[Gibbon1]

I was writing firmware for RX transceivers when Bluetooth was specified. I feel like they wrote the spec with very little input from chip designers and without building prototype hardware.

That's why they chose a GFSK frequency hopper. Which ignored the expected advances in low power spread spectrum radio's. Previously the power requirements for a spread spectrum receiver were way too high, but within a two years of releasing the spec power requirements dropped dramatically. RF chip designers new this was going to happen.

Same time their baseband requirements were almost impossible to meet with a low power budget even in 2003 or so. So you had a crummy GFSK radio, frequency hopper. Married to a fat piggy baseband spec.

What I remember is about two dozen design groups spent a couple of years developing Bluetooth hardware and by 2004 or so exactly three of them succeeded. That's big indictment of the spec. And here 20 years later it still sucks.