Beacons are small pieces of technology that allow for Bluetooth connection to modern day devices. They’re relatively cheap to purchase and run well with low energy inputs. They can be used to provide information or for location services. As they typically work on Bluetooth, it means that it has a rather limited range of connectivity. This means that people may disconnect from the beacon as they move or if there’s more than one beacon active, certain physical spaces can confuse the data or the consumer as they decide on which beacon they should be connecting too. As of right now, the main use is retail, providing customers with information about the products in the shop. This is fine but I don’t believe it’s using the beacons creatively. It’s thought that within the near future, beacons will have taken off and will be everywhere, airports, post offices, schools all providing users with necessary information, relevant to the location. The downside to these beacons is that for them to be utilised, people have to have Bluetooth on and be searching for the device which may not even connect properly. As well as this, users may have to turn on location services to access them, the use of both of these can severely affect battery life in smartphones, as location services have been found to decrease battery life the most out of the key utilities on the smartphone. Currently, Apple is trying to roll out their version of the technology so that all of their devices are both transmitters and receivers or iBeacons. This would allow for better connectivity peer to peer. However, this may allow for back door entrances to users private mobile devices to people with the appropriate knowledge.
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