Bluetooth is set to revolutionise handheld computing, reports David Shapshak
‘So what’s the big deal?” a friend asked when I phoned him excitedly from a handheld digital organiser. Making a phone call from a personal digital assistant (PDA) may seem neither here nor there in the age of almost global cellphone coverage, hence his lack of enthusiasm.
But the device in question was a trusty Palm Pilot, the top-end Vx, and I was making a cellphone call over a completely wireless network using Bluetooth, a revolutionary new wireless technology that will soon be sweeping the world.
Today a phone call, tomorrow I’ll be running my whole home office network without all the cables and wires that lie tangled under my desk. Ultimately it will do the same for corporate offices, who need never worry about where the network point is.
Named after Viking king Harald Bluetooth, who united Denmark and Norway from 940 to 981 AD, the wireless system developed by cellphone manufacturers Ericsson is a short range radio frequency system that uses very little power but has the potential to connect a range of electronic devices in a small wireless network.
Think of your cellphone being able to communicate with your PDA, then “talking” to your digital camera, even your fridge talking to your PC.
Although Bluetooth is just one of many wireless technologies, it is expressly aimed at freeing up your life from cables. It will create a personal area network, a wireless network up to 10m wide that will let you share data across the devices, such as sync your Palm Pilot with your computer’s calendar, upload MP3 files from PC to player, or let your PDA connect to the Net through your cellphone.
Most major computer, handheld device and cellphone manufacturers have plans to include Bluetooth functionality in future ranges, meaning a potential world of interoperability.
But it goes further. There is nothing to stop you linking a variety of less hi-tech devices through Bluetooth.
An Internet-enabled fridge of which five have apparently been sold in South Africa to the tune of R80 000 could use Bluetooth to “piggyback” on your home phone line to “dial-up” for some orange juice. Essentially what it allows is for pre-determined items in the fridge to be “replaced” using pre-set up, and automated, online shopping services when they run out.
Bluetooth is aimed at the more mobile computer user: the laptop-carrying executive who works at the office, at home and with clients; or has a cellphone, PDA and other electronic peripherals, plus a cartful of cables.
The first commercial application for Bluetooth comes from the creators, Ericsson, who used it in that now essential South African accessories: the hands-free kit.
Using the first operational Bluetooth network in South Africa at the offices of Bluetooth pioneers Red-M, I used a Palm Vx to make a cell call, routed through a digital line. This is one of the most graphic ways of demonstrating the wireless technology in full swing.
The Palm also does wireless application protocol (WAP), the much-maligned cellphone service that is a slimmed down, text version of the Internet. WAP running over a Bluetooth network (10 megabytes or faster) is the revelation that the technology promised.
“WAP suffered GSM [global systems mobile]. It was not the problem of WAP itself, the network let it down,” says Peter Turvey, MD of Red-M in South Africa.
Globally, Red-M is leading the way in Bluetooth services. A pilot project being run in the United Kingdom lets train commuters access the Web and WAP through Bluetooth. A test group are using Bluetooth to work while travelling. Ericsson’s Japan unit has launched trial information and Internet services with West Japan Railway.
Trials will also be run in two Tokyo cafs, where rented handheld computers using Bluetooth can access Internet access service So-net.
The United States will see similar pilots, while in Europe a supermarket will test a system that lets shoppers use Bluetooth to pay their bills.
“It will be a ubiquitous technology within five years,” says Turvey. Indeed, Merrill Lynch is predicting 2,1-biliion Bluetooth devices will be sold in 2005, while the accumulative installed base by 2005 will be 5,4-billion.
“Bluetooth will make all mobile devices more valuable together than they are alone,” says Danny Wyatt, lead technologist for the Ericsson Mobility World in the US.
“Bluetooth will allow each device to do just what it does best and then share that function with anything else that needs it. So a mobile phone can be a good mobile phone and a PDA can be a good PDA, and when the phone needs an organiser or the organiser needs a phone, then Bluetooth will link the two.”
But linking up devices will precipitate a much more widespread link-up, Wyatt says, articulating a technical reality for micro-payments and the electronic replacement of keys or multiple remote controls.
