I work for a company that makes bluetooth products and as such I get lots of bluetooth products to play with and also have a large choice of phones and PDA's to test them on.
Since we have launched a GPS unit we have seen that there is definitely a problem with the bluetooth in some versions of the 4.2 software and I would like to track down exactly what versions are effected.
Effected devices
Potentially all devices using 4.2 software. Seems mainly to effect Curves though (this could just be due to the amount of users that have Curves though).
The problem seems to be one of two things:
The BlackBerry either loses the Bluetooth connection (but still shows as paired) or it loses the settings for what service the device uses.
I have tested this with both our own products and similar products made by competitors and found the same issues with all of them which leaves it as a problem with the BlackBerry (also confirmed by other users on this forum). The same devices have also been tested and work fine on older BlackBerry's (4.1) and various Pocket PC's.
How this presents itself:
The problem is intermittent so often you will pair a device and it will initially work but then it will randomly stop working.
With a bluetooth GPS receiver (any brand) most GPS software will say there is no Satellite signal or the signal is too weak, however the GPS unit will indicate that it has a satellite signal but that the bluetooth connection is not active.
With a Bluetooth keyboard this presents itself as the keyboard appearing to be connected but then not working or it being constantly in the "connecting" phase. When checking the device properties you will often see that nothing is present under "Services:"
With Handsfree kits/headsets: Not been able to test this fully but I have a suspicion that the bluetooth issue may effect Address book transfers as well as randomly disconnecting the handsfree kit. If anyone has had these kind of problems I would like to hear about them.
What I would like to know:
If you have had these sorts of problems please let me know what model BB you have, what you are connecting to it and what version operating system your BlackBerry has (to find this go to Options/Settings on the application then go to about. You should see something like V4.2.2.803).
Short term fixes
I have not seen anything from RIM regarding this which is why I'm trying to gather as much information as I can. We have worked with RIM in the past on similar problems so once there is something we can work with I can pass it on to them.
Until that happens though there are a couple of short term fixes that may or may not resolve the problem:
- Disable the Bluetooth on the BlackBerry and Re-enabled it.
- Go into Options/Settings, then bluetooth, highlight the device from the list and then go to properties. In here press the menu button and select "Refresh Service List".
- Depending on the device changing the encryption to disabled and trusted to Yes may resolve the problem (I do not recommend disabling encryption for any device that could transmit private information such as keyboards, handsfree kits, etc).
- Reset the BlackBerry by pulling the battery and putting it back again.
- Install an older version of the BlackBerry operating system on the device. 4.2.0 appears to have no bluetooth problems at all and reverting back to this has fixed the issue for everyone I know who has tried it so far. This seems to also be the only fix that works in the long term. That being said if you do this make sure you back everything up first and make sure you know what you are doing.
So in short if you are having bluetooth issues with the 4.2.X BlackBerry's please let me know (should have just written that one sentence in the first place
).