Samsung et al hop on ultrawideband
If Bluetooth is to slow for you, read up on
ultrawideband (UWB). It's not new (originally developed by the US military back in the 60's) but due to the falling cost of chips, it's getting cheap. It boasts speeds of 480 megabits which is on par with IEEE 1394 (AKA FireWire), or about 100 times faster than Bluetooth. It's also a lot more secure than anything in use today.
Samsung recently inked a deal with
Staccato to develop commercially available products using UWB. This is the first deal of its kind, and could be big news for the mobile world. Usually these things take a while, but this is at least a good sign.
InfoWorld
thinks UWB could be a Bluetooth killer. Our take is that since Bluetooth hasn't really even caught on, it won't take much to kill it. Something that's more secure and 100 times faster just seems like natural progression. We'd just like to see something catch on and not just be "the future".
