Bluetooth advice required

[Grahame]

Hi,

I use an iNS with an iPAQ 3970 that has bluetooth. I wish to change my phone to one that also supports bluetooth to make use of live traffic information (LiveWire) and also to take a bluetooth headset for use in the car. Can someone please advise on a suitable selection of phones that would enable dual use of bluetooth simultaneously and supports GPRS for the data transfer.

I read in the review of the Nokia 6600 phone that can use a bluetooth GPS receiver directly cannot connect to a headset if the GPS is in use. Is this a common issue, or just that phone? I'm not really interested in camera phones, I just need a good reliable mobile that does the above plus voice control if possible.

Cheers,
Grahame.

[Dave]

Unfortunately this is a standards problem and not relational to a specific device. Think along the lines of having one serial port on a PC, and you have two serial devices you want to plug into that single port.

It's similar with Bluetooth, that the Bluetooth GPS and phones have to have a SPP (Serial Port Profile), and only one device can talk to the SPP at the same time which means using a Bluetooth headset and GPS at the same time will pose a real problem. Perhaps when Bluetooth reaches firmware v2, we might see multiple SPP's added to newer devices, or a workaround to this problem but it will still create problems in older legacy hardware.

[DavidW]

The problem in this case isn't the need for multiple serial ports - it's that Nokia phones are limited to one Bluetooth connection at once even when you want to use two different Bluetooth profiles. You can't have a 6310i active simultaneously on the Audio Gateway profile (to drive something using the Headset or Handsfree profile - either a Bluetooth headset or Bluetooth car kit) and the Dial Up Networking profile (for example a GPRS connection from a Pocket PC or laptop).

I had hopes that Nokia would lift this limitation in the 6600, but they haven't - which is yet another reason I won't be bothering with the 6600. I believe some SonyEricsson phones don't have this limitation.


I use my 6310i with a wired car kit (I changed the cradle on the car kit I had for my old 9110 Communicator - the kits use the same control box). However there is no full wired car kit for the 6600.

If you're not interested in a camera phone, but in a solid phone, you could do worse than look at a 6310i and wired car kit - you can have an active GPRS connection over Bluetooth with the phone in the car kit as the Bluetooth isn't being used for hands free. This is a very popular and robust choice. After all, if you're carrying a Pocket PC, you don't need that sophisticated a phone, and the 6310i is a solid triple band phone with very long battery life.

I use smartGSM to manage my 6310i's phone book and SMSes from my Pocket PC 2003 iPAQ 3970. About the only frustration is that you can't really use the iPAQ to dial a phone number when using a Bluetooth headset as you have to disconnect the headset to dial, then try to get the headset reconnected as quickly as possible to talk. I use voice dialling from my Bluetooth headset, and retrieve the phone itself from my bag if the number I need isn't on voice dialling.



David

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