BLUETOOTH CHIP specialist CSR has been able to demonstrate the very latest Bluetooth variant – 'low energy' – working inside a modified mobile phone at the San Francisco meeting of the Bluetooth SIG Medical Working Group.

Bizarrely, it isn't able to say inside whose handset the Bluecore 7 chip had been fitted. So here's a list of its prominent handset customers: - Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, RIM, Samsung, Sharp and Toshiba. Must be one of them, then.

Anyway, the full specification for Bluetooth low energy will hopefully get finalised during Q1 2009. Before being called 'low energy', it was known as Ultra Low Power Bluetooth and before that as Wibree.

The crucial part to the demo is that data transfers took place without any prior configuration or 'pairing'. In one case the remote device was a temperature sensor which was broadcasting data continuously.

In a second demo, a set of scales were used and the data was transmitted by pressing a button. All it required to display the information on the mobile phone was a Java API and a midlet application. Together they provided a simple user interface that displayed the received data.

As the name implies, the technology consumes very low amounts of energy so that battery life extends to years rather than days or weeks.

The medical industry's interest in the technology is obvious because it would enable physicians to remotely monitor patients via their mobile phones.

However, CSR specifically mentions sports equipment, too. The company is probably hoping there will be a spate of trainers launched with Bluetooth low energy built-in so that you can check how far you've run when jogging along, etc.

Very much along the lines of what Samsung and Adidas are offering with the Micoach mobile phone which soccer team Bayern Munich is already providing to it players.

Given that it obviously wasn't too difficult to modify an existing mobile phone to use the Bluecore 7 chip, we may even see Bluetooth low energy appearing in commercial handsets during Q4 2008. µ

See also:
CSR squeezes four radios into Bluecore 7