NRF51822 Sunset Timeline?

[rowadds19]

Hi, I have a two part question, I know the NRF51822 (and I believe all 4.0 BLE chipsets) are being sunset, when will this start taking place? 

Since I'm currently using the NRF51822 in our wearable device for dogs. What are our alternative solutions?  Ideally 5.0

Thanks!

[ovrebekk]

Hi 

We plan to produce the nRF51822 as long as we are able to, but it is correct that the Bluetooth SIG will deprecate older versions of the Bluetooth specification so that you are no longer able to create new products based on these stack implementations.

The Bluetooth stacks we provide for the nRF51822 are either 4.0, 4.1 or 4.2 qualified. 

4.0 and 4.1 stacks will be deprecated this month, and will be fully withdrawn in July 2020. 

4.2 stacks will be deprecated in January 2021 and withdrawn in January 2022. 

This means that you can technically register new Bluetooth products based on the nRF51822 up until Bluetooth 4.2 is withdrawn in January 2022, if you use the S130 SoftDevice. 

For Bluetooth 5 support you have to move to the nRF52 family. 

Best regards
Torbjørn Øvrebekk