Bluetooth 6 is now available with Apple-like device tracking and lower latency.

Get ready party people! There's a brand new Bluetooth standard on the market. Not excited? Bluetooth is a big deal because it's on so many digital devices. Upgrades could have a significant impact on our daily lives. What is the new Bluetooth 6 specification, which was unveiled earlier this year?

Since Bluetooth 5 has been around since 2016, it was probably overdue for some revisions. The biggest upgrade is the new Channel Sounding feature, which allows you to locate your device.

This feature allows the direction and range of two Bluetooth devices to accurately be determined within one centimetre. Bluetooth 6 will allow device tracking to be similar to Ultra Wideband, which Apple uses in its Air Tags.

Channel Sounding will not only improve the accuracy of 'find my device services' offered by Apple, Samsung, Google and others. This will mean that location services will be available on more devices, as Ultra Wideband chips will no longer need to be used.

Channel Sounding is not a mandatory feature of Bluetooth 6, but it is an optional one. This is probably a good thing for security. You probably don't need every Bluetooth 6 device to have a default tracking feature.

Channel Sounding also aims to make keyless entry for cars more reliable, secure, and accurate. It will, for example, mean that your car's door won't open until you are closer to the vehicle. This has obvious security benefits.

Next, we have improved filtering and efficiencies. The Decision-Based Ad Filtering helps Bluetooth devices reduce their power consumption by only scanning for data packets if they receive data via the primary channel relevant to the application.

Bluetooth 6 can also detect when a device is out of range. This will prevent repeated connection attempts and save energy. In general, Bluetooth devices should only communicate when necessary, which will improve battery life and efficiency.

As far as we can tell, the new standard does not include any explicit improvements in bandwidth. The effective bandwidth may increase due to improved filtering, which results in less redundant data being sent, but headline data rates remain the same.

It would be nice to have lower latency for Bluetooth headphones and mice. This should be improved for some devices thanks to ISOAL Enhancement. This allows Bluetooth devices to break down data frames into smaller pieces while still maintaining accurate timing information.

We're crossing our fingers that this will make Bluetooth devices faster enough for gaming. It is not uncommon for devices to take a year to support these new features. In other words, 2025 is likely to be the year of Bluetooth 6 We'll see if Bluetooth is good enough to be used in wireless gaming headsets by 2025.