Looking for info on whether an upgrade to Bluetooth LE Audio is being considered or in process for Laptop 13. This is going to be Very Important for anyone using hearing aids and wants to pair them to the laptop. Is this a discrete hardware bit, or is BT function incorporated into some other device?
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The bluetooth functionality is part of the wifi chip. It is swappable, and different laptop models come with different wifi cards. The latest AMD model comes with an “AMD RZ717” which is actually a mediatek chip, while the latest Intel model comes with an Intel AX211 (or AX210? not sure).
Here’s some specs for the Intel AX210 for example: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/204836/intel-wifi-6e-ax210-gig/specifications.html It just says Bluetooth 5.3 so you’ll have to search around to find more bluetooth capability details.
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I have successfully enabled LC3 codec (and thus Bluetooth LE Audio) on my Framework Laptop 16 with Bazzite Linux (Gnome) installed. At least that’s what audio settings and terminal output of bluetoothctl show and bluetoothctl info show me. I have non-factory Intel AX210, but I will retest this with factory-installed AMD RZR616 and update this comment.
All I had to do was uncomment the line in /etc/bluetooth/main.conf
The line is #Experimental = false by default, I changed it to Experimental = true and rebooted the device.
UPD: I forgot to mention that KernelExperimental = was also modified, but despite the instruction I just set it to true.
Your mileage may vary depending on Linux distribution used. I used this guide as example.
If you try to do this on Windows, you should be able to download latest Bluetooth driver AND latest Bluetooth audio codec drivers from Microsoft update catalog or wait and hope for it to happen automatically until the end of this year.
Here is the settings screen:
It works but it is unstable. Not sure what is happening there, but sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, sometimes settings screen don’t even show this drop down item list with codecs and one time all my Bluetooth devices including BLE Mouse disconnected.
Wil be testing this further.
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I can confirm that AMD RZ616 (aka MediaTek MT7922) also does support Bluetooth LE Audio according to the output of bluetoothctl show corresponding to the instructions of the guide. There is UUID: Published Audio Capabilities in the output.
However I coudn’t make Gnome Audio Settings show media codec drop down menu (even on AX210) after that initial connection. It looks like this now (screenshot below).
I also tried to use the headset in Discord with AX210 and BLE Audio enabled and I did not have a single problem during that hour-long talk.