Bluetooth 3.0 prepped for launch on April 21

Looks like the standard is final. I wonder if this new updated BT will be available in the next tablet. It'd be kinda cool if it was.

Probably not, I am guessing we will see this in 2010

Well, maybe, maybe not. The BT3.0 spec has been available, even though it's been in beta, since early last year. Some OEM's have already begun shipping BT 3.0 enabled gear, even though it's built on the beta spec. So if Nokia were playing with the beta spec, given that it's pretty much feature complete by the time it's beta and only the general debugging of the spec is undertaken from that point on, it would be very easy to implement it in the prototype tablet, and then simply update the firmware to handle the final spec when it was available, thus allowing them to have a device that was BT 3.0 compatible right at launch.

Of course, if the existing chipset could be brought up to speed from 2.1 to 3.0 with a simple firmware upgrade, then shipping or including the BT 3.0 spec at launch wouldn't be necessary as it could be added later.

It takes a bit more than having a capable chipset and firmware. The host-side stack also needs to support the new features, and for 802.11 "High Speed" transfers I guess the WiFi subsystem would need to cooperate as well.

Note that the N8x0s only do 2.0+EDR (no support for secure pairing for example). The Fremantle bluez/kernel versions are supposed to support 2.1+EDR so we might get that in RX-[57]1.

If you check what chips CSR has, you'll see the Bluecore7 marked "NEW" supports Bluetooth2.1+EDR and bluetooth low energy, also FM/RDS rx/tx and "eGPS" mentioned... Hmm.. Was there a rumour of upcoming FM/RDS support?

FM/RDS is available on some recent BlueTooth chips. Rumor is FM gets back in RX-51 like it was available in N800 (but not in N810). iPhone also gets FM receiver (and short range transmitter (?)) but that doesn't imply BlueTooth 3.0.