The Bluetooth 6.1 standard has just been unveiled, promising a significant step forward in the evolution of this ubiquitous wireless technology. This update brings big improvements in terms of privacy and energy efficiency, promising to preserve the battery life of connected devices.
Accelerating change
While Bluetooth 6.0 is just beginning to make its way into consumer devices, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has already unveiled version 6.1 of this essential wireless technology. This new iteration continues the evolution initiated by the previous version, while addressing two key issues for modern connected objects: communication confidentiality and reduced energy consumption. Bluetooth 6.1 is therefore in line with the Group’s new strategy of accelerating the pace of technical evolution.
The move to a six-monthly publication cycle for the Bluetooth Master Specification represents a decisive step for the entire ecosystem. This new pace will ensure that enhancements and features reach developers and manufacturers faster, fuelling innovation and meeting evolving market needs with greater flexibility.
Alain Michaud, Chairman of the SIG Board of Directors
Enhanced privacy
Against a backdrop of growing concern about digital surveillance and device tracking, the new standard introduces a novel protection mechanism: Randomized Resolvable Private Addresses (RPAs). This system enables compatible devices to modify their Bluetooth IDs more frequently, making them much more difficult to track.
Until now, Bluetooth addresses changed periodically for security reasons, but the frequency and method remained relatively predictable. Now, with Bluetooth 6.1, this rotation becomes not only faster, but also entirely random, making it much more difficult to track or analyze behavior based on the transmitted signal. This breakthrough represents an important step forward in securing wireless communications, particularly for everyday objects such as smartphones, smart watches, earbuds or health trackers, which often carry sensitive data.
Optimized energy efficiency
In addition to confidentiality, Bluetooth 6.1 also provides an answer to a recurring problem with wireless technologies: power consumption. One of the major technical improvements in this version concerns the transfer of certain tasks from the device’s main processor to the Bluetooth controller itself. In particular, by relieving the CPU of address change management, Bluetooth 6.1 saves processing cycles and therefore limits unnecessary energy consumption. This optimization may seem insignificant on the scale of a single use cycle, but it becomes significant over time, particularly for portable devices with low energy capacity. For users, this translates into extended battery life, less frequent recharging requests and, ultimately, a better user experience over time.
Integration as early as 2026?
As with every new evolution of the Bluetooth standard, the arrival of version 6.1 naturally raises the question of its adoption by manufacturers and its compatibility with current devices. Although the standard is now official, its widespread adoption by the general public will depend on each manufacturer’s industrial timetable and the ability of current components to take advantage of it. In most cases, Bluetooth 6.1 will require the integration of compatible chips right from the product design phase. Smartphones, laptops, true wireless earbuds, smart watches and other Bluetooth-enabled devices will therefore need to be equipped with a controller supporting the new functions, postponing its integration to future generations of devices. We can therefore expect to see the first Bluetooth 6.1 devices on the market in 2026.
