Your next Bluetooth-enabled gadget might sound better, zip data to other devices quicker, and even find things faster—if its manufacturer builds in support for these new features.
But if these upgrades touted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) follow the path of past improvements to the short-range wireless standard, buying hardware that supports them may require some upfront research.
Channel Sounding
One upgrade that’s already hitting the market, Channel Sounding, lets Bluetooth devices like trackers and connected locks find each other more easily and accurately, down to tens of centimeters. In a demo at CES 2026, Bluetooth SIG marketing VP Dave Hollander set an unlock distance on a phone across the room from a Bauer smart lock—then walked within 2 feet of the lock, leading its deadbolt to whir into the retracted position.
In another demo, he and Damon Barnes, the group’s director of technical marketing, held test devices and slowly walked toward each other while an app on their devices showed the remaining distance.
Barnes suggested that digital car keys would be “the lead use case” for Channel Sounding, followed by find-my-device Bluetooth trackers. He noted that Channel Sounding would deliver much more accurate positioning data than the current Bluetooth method of RSSI (received signal strength indicator): “There’s a lot of variability with RSSI.”
Channel Sounding requires that the two devices be paired first via an encrypted link, adding improved security over earlier Bluetooth positioning techniques.
Channel Sounding is already shipping on phones such as Google’s Pixel 10 series—although with no mention of that feature in Google’s published specs, Pixel 10 users should be forgiven for not realizing it’s a thing.
High Data Throughput
Two other Bluetooth upgrades are farther out. High data throughput (HDT), expected in Q4, should almost quadruple Bluetooth data-transfer rates from the current 2.1Mbps limit to a ceiling of 8Mbps, making Bluetooth alone viable for the device-to-device file transfers that today require Wi-Fi services like Android’s Quick Share.
HDT, in turn, will support a set of upgrades to Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) audio, including a new codec for high-res and lossless audio, frameworks for surround sound and spatial audio, and extensions to the Auracast broadcast-audio standard.
Get Our Best Stories!
Your Daily Dose of Our Top Tech News
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy
Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
The SIG also expects to complete that by the end of 2026, at which point existing Bluetooth speakers, headphones, and other devices may or may not get these audio features via a software profile update. That will depend both on the Bluetooth chipset supporting the right “physical layer” and the vendor choosing to ship an update.
In other words, it’s too soon to say, even for vendors with a decent record of supporting new Bluetooth features. JBL, for example, has shipped Auracast on a wide variety of devices, but it declined to comment about possible software updates to add high-res and lossless audio.
Recommended by Our Editors
Yet another project, “ultra low latency,” aims to reduce the lag of gaming controllers from the current, already-good 7.5 milliseconds to 1ms, which could make a meaningful difference in gameplay during particularly twitchy games. One component of this is available to developers now, and another should ship by the middle of 2026.
6GHz Bluetooth?
The group’s longer-term ambition is to expand Bluetooth LE from its current 2.4GHz wireless frequency to higher bands around 5 and, maybe, 6GHz. “We know that 2.4 is a little congested, to put it lightly,” Barnes said at CES. “The 5GHz band is where we’re targeting to have a solution and approval first.”
That’s because those frequencies already offer unlicensed spectrum; in 6GHz, the US has opted to keep it unlicensed, while other countries, notably China, let wireless carriers license it instead.
In the short term, however, the Bluetooth SIG may need to address a different problem: how people are supposed to shop for these features when manufacturers don’t mention them, and Bluetooth version numbers don’t confirm support for them. “My team has some work to do on that,” Barnes acknowledged.
About Our Expert
Experience
Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
Read Full Bio
