Bluetooth 4.2 has clear advances over its predecessors, but Ars Technica reports that “some, but not all” of the new specification’s features will be available to those with older devices.

Both new iPhones and the recently launched iPad Pro ship with Bluetooth 4.2 while the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus shipped with Bluetooth 4.0. Now, according to Apple's iPhone comparison page, the newest ...

It’s just ‘Bluetooth 5’ Previous versions of Bluetooth, all the way back to 1.0, had a decimal point. You would see “Bluetooth 3.0” or “Bluetooth v4.1” listed on spec sheets.

Secondly, Bluetooth 5.0 will have four times the range as Bluetooth 4.2. This means your smartphone and Bluetooth speaker will be able to work up to 260 feet away from each other (if no walls ...

The new board has a slightly faster 1.4 GHz quad-core processor, Bluetooth 4.2 (an upgrade from 4.1), and dual-band Wi-Fi. I’m especially excited about the Wi-Fi upgrade, because for some reason ...

Bluetooth has been around for nearly 25 years now (yes, we feel old too) and its introduction was originally meant to pave the way for the removal of those large, nine-pronged RS-232 serial ports on ...

2. Bluetooth 5 has higher speed and longer range. One of the biggest misnomers about Bluetooth 5 is the idea that users can operate at 2 Mb/s with extended range, which isn’t the case. The high ...

In the past, Bluetooth 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 devices could not be upgraded to newer versions of the standard, but Bluetooth 4.0 devices were able to upgrade to Bluetooth 4.1 using product-specific ...

In announcing Bluetooth 4.2 support for iPhone 6s, iPad Pro and iPad mini 4 last month, Apple published product comparison charts suggesting that same technology was also activated in older hardware.