I used to be in this camp. My Jawbone Big Jambox would never pair, never stay connected, the whole deal. But I then replaced it with a Marshall bluetooth speaker and it's just a dream. It connects immediately, on the first try, every time. It never disconnects. If it hasn't received audio in a while, it goes to sleep. Press the "wake" button and it immediately connects again.
I used to loathe bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if it's shoddy implementations that are to blame?
I'm convinced shoddy implementations are to blame. I have two examples, both anecdote. First, watches. I've had every Pebble since I pledged the original Kickstarter. I've hooked various Pebble's to various iPhones. The connection to this day is flakey as hell. If I feel the watch buzz, indicating that I've walked away from my phone, there's a 50% chance that I'll be doing the Bluetooth Pairing Watuzi Dance to get it to pair again. Such is the way of things, eh?
Except the Garmin Fenix I bought a month ago has been rock...m'f'ing...solid. I walk away from phone, watch buzzes, walk back, watch buzzes and says it's connected again. Every time. I pull up the Garmin app, it's always connected. In a month of heavy usage, it has NEVER failed to reconnect or stay connected to the phone. Always get my notifications. Couldn't begin to say what the difference is, but someone appears to be doing it right and someone else: meh, not so much.
I don't know what others are doing wrong, but I basically reimplemented Apple's Core Bluetooth for a hardware piece that allowed old iPhones (4 or less, IIRC) to pretend they had BTLE, and consequentially pretend they supported Core Bluetooth. We tested heavily, never had issues, sold it to users, and I don't recall support issues with connectivity (I'm sure someone had an issue, but not enough that it was ever brought to our attention). I believe the devices sold like dog poop sandwiches, but it was for a company large enough that they probably sold more of their devices than Pebble has sold, so I would think we'd have heard about it if there were issues. But if I did anything "right", I couldn't tell you what it was, as I just followed the specs as best I could.
In summary, it would appear that it's possible to get devices to reliably connect and stay connected, but I don't know what the secret is.
The Amazon Echo is kinda the same way. I paired to my phone once, and rarely use, so I often have to go to the Bluetooth settings on my iPhone and tap the Echo to connect, but every time I do, it works flawlessly.
I used to loathe bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if it's shoddy implementations that are to blame?