A big Bluetooth upgrade will soon boost your privacy and battery life on iPhone or Android – here's what's coming

• The Bluetooth 6.1 update has just been announced
• It should improve device privacy and battery life
• It might come to iPhones and Android devices as soon as this year

Your next phone could come with a new Bluetooth feature that could make it harder to track you and boost your battery life at the same time, in a double win for any of the best phones that incorporate it. And while we don’t know its exact release date, there’s a chance we could even see it this year.

The feature in question from the new Bluetooth 6.1 protocol is called Randomized RPA Updates, and it’s just been announced as part of the Bluetooth upgrade. In this instance, RPA stands for resolvable private address, and it’s this part that will have an impact on your privacy.

That’s because under Bluetooth 6 ...