Bluetooth 3.0 is Official, and it's Fast

WIRED.com - The Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group) has officially announced the spec for the third version of the wireless data transfer protocol, and its fast. And we mean really fast.

Bluetooth v.3 uses the 802.11 wireless protocol, pairing a Bluetooth radio with a Wi-Fi radio. Everything works as it does now, more or less, but when higher bandwidth is needed the Wi-Fi kicks in (it remains off the rest of the time to save power). So how fast is it? The SIG says that it can run at around 24Mbps, fast enough to send video and keep, say, an iPod synced wirelessly.

It may even be possible to do this with today’s devices. As long as the hardware includes both Wi-Fi and a current Bluetooth radio, the two could work in concert to act as BT3. This means that something like a laptop computer or an iPhone could, theoretically, be upgraded.

When will we start seeing new 3.0 devices? As soon as nine months, but more likely a year.