I know the meme format is kinda wrong. It’s also kinda right.
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Bluetooth when I’m connecting to a speaker
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Bluetooth staying connected to my car when I’m 3 streets away
My dude! I can’t believe this is such a pervasive problem! Pretty much every person that I know who connects their car to their phone runs into this issue especially in the case of couples where both phones are paired and it’s just some kind of headbutting match to see which device randomly wins out, which is guaranteed to be the phone you didn’t want connected. In theory their priority system, but in practice Bluetooth device discovery and the connection process seems rather random.
I wish my car had an option to disable auto connection and a prominently displayed button to explicitly connect to a recent phone upon request.
Ugh, the car!
I live in the heat. I have to start to car before hand, just to make it so the family doesn’t melt to the seats. It connects. I switch it back to my headset. I go back in the house to get stuff to load up, and I go out of range. Get back in range. It connects again. I switch it back to the headset. I forgot something…
Rinse and repeat like 5 times before I’m good to go. Whole time, I’m only catching every 10th word of whatever someone is saying to me on the phone, thinking it lost service, or they hung up on me.
I hate auto connect.
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Wait, do you just keep your Bluetooth on when you don’t need it? Is that… are people doing that?
Yeah. Why not?
Because it drains your battery like you poked a hole in it?
Did you get your battery saving advice from 15 years ago?
It shouldn’t be draining like that, at least…
Even if you turn it off the radio is still powered on and scanning in the background (wifi too), unless you specifically disable that as well. The battery drain is negligible
- I did disable the scanning.
- Looked it up. Seems like it’s actually pretty low when not connected.
I never really thought about it because I use Bluetooth about once month at best. Still, leaving it on when I don’t need it seems silly. But maybe it only does when you don’t need it again a few minutes later.
it can be a security issue leaving it on. also can drain battery as its occasionally pinging for nearby devices.
So is literally any communication standard on your phone…just turn off wifi, nfc, cellular network and Bluetooth then you’ll be safe
the protocols on how Bluetooth is handled is far different than the ones how wifi is handled, same as NFC and cellular. to equate all their security as “the same” is very dismissive, especially comparing to wifi and cellular which typically arent direct device to device connections.
nfc dodges its problems because its for the most part off until you open an app that uses it, so its already doing what a user should be doing for security reasons.
Nah, my sentiment is more like if man can make it man can break it…imei cloning, arp poisoning, relay attack…anything broadcast willy nilly everywhere is as much of a security risk if you are concerned about bluetooth exploits…
again, its diminishing the security features of the different forms of communication. one (likely) requires connecting to a secondary powered device, likely with a 10 key minimum password length of various characters or a series of login prompts. the other is a protocol which connects either by pairing or a 4 digit pin… just because security exploits exists for all connections doesnt mean all communication standards have equivalent security risk.
Bluetooth headphones when I want to use them:
Bluetooth headphones when there’s someone calling and I can’t answer because I can’t find them:
The number of times I’ve been mid video call or watching a video on my headphones and they randomly decided to disconnect from my laptop and connect to another device like my phone absolutely infuriates me.
The whole multiple paired device feature really needs some work…
It might be your phone getting a notification, and sending that to the BT speaker, which then takes precedent over the laptop
I usually just disable BT on my phone when stuff like that happens (on android, you can change the playback device without disconnecting, and that should also prevent the phone from stealing your headphones)
There might be something to that. Unfortunately I keep Bluetooth on for my smart watch to connect. The headphones aren’t normally selected, but I think they auto-connect sometimes when they come in range. It also doesn’t help that the main way of switching the connected device is via the Android app, that requires the phone to use. (Original Surface Headphones, I’m considering replacing them because the pads are falling apart already)
For what it’s worth, headphone pads are often pretty easy to replace.
Yeah, if I actually liked these headphones I’d probably repair them, but as it is, I have other headphones I can use, they’re just not noise cancelling.
(on android, you can change the playback device without disconnecting, and that should also prevent the phone from stealing your headphones)
You can do this quite easily on iPhone as well, I was delighted to discover when my beloved OnePlus 7T Pro died and I went to the Dark Side.
I wonder if this has anything to do with how the bandwidth is automatically decreased when taking a call vs when you’re just playing audio. Less bandwidth means a slower but more robust connection or something like that?
I don’t think BT devices do frequency hopping. The audio bandwidth is reduced just because the mic signal is added and has to share the connection. There’s no change on the physical connection.
(Now, it would be great if there was some frequency hopping and your phones could reserve a full FM channel instead of messing with digital compression.)
That decreased bandwidth would still help to maintain a digital connection though, wouldn’t it? There’d be a weaker and slower connection as the devices get further apart, so I was thinking less demand on the connection would keep them from dropping it.
I don’t think it’s the same as what you meant exactly, but I looked it up and Bluetooth does hopping between 2.402 and 2.480 GHz.
After you establish a connection, it doesn’t hop anymore.
I don’t think they’re talking about frequency hopping, just using a thinner datastream. Smaller packets are less likely to be dropped perhaps?
Yeah, if you transmit less data in total, your odds of having a random problem reduce. But not much, because electromag interference tends to last for relatively long times and you still need to communicate often for minimizing latency.
That is, unless the problem is a saturated channel. If that’s the case, your situation may improve much more by sending less data.
Pretty good idea! Yeah, maybe the half duplex codec can connect with a weaker signal.
Or something. I don’t know that much about the protocol.
I have a pair of bluetooth sportbuds i connect to my work laptop for when i go in the office, and to my phone when i go for a jog. When I’m in the garage putting my running shoes on and put the earbuds in they never connect to my phone which is in my pocket. They instead connect to the work laptop…in the upstairs den…on the exact opposite side of the house. Every. Goddamn. Time.
For Android, don’t accept the prompt to let the speaker read your contacts and call history. Seems to stop this nonsense on my speakers.
Exhibit one: Aussie wanker yells at tech.
I knew who it was before I opened it.
Occasionally my phone will prompt to connect to some random earbuds, WHILE I have my headset actively connected.
Every time I am tempted to connect those and choose on their behalf. My friend, you’re now listening to the WAN show while I watch with subtitles.
