Bluetooth is 24 years old and it's come a long way since the days of me carrying a phone, PDA, and MP3 player, wearing a mono single-unit earpiece with a boom that sat along my cheek. Its primary function was making phone calls with my phone (a novel concept today). Much of the progress consumers have experienced comes from manufacturers like Apple finding a good way to slingshot sound from one wireless earbud to another or Qualcomm splitting a stream in a way that allows more than one person to listen at a time. But the meat of it all comes from a group of people known as the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group).
Those are the people who formally announced Bluetooth LE Audio at CES back in 2020. By 2022, the Bluetooth SIG finally completed the list of specifications, fully fleshing out its feature set. Those specs brought with them the potential to deliver some exciting advances to those who use Bluetooth earbuds and headphones. Part of that potential relied on equipment manufacturers' cooperation of course. Today, in 2024, we’re still waiting for that potential to be fully realized. So, where exactly are we? What do we have today, and what's still to come? Let's dig into that!
