CSR has announced that its BlueCore4-external Bluetooth solution is now shipping in volume and has already been selected by Dell. The Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Internal Card is offered as an integrated option on the Dell Family notebooks. BlueCore4 for EDR Bluetooth will allow users to benefit from multiple simultaneous Bluetooth connections, 3-times faster data transfer speeds, and lower power consumption than existing Bluetooth. BlueCore4 for v2.0 + EDR is fully backwards compatible with existing Bluetooth (v1.1 and v1.2) devices.
Bluetooth EDR is ideal for PC applications in that it supports multiple Bluetooth connections. PCs will increasingly be asked to support multiple Bluetooth links as users type on a Bluetooth keyboard and move a Bluetooth mouse while listening to music on a set of Bluetooth stereo headphones and synchronising contact details with their phone or using the phone as a modem to connect to an email or internet service.
EDR offers a maximum data transfer rate of 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) - compared to the current 1Mbps for standard rate Bluetooth. This increase in transfer rate also means that, for a given amount of data, the EDR radio will be active up to 3 times less than a standard v2.0 radio, hence reducing power consumption, which greatly benefits battery-dependent mobile devices such as laptop computers.
