How will Bluetooth 5 affect Arduino products? I am trying to decide when to bring my product to market and if a new bluetooth module is coming out in late 2016 or early 2017, I wouldn't want to buy the old version and have to replace the hardware.
Bluetooth 4 has a lot of life left in it - it's only now widespread in host devices. The same will be true of bt5 - even if you have the hardware, users won't be able to take advantage of it until the next phone or computer refresh cycle. So, I would not delay your product to wait for 5 - there will always be some new technology coming up, and if we all waited for it, nobody would release anything. Not worth the cost in time to market.
jamoroso:
have to replace the hardware.
Bluetooth 4 reverts seamlessly to BT2 when it connects to one and you can be pretty sure BT5 will be equally backward compatible with your old stuff. We are only talking about a few dollars here anyway.