I will die on the hill that Bluetooth always has and always will suck ass. Pairing sucks. Latency sucks. Random-ass disconnects suck. Fuck Bluetooth in the neck sideways with a rusty screwdriver.
The bluetooth antennas on your devices have sucked. I have no problems with my pixel 7 pro. Pairs quickly, play music from across the house, through walls and floors even. Previous phones of mine would lose connection to my bluetooth headphones if my.phone was on the wrong hip, obviously an antenna issue.
Until we can finally kill HSP/HFP, I’m never gonna be happy with Bluetooth. Using a headset mic shouldn’t blast you back to the telephone era.
What’s hsp/hfp?
It’s the Handset Protocol/Handsfree Protocol that was developed for simultaneous sending and receiving of voice data. They’re the only protocols that support sending and receiving voice at the same time, and they do that by sending mono telephone quality audio and receiving mono telephone quality audio.
It’s why most gaming headsets, even ones with Bluetooth, include a small RF dongle separately. Bluetooth is technically incapable of high-quality audio when recording.
I mean my AirPods are fantastic. I think they’re great at playing my podcasts and I’ve not had any problems with random disconnects. Granted I’ve only ever used them with my phone but still.
Apple uses a modified version of Bluetooth
Edit: for Apple-only version
No one uses standard bluetooth. I’m pretty sure it can only transfer files in its base form
That’s absolutely not true. Bluetooth has many “profiles” which define different capabilities. Here’s a list of them. These are all defined in the official bluetooth standards.
Maybe you were thinking of the “core specification” which defines the underlying protocol but doesn’t define the profiles? But that’s just the way they broke up the spec documents. The profiles are still official parts of bluetooth.
Apple’s proprietary extensions for audio are not part of any official specification though.
Shiny new AirPods + shiny new iPhone = minimal issues. Certainly preferable to cords for many, even if no dongle were required for many corded headphones.
In fact AirPods + iPhones have been all but rock solid for years, at least since first gen kinks were worked out… so five years worth of high reliability.
My AirPod Pros have also worked perfectly on my Linux PCs - just as solid as connecting to an Apple device.
That is great to hear. Do you still have to pay the Apple tax if you want the full experience of say using your computer with the AirPods, getting a phone call which pauses your music and having them automatically switch over to the phone until you end the call?
I just want a headset that doesn’t descend into hissing at me in mono over a crackly 1940s phoneline whenever I dare to use the microphone.
Does it improve the bandwidth so higher quality codecs can be used without having to switch between good quality sound and shitty mics to shitty sound and good mics? I mean seriously, we’re in 2024 and we still can’t have quality parity with a wired headset when using Bluetooth because the bandwidth sucks so much ass that better codecs just can’t be used. Bluetooth can die in a fucking fire.
My 300$ earbuds can play two sources at once. But an uncompressed signal? Fuck yourself.
