Wouldn’t surprise me. I do remember that a couple of years ago the lead developer was from Widex. He got some kind of award from within Bluetooth SIG for his efforts.
Hmm. Looks like not likely until 2023. At least that’s my take from this: https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-may-add-blueooth-le-audio-support/
Galaxy S22 MIGHT be updateable, but won’t be in a new Samsung until 2023. Guess it’s possible iPhone 14 might beat Samsung to the punch.
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They will include LC3 as one of the codecs that’s available in Bluetooth Classic Audio. From there, everyone’s concluding that LE Audio will be included in Android 13. It’s a bit of a stretch though I hope they’re right. There’s a lot more to LE Audio than LC3.
2023 seems a bit pessimistic though? I’m hoping that they announce it at CES in January. If they do, you’d think there’d be plenty of time for Google to write it into Android 13. If they don’t, I’m hopping on the pessimism train.
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Looking at Bluetooth SIG, FastConnect 6900, which is Quallcom’s Bluetooth device in their high end Smartphone chips is certified Bluetooth 5.3 as of early December. Seems like there is at least the potential for Snapdragon 888 and later premium smartphone chipsets to have BT 5.3
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Nordic Semi is doing a thing at CES this year:
LE Audio - the next Evolution of wireless audio
LE Audio is being promoted as the next big thing in consumer wireless audio. But what exactly is LE Audio, who’s driving it, and why should any company with an audio aspect to their product or application care?
Starring: Chuck Sabin from Bluetooth SIG, Doug Breaker from MD Hearing Aid, and Vince Hagen from Nordic
I saw that JBL plans on introducing a Bluetooth speaker in June or July with BT 5.3.
If you read earlier in the thread or visit the bluetooth.com site ( Introducing Bluetooth® LE Audio | Bluetooth® Technology Website, you’ll see why it’s a big deal. Better audio than classic Bluetooth at lower energy consumption (at least 50% less). Plus a lot of other good stuff. Most of the major HA OEMs (except Phonak) are part of the Bluetooth SIG that developed BT LE Audio, as well as (you guessed it), Apple. (my ignorance might be showing here - perhaps it’s possible to be in a BT SIG but then higher status accorded the “coordinating committee” - so maybe Phonak is part of the LE Audio SIG but just not a “board member?” So one supposed plus of BT LE Audio is just like BT Classic. Devices that employ it could potentially use interchangeable accessories. Any remote mic, BT LE Audio-capable TV, or BT LE Audio streamer from any OEM would work with your BT LE Audio HA’s. So the $64 MILLION dollar question is will HA OEMs give up their pricey accessory market and will Apple still try to have its own special MFI walled garden that adds a twist to BT LE Audio that keeps non-Apple Club members out, as typical for so much other stuff that has to be “Apple-licensed,” etc., ostensibly to preserve the end-user experience for iPhone, iPad, etc., Apple users.
I think he’s quoting from the preamble Jim 
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I guess that’s why there’s a QUOTE feature in Discourse. 
I don’t know if it was, but I’m still putting a link to the development of Android support for Bluetooth LE
What’s interesting to me is how one of the LE Audio features was hands free calling and Apple came out with it in their proprietary technology without needing it.
This hands free feature will be released with Resound ONE which has Bluetooth 5.2. But it’s supported by phones with Bluetooth 5.1.
It’s great but I was hoping Apple would just utilize LE Audio and make that jump already. But their current iPhone 13 line doesn’t have 5.2 or 5.3, just 5.1 (5.1 is required for the hands free bidirectional microphones).
I do very much look forward to the new 5.2/5.3 LE Audio. I imagine iPhone 14, not the current 13 (which has 5.1 Bluetooth) will support 5.2 or 5.3 unless Apple doesn’t have incentive.
I assume there’ll also be a transition with Apple basing their proprietary technology (phone remote etc) on old LE to using LE Audio. I’m sure they’ve already figured it out for when the time comes!
A question of people, if that can be measured somehow. How much could the new bluetooth save battery?
