To ask if bluetooth is the same as Alexa but with no voice activation?

[bluetrampolines]

Very late to the party with technology. I want my ancient phone to be able to play music and the radio in different rooms in the house. If possible 2 different audio books from the same audiobooks account at the same time. Talk on the phone at the same time.

Is bluetooth the cheapest way to achieve this?

Sorry, I really don't understand your question.

Bluetooth is nothing like Alexa - that's like asking if a saucepan is like a chicken.

Bluetooth is a method for connecting devices without using wires (hence wire-less).

Alexa is a voice activated device that would be connected to other devices. V. different.

Bluetooth itself is free - your phone should have the capacity to use Bluetooth.

You will need to buy Bluetooth stereos though for different rooms in your house that you will connect to your phone. Once you connect your phone to the Bluetooth speaker, you select what you want to play on your phone (be it radio, music, whatever).

And yes, the iBooks app on an iPhone (i'm presuming you have an iPhone?) is perfectly equipped for you to have more than one audiobook on the go at a time. You can switch between them easily without losing your place.

And yes, you can get cheap Bluetooth speakers that aren't voice activated - that would be cheaper than Alexa.

Ah, now I see what you meant - you were asking about Bluetooth speakers vs Alexa, not about the concept of Bluetooth itself.

Confusing question but no you wouldn't be able to play two books, a radio and also take a phone call at the same time. Most phones will probably only manage to do one of those tasks over Bluetooth at a time but are capable of doing all the tasks. Alexas on the other hand could handle most of them concurrently

Ok I'm going to be quite specific here, please don't take offence if you know all this.

Bluetooth is a way to connect devices, like wifi (connecting computers/phones/tablets/devices wirelessly to your home router if you have an internet connected broadband package), or a data connection via a sim card over a phone network.

So for an example, I have a TV, broadband and phone contract with Virgin Media. With this I can watch many TV channels, connect to the internet by television, phone, tablet etc. via my router wirelessly, and phone people on an ordinary telephone. My smartphone sim card comes from a different provider, GiffGaff, but that's the mobile data connection so that's not important in this context.

My computer and phone and tablet can talk to my radio/cd player/ bluetooth/digital radio device (media player, but not BluRay/DVD) via a connection protocol called Bluetooth.

Bluetooth is made for short range connections between devices in the local area. So I stream music from the internet, onto my computer, then to my music centre, which has better speakers but isn't internet connected, to play my music. I have an online internet streaming account subscription which allows me to do this. I can also connect my Kindle, a device which solely provides a way to read or buy books/texts over the internet via Wifi.

If I want to hear audiobooks, I would buy them over the internet via my computer or phone, and then stream them via Bluetooth to my media player in order to hear them on good speakers. But not via my Kindle because it's a Paperwhite and is only for text so it can't do Audiobooks. It can't stream Bluetooth to my media player.

Does that help any? Let me know where I haven't explained it properly :)

You can have Bluetooth speakers in different rooms that you use for different purposes, but you wouldn't be able to get them to play different things at the same time, as they just play what you are currently playing on your phone.

If you want audiobooks, music and radio at the same time in different rooms, you will need to get a few Alexas instead (or several phones/iPads to connect to the Bluetooth speakers)