There’s a fair amount of buzz going round at the moment about Wi-Fi Direct, the latest thing from the WiFi Alliance people. It appears for all intents and purposes to be a version of the 802.11 Ad-hoc mode, designed to allow for connections between individual devices without the use of an AP or router, which led to bnet.com claiming it was a “sales bomb” that would somehow destroy Bluetooth, kill the majority of AP sales, kill all the companies who make connector cables and create a large security problem to solve as we all switch over to using WiFi Direct to hook up our various gadgets. And they’re not alone in suggesting this is a bluetooth killer.

Baloney. Utter rot. Nothing of the kind is going to happen, and it’s pretty obvious why. Taking one worry at a time:

1. Bluetooth isn’t going to be destroyed, it’s perfectly safe. We’ve tested 802.11 and Bluetooth usage here on mobile phones as part of the Suura project and the difference in battery life isn’t just significant, it’s game-changing. Just scanning every few minutes (and powering down in between) with a phone’s 802.11 connection will drain a full battery in two or three hours on some of the older phones while bluetooth will give three times that or more even in continous usage. Bluetooth has a pretty much guaranteed role in the low-power end of the market for the foreseeable future no matter how much success WiFi Direct enjoys. 802.11a/b/g/n transceivers just draw too much power for us to see them in mobile phones replacing bluetooth modules for the next few years at least, and then only when someone invents a circuit that works at very low power over short ranges and higher power in normal mode (which is not a … Read the rest