Could it provide 50% longer battery life compared to bluetooth clasic?
Great question. Seems like it ought to have a straight forward answer. Anybody know the wattage used for streaming BT Classic on Phonak vs wattage streaming on Made for iPhone or ASHA hearing aids? only first hand info I’ve got is that with my previous KS7 (made by Rexton and no bluetooth) i got 7-9 days battery life out of 312. With my KS9 with a couple of hours of streaming using TVConnect (LE radio) and only sporadic streaming, I get 4-5 days.
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It’s the other way around. BT LE Audio (BT LE) requires at most 50% of the energy of BT Classic and can do even better than that depending on the specific audio circumstances in play (the maximum power allowed is in the specs and, IIRC, varies, too, according to the class of BT device - there’s class 1, class 2, etc.). So you should get at least 2x better battery life as far as streaming goes with BT LE than with BT Classic. As far as HA’s and smartphones go, though, streaming is not the only thing either the HA’s or your smartphone are involved in so you won’t notice that magnitude of savings in the overall battery usage life of either device. Perhaps the best way to thing about it is, for whatever dent streaming puts in your HA battery life, you get to stream at least 2x as much streaming that puts the same amount of dent that BT Classic would. Several years ago when Marvels and Quattros first came out, Phonak reported that 12 hours of streaming reduced the full charge usage span of Marvels from 24 to 16 hours (12 hour reduction) whereas ReSound reported 12 hours of streaming reduced the Quattros from a 30 hour battery life to 24 hours (6 hour reduction). So assuming the batteries in both HA brands are roughly equivalent in size and quality, the figures I just gave illustrate the at least 2x better effect (for streaming) of BT LE (and presumably of BT LE Audio).
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From 24 hrs to 16 hrs is an 8 hr reduction (not 12) So LE is 25% better or BT Classic is 33% worse by what I think is similar reasoning to what you’re using. I’d love to see some actually wattages although that may not be possible in that from my reading it sounds like LE Bluetooth is intermittent and Classic is continuous. Perhaps an average wattage figure is possible.
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Oops! I’m mentally (non)calculating to get the result that I want!
Here’s a comparison of BT Classic vs. BT LE:
The Ultimate Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Guide - Novel Bits
See following quote of relative energy requirements. BT LE can have as little as 1% of the energy consumption of BT Classic, but that’s when it’s communicating sparse data rarely in infrequent compressed data bursts. Clearly in streaming one is maxing out on available data rate and BT LE at a maximum consumes half the power that BT Classic does (but then the Marvel technology is a proprietary, non-open OEM version of BT Classic that is more efficient in some (undisclosed) ways).
Then, the Bluetooth 4.0 specification came along and enabled Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity. Bluetooth Low Energy essentially offers low power consumption of a magnitude of 1-50% of that of Classic Bluetooth.
Source: Bluetooth Classic Vs Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) : Whats different
Also, maybe one of the sources above or Wikipedia said the things that special about BT 5.x is the code is truly open source. It doesn’t need to be licensed. So Phonak (and Apple) have to deal with proprietary baggage vs. a world that is hopefully moving to interoperability, i.e., accessory devices do not automatically become obsolete or require jumping through hoops if you switch to another brand of HA, etc.
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Good find! The 1-50% makes sense taking into account what I read previously.
Found the following article by Nick Hunn:
This sentence caught my eye: “Just before Christmas, the Bluetooth SIG published the final documents in its first release of Bluetooth LE Audio. It’s been the largest single development in the history of Bluetooth specifications, taking around eight years to complete”.
I haven’t seen any annoucement, but it’s Nick Hunn. If anyone should know it’s him. So…?
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I see his book is also available for free download from the site too! Sounds like things are moving along.
Here’s a link to the page to download the book: Introducing Bluetooth® LE Audio | Bluetooth® Technology Website
I’ve just skimmed a bit, but it’s interesting and well written.
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Turns out the remaining specifications have indeed been published, but as drafts. Presumably they have to be approved by someone before they become final.
You can see them here. Specifications – Bluetooth® Technology Website
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