Wibree: New low-level wireless to oust Bluetooth

Bluetooth has a competitor. It has a strange name.

Nokia has taken the wraps off Wibree, a new short-range wireless technology that needs a lot less power than Bluetooth does. Wibree can give you a radio link of up to 30 feet, allowing your phones, PDAs, and laptops to talk to wireless keyboards, toys, watches, or heart-rate monitors.

The new technology, which Nokia says it has been working on for five years, will operate in the 2.4-gigahertz range, much lower than Bluetooth’s 6GHz. The mobile phone manufacturer said it would begin including both technologies in its devices sometime soon.