is having a universal standard (BT) really that bad..?
100m/30ft=10.936
Let's see 10x less draw but 11x worse range. Doesn't sound efficent to me at all.
Not to mention it has only half the bandwidth. That's another multiplier of 2. That about makes this technology 22X less efficient than technology already used en mass. Nice to see R&D funds are being put to good use at Nokia.
Thats exaclty what I thought, BadBatz. I will never buy anything with "Bro" in it cus of that episode.
WHY NOKIA, WHY??????? Stick to designing beautifule S60 phones...not creating shitty standards. Everyone is getting used to Bluetooth so why the hell create something new that will take years to catch on. And one more thing... WTF N95 does not have UMTS 1900 for the US of A????? Obviously they can make Dual band UMTS 850/1900 so why not either dual 2100/1900 or triband. Device like that would KICK everyone's behind.
....and its not even april 1st.. had to have a quick look at the calendar..
more efficent wifi chips.. none of this "wibree taking the p*** stuff.
Should it be WiBrei - Sounds a bit cheesy
10x less power drain woulds be a major boon. Think of bluetooth A2DP headphones (ie hifi headphones). Some of the best ones get only 6 hrs playback time, a deal breaker for me. Imagine if that were 60 hrs. Thats an enormous difference in convenience. Think charging once a week, rather than every day. For headphones, headsets, desktop-PPC syncing, pocket to car phone use, the range should be totally fine.
As for engadget's "huckster" claim: I don't agree.
1) Dual chips (BT+WiBree) could be user configurable: allowing you to turn off one or the other depending upon your peripheral needs. So the power drain advantage could still be there with these chips.
2) Even if the power advantage were only to be realized in the long term, a transition phase would be worth it in order to get the market there eventually.
Pete
This sounds like something Sony would try and pull. Seems pretty useless seeing as their is no performance increase and how widespread blue tooth is.
I think everyone's missing the point here - it's not designed for devices that already include Bluetooth!
WiBree is designed for new sectors where using Bluetooth is technically impossible or impractical. Devices that you want to have to recharge every 4 days, like watches and other low-power devices.
If this gets wireless tech into a broader range of devices and Nokia promotes this as an open standard, which they are, then all power to them.
You said CLASS 1 bluetooth has 100 meters of range, but in OUR nokia phones, we only have about 19 meters of range, which is similar to Wibree's 30 feet range!
So if it's battery efficient it's good. But the data rate shouldn't be lower than blootooth.
Wow..
I just bought a new mac laptop with bluetooth, and now i have to spend $30 on an an ugly adapter that will be a pain to always plug in, to replace something my computer already has built in? And that "10X more effiency" is really going to make my laptop battery last longer... As far as I can tell, leaving bluetooth on makes no change in my battery length anyway!
Many comments seem to be missing from this article that I read yesterday. Is the website having problems?
Mike Foley, executive director of the Bluetooth SIG, has posted comments about this his blog at: http://programs.bluetooth.org/mikesblog/
Seems like most people replying to this are really concerned about doing what they do. I want to do what I don't know how to do yet. I can think of dozens of ways to use this new capability. HDTV is quite a bit less efficient than NTSC but I love it. My laptop is much less efficient than an NSA server farm, but it's much more usable for me. Nanomanufacturing will be orders of magnitude less efficient than today's manufacturing processes yet orders of magnitude better in many ways -- most of which we can barely imagine and can only recently begin to design. As my Dad would say, Kwityerbitchin unless you know what you're talkin' about.