iPod Touch Bluetooth Hopes Raised, Mercilessly Quashed

One of the big missing features on the iPhone is support for wireless bluetooth stereo, also known as A2DP. Naturally, the iPod Touch lacks the same, since it lacks a Bluetooth chip altogether. ...Or does it? Yes, it does. See, as MacRumors notes, the legendary disassemblers at iFixit took on the iPod Touch 2G and found a little chip called the Broadcom BCM4325 -- a chip typically used to provide WiFi or Bluetooth. There's already a separate WiFi chip, so Bluetooth is the natural assumption.

ZOMG, right? Well, no -- Engadget put the hammer down on the rumor and our childlike sense of wonder by pointing out that 1) the chip's presence doesn't necessarily mean that there's actual Bluetooth support in there and 2) that what the chip probably really does is interact with Nike+ (it's built-in, see), since Nike+ uses a "proprietary 802.11 protocol" that this Broadcom chip is almost surely able to work with.

In other words, move jog along, nothing to see here.

Dieter Bohn