Bluetooth 3.0, what is it and how to make use of it?

I noticed that lenovo's laptops (x120e, x220, ...) are being advertised with bluetooth 3.0. When I had my x120e, I installed the latest drivers from lenovo and thought I had BT 3.0. I couldn't find any hint about bluetooth 3.0, but all I saw was bluetooth 2.0+EDR.

So, are there any hardware differences from BT2.0 vs 3.0? Will lenovo update their software to work as BT 3.0 later on?


I currently use BT 2.0 + EDR quite extensively on my 4 year old tablet. I have a sony c905a camera phone, and use it very often to send pictures of documents over BT. I also have MS BT keyboard and Logitech BT mouse which I use all the time.

 

I've used a BT cell-phone headset for higher quality audio when videoconferencing via Skype with my T400. It works quite well.

Bluetooth 3.0 has a high-speed transfer option in the sepcification (but it isn't a requirement) that greatly exceeds 2.0+EDR speeds if implemented. It also has some additional power control features. I don't know that it's all that useful --yet, at least.

Bluetooth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

BT 3 is supposedly enabled if you use Broadcom's drivers instead of the Lenovo ones (see the Lenovo discussion forum: X120e Bluetooth 3.0 ? - Lenovo Community ), but I don't think there's any BT 3 devices that you can test with, other than other computers I suppose...