how to check bluetooth version on my laptop

Question

I bought new laptop Lenovo Z50-70 and have installed Ubuntu 14.04. I want to check whether the Bluetooth shipped is v4 or v3?

I know I should check it from main website or from BIOS, but I am curious to find it from command line. Any help please

Answer 1

That info can be found with hciconfig -a:

$ hciconfig -a
hci0:   Type: BR/EDR  Bus: USB
    BD Address: 5C:93:A2:A3:59:56  ACL MTU: 1022:8  SCO MTU: 183:5
    […]
    HCI Version:  (0x7)  Revision: 0x3101
    LMP Version:  (0x7)  Subversion: 0x1
    Manufacturer: Atheros Communications, Inc. (69)

In recent years, hciconfig has been deprecated, and mostly replaced by btmgmt and bluetoothctl.

$ btmgmt info
Index list with 1 item
hci0:   Primary controller
        addr 5C:93:A2:A3:59:56 version 7 manufacturer 69 class 0x6c0100
        […]

There is a table mapping each numbered version to each Bluetooth specification version:

| hex | dec |Bluetooth|
|-----|-----|---------|
| 0x0 |   0 | 1.0b    |
| 0x1 |   1 | 1.1     |
| 0x2 |   2 | 1.2     |
| 0x3 |   3 | 2.0+EDR |
| 0x4 |   4 | 2.1+EDR |
| 0x5 |   5 | 3.0+HS  |
| 0x6 |   6 | 4.0     |
| 0x7 |   7 | 4.1     |
| 0x8 |   8 | 4.2     |
| 0x9 |   9 | 5.0     |
| 0xa |  10 | 5.1     |
| 0xb |  11 | 5.2     |
| 0xc |  12 | 5.3     |
| 0xd |  13 | 5.4     |

This mapping is defined at section 2.1 Core specification versions from Assigned Numbers Document (PDF), and also available as YAML. Both can be found from Bluetooth Specifications → Assigned Numbers page.

If you're interested, there is also a table for the assigned manufacturer numbers, among many other tables.

Answer 2

While not part of the original question, someone reading this may also wonder how to get the bluetooth version of a bluetooth peripheral (I know I did):

1. Pair the peripheral
2. Get its MAC address: bluetoothctl devices
3. Get its details: hcitool info <mac address>

Note that the ouput of the last command doesn't provide the HCI version, but the LMP version. Many other answers on the web to the original question points to the LMP version, not the HCI version. It can be decoded using the same equivalence table. In the answer above, both have the same value. I searched for an explanation of the difference between both, but didn't find it.

Answer 3

You can also use inxi -E.

It provides output in human readable form:

  Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Actions general adapter driver: btusb type: USB
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci1 state: up address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX bt-v: 5.3

So in the example above the supported Bluetooth version is 5.3.

Excerpt from man:

-E, --bluetooth Show bluetooth device data and report, if available. Shows state, address, IDs, version info.

https://smxi.org/docs/inxi-options.htm