“After Bluetooth links between devices become ubiquitous, then Bluetooth links between devices and fixed services will become feasible. For example, a Bluetooth link between a phone and a cash register will allow for wireless payment. A Bluetooth link between a handheld device and a home automation system will allow a device someone already has to replace his or her keys and remote control. And beyond that, Bluetooth links between appliances or devices in the home or office will allow all of them to easily discover and communicate with each other,” he says.
But how will this change the way we function?
“It will change the way we operate, first of all, through the use of mobile devices. Currently, a Palm has a superior user interface and software capability for things like contact management and e-mail. The cellphone has superior abilities for wide area networking and voice. Bluetooth can connect the two,” Wyatt says.
“You can use a PDA as a data and software interface and the phone as a network connection and voice interface. In addition to that, the PDA usually needs to stay synchronised with data on a computer. Bluetooth in the computer will make this synchronisation even easier than it is now.”
When the PDA isn’t enough, a laptop computer can provide a data and software interface while the phone provides the network connection.
“So,” adds Wyatt, “immediately, the laptop-PDA-cellphone “connectivity triangle” will be the first area in which Bluetooth will change the way we interact with our technology.”
A Bluetooth device can do all the standard browsing as with normal Ethernet. And the Bluetooth setup is four times less expensive than a chipset for wireless Ethernet.
Bluetooth’s main competition from the default wireless networking protocol, known as 802.11, which has a 100 megabyte data speed, the same as most wired corporate networks. It is already popular as a wired network- replacement technology.
While many computer manufacturers say the beginning of next year will see the mass uptake of Bluetooth, Wyatt predicts that the implementation will start now.
“This year is really the year that serious adoption of Bluetooth will begin. It will start first with business users keeping their laptops, cellphones and PDAs connected.”
Hewlett Packard, Sony and Fujitsu have announced laptops with integrated Bluetooth radios, while Compaq and IBM have special-purpose Bluetooth adapters for their laptops.
Motorola, IBM and Toshiba have had Bluetooth PCMCIA cards the credit-card-size expansion cards used to add features to laptop computers on the market for a while. Hewlett-Packard will include Bluetooth chips in some of its future printers.
As befits the mobile market, most new cellphones will come with Bluetooth. Ericsson already has two (the R520 and the T39) available, with the T68 launching at the end of the year.
The Bluetooth headset features in the new film about computer-game icon Lara Croft. Ericsson kitted out Angelina Jolie (who plays Croft in the eponymous film) with a variety of its impressive new concept phones.
I tried the headset featured in the film named somewhat less sexily as HBH-10 and was able to wander about my house having wireless conversations after leaving the cellphone in one room.
A Bluetooth battery pack will be available for Nokia’s 6210, says Clinton Milligan, Nokia’s business applications and solutions manager. The phone’s upgrade, the 6310, will have it built-in.
In the PDA market, Palm, which still has the dominant share of the handheld market, recently announced a Bluetooth card that will add Bluetooth to their current line of handhelds.
More importantly though for Wyatt, Bluetooth will be integrated in the next version of the Palm operating system, and eventually Palm plans to build Bluetooth into its hardware. Microsoft will also be integrating Bluetooth into the next version of Windows CE. Turvey sees the technology being used “anywhere where you can deliver services”.
According to Vodacom’s CE for technology Fanie Viljoen, Bluetooth is essentially a “wire replacement” technology. But, he adds: “Location services are of much interest to us as an operator.”
Using a new technology from Ericsson called a blip (Bluetooth local infotainment points), a Bluetooth- enabled phone or PDA could notify or “blip” a shopper about specials in a shop that they are walking past.
But the Bluetooth revolution might itself piggyback on another trend: non-PC Internet access. The number of desktop computers won’t decline but they will ultimately make up a small percentage of devices used to connect to the Internet, argues Red-M’s Turvey.
Many pundits see the ubiquitous cellphone as the ultimate mobile device. Internet access on the typically small, monochrome screens may not be much, but who knows what it will be like if the phone is just the carrier for the Internet connection and surfing is done on the more powerful, colour screen PDA?