Bluetooth Knowledge Needed

We have never used bluetooth for anything other than using the phone in the car. My wife has recently started listening to podcasts, and the speakers on her iPad 2 and iPad Mini 2 are lacking in quality and volume. So I decided to get a bluetooth speaker for her. She can just leave the device on the counter and take the little speaker wherever.

Turns out that is not to easy. The iPad 2 has BT version 2.1 and the Mini has 4.0. After much searching, I finally found this unequivocal statement: "Your Bluetooth smartphone, tablet, portable media player or laptop must be the same Bluetooth version or higher as the accessory you would like to pair it with."

Can't get any clearer than that. The problem is that for damned near every BT speaker I look at, the BT version is not provided.

I know NoCoPilot has experience with bluetooth. So is that quoted statement true? Do I have to get a BT 4.0 or lower speaker for the iPad Mini? Would I have to find a BT 2.1 speaker for the iPad 2? Or should I just say, "Fuck it" and buy a wired speaker?

TBH I don’t think I can be much help.

Comments:
1. The statement that the Bluetooth sending device has to be the same version or higher doesn’t sound right.  Well maybe it is.  I have two BT senders (iPhone, iPad) and a few BT receivers (speakers,  BT puck for stereo input, BT stereo, BT for my TV).  Everything connects with the Apple devices, but NOTHING connects with the Alexa. I don’t know where to find the BT version.

2.  “Carrying a speaker around the house” might be problematic. BT isn’t “line-of-sight” but you lose connection if it’s more than about 20 feet away.   I had to put in repeaters for my music room and the doorbell.

Wait, my repeaters are WiFi repeaters. Nevermind. The distance limitations I mentioned are there for BT though.

I know nothing, sorry.

I’m planning to buy a BT speaker for the bedroom tomorrow, during Black Friday, to get stereo on my Alexa. However, looking at the ads tonight, another Amazon Echo would only be $24. Probably can’t get a speaker for that.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I don’t know where to find the BT version.

Online resources give this advice:

Quote :

How do I check what version of Bluetooth an iPhone supports using the iPhone?

To determine your Bluetooth version follow the steps -

1. Click the main menu.
   
2. Select About Bluetooth.
   
3. Click on the More Info... button.
   
4. Click on the System Report... button.
   
5. Select Bluetooth from the sidebar on the left, underneath "Hardware."
   
6. Scan down the list of information until you find "LMP Version."

One question: Where's the "Main Menu" button on an iPhone?

Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Bluetooth.  It seems 4.0 is a completely different set of protocols than 1.0 thru 3.0, and 4.1 and 4.2 are simply software tweaks of 4.0, which was released in 2010.

Therefore, anything newer than eight years old should interconnect.  Anything older than that may connect with other old shit only.  Consider 2010 a line in the sand.

Your ipad2 which is 2.1 might be unable to connect to anything you can buy today.  The mini OTOH should be good with anything.

Bear in mind however that apparently different manufacturers interpret the Bluetooth standards differently; viz. all my Bluetooth devices which are "iPhone compatible" are not recognized by my Amazon Echo.

NoCoPilot wrote:

2.  “Carrying a speaker around the house” might be problematic. BT isn’t “line-of-sight” but you lose connection if it’s more than about 20 feet away.

To test this I fired up my iHome Go+Arc portable speaker, paired it with my iPad mini, set Pandora to a'playin', and carried the speaker out of my music room.  When I got to the kitchen, about 20 feet away, the signal started to waver in and out, and by the time I got to the hall it dropped altogether.  The bedrooms were a total no-go, 40' away.

When I carried it back into the music room I had to re-pair it to get it to start playing again (i.e. it didn't remember its previous pairing).

Less than ideal for your intended usage.

Does your wife like headphones?  You could get BT headphones.  The iPad 2 or iPad mini could then be carried to the room or neighboring room (within 20') if she's moving around. Or regular wired headphones if she's sittin' still.

She doesn't want headphones; already asked about that. Too inconvenient for some activities and the inability to hear the door bell.

The range of BT devices varies with the BT hardware; some have more power (I think that is defined by the "class" number, not the version number). 33 feet is considered the norm, with some devices providing double that. You can get BT extenders, but from what I've read, they are all seem a little hinky.

Quote :

Therefore, anything newer than eight years old should interconnect.

The iPad 2 is less than eight years old and is BT 2.1.

Thanks for your assistance.

iPad 2s were introduced March 2011.  So it's entirely believable that early models didn't have BT 4.0, which was finalized June 30, 2010.

After getting my iHome Go+Arc portable speaker working again (after a long sleep) with my iPad, I took it into the bedroom and tried, once again, to get Alexa to pair up with it.

No luck

I don't think my speaker is eight years old either.

Let's just say the technology isn't quite mature yet, okay?

Somebody might make -- and if they don't they should -- an Otterbox-type case for the mini that includes a built-in speaker.

Let me poke around on that.

In poking around for info on BT, I encountered a number of Apple users who had problems with connecting non-Apple BT devices.

I have two iPhone 4S (BT 4.0) that I fired up and tried to connect via bluetooth. Neither of the phones could find the other one, even though they were right next to one another. Both of these phones had previously had no problem with bluetooth with other devices, but I had never tried connecting the two phones. I got out my Samsung and enabled bluetooth (4.2). It immediately found the two iPhones and they responded and accepted pairing. But the iPhones showed the Samsung as not connected. When I tried to communicate, the iPhones would toss an error message. No comm.

Yay, tech!

Well, I got my wife one of these.



Sounds fine and connects easily with the iPad 2, the iPad Mini, an iPod Nano, my Samsung Android phone, and an old iPhone 4S. So it works with BT 2.1, 4.0, and 4.2.

Range is almost exactly 33 feet, which is sufficient to reach through one wall into the sewing room.