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Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

You can't rename most Bluetooth speakers. "Bomb" was the name the selling brand gave the speaker.

By making everyone turn off their Bluetooth, the kid whose speaker had turned on probably couldn't even see the device broadcasting the name. People linked to one by a company made Hellotec but Hama has a similarly named device, and plenty of other speaker manufacturers try to make a pun out of "boombox" by naming their devices "bomb" (iJoy, ZEB-MUSIC, and presumably other such brands).

Maybe if someone asked the passengers if anyone knew about this "bomb" Bluetooth device the kid would've remembered, but in this case I can't blame them. On the other hand, asking passengers if they know something about a bomb is probably the quickest way to cause a panic.

The entire thing seems like a ridiculous overreaction. What kind of terrorist would call their bomb "bomb"? This is "Al Qaeda Free WiFi" all over again.

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Even better. The news made it sound like it was an intentional act (at best a prank) by the kid.

If it’s a commercial product doing it, I can’t even quantify the levels of facepalm involved.

but Hama has a similarly named device

...I mentally appended an "s" to that, and was momentarily very confused.

When you rename a Bluetooth device from your phone, does that affect the name it broadcasts, or only the label applied in the list of Bluetooth devices in the phone?

I know for certain if you change the setting General > About > Name in an iPhone it changes what everyone sees when they look at their list of available Bluetooth devices.

I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no? Otherwise how do you distinguish which one of the three million Bluetooth devices within range is your friends Bluetooth speaker you’re trying to connect to?

> I know for certain if you change the setting General > About > Name in an iPhone it changes what everyone sees when they look at their list of available Bluetooth devices.

> I assume other Bluetooth devices are the same, no?

No. The iPhone is allowing you to configure what name it broadcasts. But you cannot just tell another device what to broadcast. That device must have its own mechanism for changing its name.

For example, many Apple wireless peripherals can rename themselves after your user account once you connect them at least once. That has to be a function of the peripheral though, it's not performed by the device you connect it to (past telling the peripheral the new name, of course). Third-party peripherals usually do not have this functionality.

> Third-party peripherals usually do not have this functionality.

What do you mean by ”usually” here?

I’m certain all the regular name brands, eg JBL Bose Sonos B&O etc enable the device itself to be configured with a user set name via their app. I’m certain because I’ve used them and done so.

I've never had a bose device that allowed this - is that new? And for JBL, it's only the latest gen (or maybe starting with gen 3?) that started allowing it.

As for other brands I own: Jlab, jawbone, pyle, and anker don't seem to have any such functionality that I can see.

So it's far from ubiquitous, sufficiently so that it makes no sense to presume that a bluetooth name is a message from a passenger and can be understood to have any intended meaning.

Yeah, you can 100% rename select JBL Speakers.

I don't see why people are hung up on this. Imagine even just 2 or 3 of the same model "JBL SpeakerName" nearby, how would you know whos is whos? Renaming is common.

You would know which one is the desired one because only the desired one would be in pairing mode at that moment. Obviously a collision (if I can say that word) is possible, but unlikely enough for most purposes.

Many of the cheap unbranded/OEM'd ones seem to just use their MAC address, which is (supposed to be) unique.

Almost nobody install apps of their bluetooth device.

People buy the speaker, charge it and turn it on, pair, play music, throw the packaging away, that's it. Usually the bluetooth name refer to the brand and model which is much more convenient to know which one you are connecting to than giving it a silly name.

I wouldn't expect most people to know they can do it in the first place and even those who do like me don't bother most of the time.

iPhone BT settings also let you rename devices, but I think that's just a local setting, not like the BT spec has a rename feature. Not sure cause uh, my iPhone broke. But for sure there are speakers that have their own apps that let you rename them.

Some devices come with apps that include proprietary renaming features. Those devices can be renamed.

Your iPhone's rename feature won't change anything for other devices. Maybe Apple is smart enough to sync the renamed device to other Apple devices as well, I don't know about that, but it certainly won't change what the other passengers on your phone see.

You can distinguish Bluetooth devices by their MAC address, that's usually how the rename mapping works.

Rename is a fairly common feature on Bluetooth speakers and headphones, for example my Bose NC-700.

+1 on this for my Soundlink, but it's important to mention it has to be through the Bose app itself. I don't think you can rename devices from a pairing device's native bluetooth settings?

Otherwise, I trust many folks in an HN comment section would reminisce on stories from their earlier years, where they'd rename the Bluetooth devices around a densely-populated area to cause mischief.

Define Common

I own zero Bluetooth audio devices with rename functionality. I don't think it's common at all. Especially in the "cheap, obnoxious Bluetooth speaker" category.

My phone will show me a different name for a "renamed on phone" Bluetooth device, but all other devices in the area won't.

The cheapo ones probably won't have it. Any brand name will have its own app that will have a rename feature like half the time. Not particularly expensive brands either.

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