firstly they are very similar to the layman because they both use the 2.4GHz radio band to allow information transfer without wires.
wifi was envisioned to be the architecture that allowed more and more data to be transferred wirelessly in networks of many devices as the tech improved. meanwhile BT was targeted towards low power and energy efficiency connections between pairs of devices. so think like watching 4K movies on your iPad vs having your watch, headphones, mouse or keyboard, basically accessories that run on batteries being able to talk to your PC without wires.
because of the different use case we have seen wifi progress from 1Mbps to 1Gbps range over about 25 years, meanwhile BT never saw the need to go over 5Mbps in roughly the same time, instead prioritising improvements to connection stability, multiple connections, and of course all within the energy envelope allowed for the main principle of efficiency. any accessory that needed more bandwidth would be considered to use wifi instead if it made sense for the market, such as dash cams for example, which would be a pain to rely on BT to download recorded clips around.
because WIFI has to cover the function of networks, there needs to be a router in the middle to perform the traffic management role while BT being almost always pairwise, doesn’t. if you are thinking of a scenario where a watch needs to talk to the fridge and the printer and the home security system all the time, that’s sort of pushing the limits of what BT is optimised for and then the better consideration starts to become WIFI.
as for why both use 2.4GHz, the world pretty much agreed to reserve this range of frequencies for civilian use. both WIFI and BT do their best to be able to independently work in this same highway, although due to the advance of the internet and it’s connected devices, it’s more akin to WIFI owning the highway and BT trying it’s best to still be able to use it. it does something called Adaptive Frequency Hopping which is essentially changing its frequency thousands of times a second (around the 2.4Ghz region), sort of like switching to different mini channels and analogously like weaving in and out of clogged traffic on a bicycle. that means more complex signal processing to continue to use this overcrowded band while WIFI gets more and more demanding each year. WIFI also eventually developed to use 5 and 6GHz bands later on. meanwhile while BT can in principle also do this, again the in the spirit of low power and universal compatibility, it will probably not.
tldr bicycle versus automobile. sometimes one is preferable than the other.
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I guess the question is Bluetooth vs WiFi 2.4Ghz.
firstly they are very similar to the layman because they both use the 2.4GHz radio band to allow information transfer without wires.
wifi was envisioned to be the architecture that allowed more and more data to be transferred wirelessly in networks of many devices as the tech improved. meanwhile BT was targeted towards low power and energy efficiency connections between pairs of devices. so think like watching 4K movies on your iPad vs having your watch, headphones, mouse or keyboard, basically accessories that run on batteries being able to talk to your PC without wires.
because of the different use case we have seen wifi progress from 1Mbps to 1Gbps range over about 25 years, meanwhile BT never saw the need to go over 5Mbps in roughly the same time, instead prioritising improvements to connection stability, multiple connections, and of course all within the energy envelope allowed for the main principle of efficiency. any accessory that needed more bandwidth would be considered to use wifi instead if it made sense for the market, such as dash cams for example, which would be a pain to rely on BT to download recorded clips around.
because WIFI has to cover the function of networks, there needs to be a router in the middle to perform the traffic management role while BT being almost always pairwise, doesn’t. if you are thinking of a scenario where a watch needs to talk to the fridge and the printer and the home security system all the time, that’s sort of pushing the limits of what BT is optimised for and then the better consideration starts to become WIFI.
as for why both use 2.4GHz, the world pretty much agreed to reserve this range of frequencies for civilian use. both WIFI and BT do their best to be able to independently work in this same highway, although due to the advance of the internet and it’s connected devices, it’s more akin to WIFI owning the highway and BT trying it’s best to still be able to use it. it does something called Adaptive Frequency Hopping which is essentially changing its frequency thousands of times a second (around the 2.4Ghz region), sort of like switching to different mini channels and analogously like weaving in and out of clogged traffic on a bicycle. that means more complex signal processing to continue to use this overcrowded band while WIFI gets more and more demanding each year. WIFI also eventually developed to use 5 and 6GHz bands later on. meanwhile while BT can in principle also do this, again the in the spirit of low power and universal compatibility, it will probably not.
tldr bicycle versus automobile. sometimes one is preferable than the other.