Bluetooth – What Makes Bluetooth v5.0 Better than v4.2?

Profiles

Bluetooth profiles provide different types of services, such as Hands-Free Profile (HFP), Headset Profile (HSP), and Serial Port Profile (SPP) on top of a core set of Bluetooth capabilities. In general, they are not tied to a particular hardware implementation since they are implemented in firmware. Sometimes a particular profile will have hardware associated with it, for example the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) will usually have a stereo codec but most profiles do not require extra hardware.

Profiles are defined and adopted by the Bluetooth SIG. This article in Wikipedia defines 28 different profiles. Most modules implement many but not all of them.

Classes

Generally, hardware differences in Bluetooth devices are more associated with the class of the device:

• Class 1: 100 mw or 20 dBm, range approx. 100m
• Class 2: 2.5 mw or 4 dBm, range approx. 10m
• Class 3: 1 mw or 0 dBm range approx. 1m (seldom used)

Some manufacturers have modules that fall between Class 1 and 2, i.e. they have a longer range than Class 2 but don't have the power amplifier (PA) needed by Class 1. These are informally sometimes called Class 1.5 but that is not a standard term nor defined by the Bluetooth SIG.

As mentioned in a comment below by Kortuk, some manufacturers pay for a higher class but then actually radiate a lower level of power. So check the power level in the module's specification.

Core Specification Level

These classes are often confused with the core Bluetooth specification level, which may be 1.0 (original), 1.1 (1st IEEE standard), 1.2 (many enhancements), 2.0+EDR (enhanced data rate, released in 2004), 2.1+EDR (simple pairing enhancement, 2007), 3.0+HS (high speed, 2009) or 4.0 (low power, 2010). Most current devices conform to level 2.1.

Note that classes (1,2,3) have a single digit and specification levels always have a decimal point and tenths digit (e.g. 1.2, 2.1).

Since the specification levels are also defined by firmware, older devices can often be updated to support a newer level of the specification, except where new hardware features are supported. Levels in general are backwards compatible; the same profile may exist on several different core specification levels (with perhaps different capabilities), depending on when it was first introduced.

Other differences

Besides the Bluetooth class, another major difference between modules is whether the module supports the higher level profiles internally, or just provides a low-level Bluetooth Host Controller Interface (HCI), which means the host microcontroller must implement the Bluetooth software stack. Although these modules are generally a few bucks cheaper, since the processor requirements for the Bluetooth module are lower, this generally is a lot of work unless you have a Bluetooth stack provided by the manufacturer of your microcontroller, or you are doing a high-volume product where you can amortize the cost over many units. You may also need to go this route if you need to support profiles not implemented by the module.

Whether implementing a high or low-level interface, Bluetooth modules may physically connect with the host microcontroller using either a UART, SPI, I2C or SDIO interface -- another potential hardware difference. A few modules allow you to run additional applications of your own on them, so that you can get by with not having to have a separate microcontroller in the your system.

Here is an example of five different Bluetooth modules (i.e. different hardware), all running the same core Bluetooth specification (2.1) and the same 14 profiles (except the one with an HCI interface) but providing different hardware features as described above.

Your use case sounds like a perfect match for Bluetooth LE. I would seriously consider it. The biggest disadvantage would be, as you hinted at, older smartphones don't support it. However, adoption is growing rapidly. Apple's iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches) support Bluetooth LE as far back as the iPhone 4S, iPad 3 & iPad Mini, for example. Pretty much all recent Android devices support it too, from my understanding.

The smartphone integration of Bluetooth LE will be much easier than Bluetooth Classic (particularly on iOS, if that is relevant to your product).

There's a whole bunch of BLE chipsets and modules already available. A few suggestions: http://www.ti.com/product/cc2541, http://www.bluegiga.com/bluetooth-4.0-modules

If you absolutely need to support legacy devices, then a dual mode Bluetooth chipset like the TI CC2560 would probably be your best bet. I don't have much experience working with legacy Bluetooth so can't offer much more in that area.