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For the first time in eight years, a new full Bluetooth version has been launched.

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Bluetooth 6.0 is here, but are the new features things you'll actually be excited about?

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That might depend on you. Let's get right into it with a cool feature

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called channel sounding. Because Bluetooth is very commonly used

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to locate misplaced devices, channel sounding was implemented

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to make this process more accurate by using two new techniques to locate devices.

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The first, called round trip time, notes the exact time a signal leaves one device,

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the time it arrives at the second device, and how long it takes to come back to the first device

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to help calculate the distance between them. The second technique is called PBR,

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and no, I'm not talking about the greatest beer to ever grace this fine land.

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PBR stands for phase based ranging, which measures the difference in the phase of the wave

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that travels between the two devices. Bluetooth 6.0 can leverage both techniques at the same time

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to judge distances more accurately than the previous method,

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which mostly relied on measuring signal strength and angles.

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Channel sounding is supposed to allow you to pinpoint a device's location

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down to a few centimeters under optimal conditions,

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similar to the ultra wide band tech that Apple uses in its air tags.

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But since Bluetooth is a widely used open standard,

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the hope is that Bluetooth 6.0 will make precise location measurement more accessible

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if you're not in the Apple ecosystem. Channel sounding's better distance sensitivity

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also has implications for physical security,

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as it can be used to ensure that things like Bluetooth operated smart locks

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can only be operated by someone who's both authorized and in close proximity to the lock,

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and not by some sneaky boy in a different room.

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But if you're the type of person that just never loses anything,

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there are other Bluetooth 6.0 features you might care about. There are a pair of features in Bluetooth 6.0

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that refer to advertising, but fortunately they have nothing to do with ads

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for things like this lovely shirt from LTT Store I'm wearing.

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Thank goodness. Instead, these features are actually meant to help your Bluetooth devices suck down less battery.

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What the, advertising battery? I'll explain.

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The first feature is called decision based advertising filtering,

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and it works with Bluetooth low energy, which is used by a huge number of devices

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and utilizes multiple channels, basically radio frequencies to transmit data.

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These channels are split into primary and secondary

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with the primary channels mainly being used for advertising,

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that is telling other nearby devices that a certain Bluetooth device is present.

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It's how your phone detects your earbuds or how your laptop detects your Bluetooth mouse.

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With this new feature, a device can listen to the data being sent to it

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on a primary advertising channel and use that data to decide if the remaining data

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on the secondary channels is relevant to what the application is doing.

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This means that your device won't waste battery on scanning for and processing extraneous transmissions.

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For example, imagine a music app trying to listen for music signals.

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If it hears an advertising packet from a fitness tracker on the primary channel,

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it knows it can ignore the data on the secondary channel

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so it doesn't waste energy processing your new personal best clean and jerk.

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That's a fitness thing, Glenn. The other advertising feature

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is called monitoring advertisers, and it's a bit more straightforward.

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Bluetooth devices often cannot know if a saved device they want to connect to

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is within a close enough range. This means that a device can waste a lot of energy

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searching for the gadget it's trying to connect to, even if it's well out of range,

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like if you leave your Bluetooth speaker at home. This is where monitoring advertisers comes in.

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The device instead tracks when a device moves out of range,

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so the host device will stop trying to connect to it.

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Once the device moves back into range, like when you get home, the host will know that too,

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so it can automatically reconnect. And speaking of speakers, LOL,

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there are also minor changes to exactly how data packets are delivered

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that should decrease audio latency, meaning an improvement in how well

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the sound coming out of your headphones matches what's happening on the screen.

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Not going to say no to that. Of course, we should note that Bluetooth 6.0

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is just a specification for now, and it's up to manufacturers

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to start including it in their products. While we do expect this will happen,

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there have actually been cases in the past where a technology failed,

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partly because no one made anything for it,

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which is exactly what happened to wireless USB. So if you want to learn more about why that failed,

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go watch this video next. It's fascinating.