The quiet history of better Bluetooth pairing
Designing for fancy new technology can mean we ignore the elegantly practical tech we already have
You’re probably familiar with a scenario like this: You get into your car and all you want to do is pair your phone to the car through Bluetooth. But to do so, you must wade through a whole menu of items, put each device in pairing mode, and fail a few times before they finally pair. The same goes for pairing a speaker or other devices.
If you’ve already resigned yourself to this situation as just an inevitable inconvenience of the modern world, let me tell you a story about what might have been — and what could still be.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just tap your phone to a device to pair it? Instead of the multi-step process required for setting up a Bluetooth connection, imagine coming home to do this: Tapping your phone to a dock near the entrance, which instantly pairs it to every device in the house. Your television, smart speaker, baby monitor, and everything else, seamlessly connected to your phone in a single touch.
This is exactly how Bluetooth was supposed to pair to devices. Not only that, but a fully functioning prototype and planned product line of the sort I just described existed as far back as 2008, created…
