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I'm really quite upset with the turn this thread took, so I'm locking it now.
The reason Rodney even became aware of this thread is because I complained about the tone it had taken in its last few posts. I get (probably unnecessarily, it's a personal failure) upset when people suggest that "thing x should be critical because it affects me". I also get upset about answering questions about specific bugs in the Q&A. Before long, the sessions become long talks about how Bluetooth is in a bad state because of greater market reasons, or how Libertine (which we acknowledge is experimental, but we put in the image for exactly that reason) isn't working in exactly the way someone wants. More than that, we don't have a full understanding of why some bugs occur so we end up speculating for too long in front of the audience. It's not fun for the viewers and it's certainly not fun for the team.
As for whether things are a priority or not, we've put forward our major ideas for the next few releases in the milestones. I grant you that they aren't filled with specific bugs, but they say the "big things" we're working on.
The reasoning for Bluetooth being in a poor state is not for lack of trying or for lack of impact. We know that Bluetooth is an important function of a smartphone. However, it is an unreliable (at best) protocol with tons of vendor-specific "gotcha!"s and weirdness. It's likely that fixing a bug with one device by tweaking a timing or changing a message will actually break another device. Personally, this bums me out. I love to use Bluetooth car kits and other gadgets. Not having them with UT is unfortunate.
Even the big players have trouble with Bluetooth. Look at the one-star reviews for any Bluetooth car kit and you'll find lots which say "this worked with iOS 10 but not 11" or "my Android updated and now this broke, what a piece of crap". These are companies who can devote entire teams to the protocol and, honestly, it's still terrible.
We may have paid developers, but this is still an open source community and our team is still extremely small. There's a huge amount of power in the "scratching an itch" factor. Bugs are fixed most completely when an interested developer picks them up and pulls them through to completion.
Let me be very clear: I'm not trying to attack anyone with this message. If you feel that I am, PM me and let me know so I can edit any ambiguity out. I'm also not saying that Bluetooth is not important, rather that it is an undue amount of effort for little forward movement. In more concrete terms, we could spend the time to fix Bluetooth for one gadget or tackle OTA-5.
If you'd like to solicit feedback about a specific Bluetooth device, please open another thread in the Support section. If you want to discuss anything I've said in this message, opening a thread in General is probably the best course of action. Opening megathreads like this is not conducive to good discussion in this forum software.
