Many Owners of Bluetooth Devices Still Don't Use Bluetooth

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2061-10800_3-6042156.html?part=rss&tag=6042156&subj=news' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2061-10800_3-60...42156&subj=news</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Bluetooth is in an ever-growing number of devices. Last year, 315 million products containing Bluetooth chips for short-range wireless communication got shipped, according to Michael Foley, who runs the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the standards organization that oversees the standard. This year, ten million items a week will get shipped. Getting people to use the technology, however, remains a challenge."</i><br /><br />No doubt Bluetooth is becoming more and more ubiquitous. In my experiences, most all of the people I encounter professionally know what Bluetooth is (thanks mainly to the booming Bluetooth headset market). However, as the Bluetooth SIG noted, roughly about 30-50% of all Bluetooth devices are actually utilized for their Bluetooth capabilities. What makes matters worse in my opinion is that some phone carriers don't even allow you to use all of the Bluetooth capabilities such as dial-up networking or file transfer. It makes me wonder if Bluetooth will ever be accepted by the general public as something more than just a wireless headset technology.

[pocketpcadmirer]

Well, me and my friends exchange lots of stuff, incl lots of programming code, short clips, ringtones everyday. We love BT technology. Even my teacher sends all of us files via BT after the class ends so that we can read the notes after the college.

Sunny :)

[capo]

I've had BT on my last 2 PDA's - an iPaq 4155 and my current Axim x50v and have spent literally hours trying to get both devices to connect to my Dell D400 laptop. I've never succeeded. Maybe there's some fluke with the gear I have (I work in IT, so I'm not a total computer n00b) but BT has been a total disappointment for me. As for phone - who knows. We're obligated to carry company provided phones and they give us the cheapest ones they can find, so no BT.

[stlbud]

My bluetooth experience has been less than stellar. I bought an HP RX3715 thinking I'd get a chance to use a bluetooth headset with it but HP decided to leave that part out. I thought I'd use it to sync but that has also been disappointing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It randomly forgets pairing. Other than that it's just a pretty blue light on the front.

I give up. Anyone want a usb blootooth dongle?

Bill B.

[biglouis]

I have to say this post made me laugh. I was once berated far and wide for publishing an article on the web called "Bluetooth! Why bother?" in which I pointed out that while Ericsson was disappearing up its own technical backside creating Bluetooth, Nokia was dominating the mobile phone market by inventing the snap on cover.

Yes, the snap on cover may be an unglamarous idea but it didn't half sell handsets as Ericsson found out to its cost.

Bluetooth is the ultimate example of what is wrong with many high-tech companies. Too much emphasis on technology and too little emphasis on marketing.

I can't remember the last time I turned on BT on my i-mate KJAM and I've never even investigated it on my V3i which I've had for a month. Of course, one reason is the incredibly user hostile interface on the PC made even more incomprehensible by Microsoft becoming involved with it. Whoever thought the average consumer would be able to cope with pairing and bluetooth neighbourhoods was clearly missing a marble or two.

Mind you, the posers I see with dongle hanging off their ears are clearly a match made in heaven for the inventors of BT. Problem is, there just isn't a big enough market to make is a runaway success.

Nice idea in concept but not worth bothering about in practise.

LouisB

[SteveHoward999]

So far I've never used Bluetooth for anything, even though I have a number of bluetooth enabl;ed devices (laptop, PDA, wife's phone).

I'd like to use a Bluetooth keyboard with my PDA but Toshiba did not add the appropriate scheme to the E830 Bluetooth driver. I'd like to use a Bluetooth headset with it too ... so I could use the PDA for Skype and listening to music ... but bluetooth and Wi-Fi appear to interfere with each other making that a non-starter ...

[MG]

I've had my i730 for about 3 months now and I have just ordered my first BT headset. I only did that because of the clearance sale they had at Moto. I see there are other things, but I'm not sure I'll need to take advantage of them.

Mark

[keirmeister]

I use Bluetooth for the headset, to sync my phone to my laptop, and for a wireless mouse. It is quite awesome, and perfectly suited or close-range, low-bandwidth stuff. Bluetooth has become a requirement for me, especially with it being built-in to everything...no more need for dongles.

I love Bluetooth. It's a shame folks don't really know about it. It has such simple practicle uses.

- Keirmeister

[bblock]

Not to make an off-topic post even more off-topic, but WHY OH WHY do Telcos remove the BT DUN Profile from a device that would otherwise be wonderful with BT? I live in Canada, and Telus has the WM5 Pocket PC Phone Starcom UT6700. Granted, no device is perfect, but it's on their new 3G network, and I happen to have an HP Tablet PC w/ Bluetooth built in, and ride the bus 3 hrs a day. Can you say match made in Heaven? Except Telus advertises that the phone CANNOT be used as a wireless modem, although it works fine tethered (via USB cable).

WHY? WHY? That one item right there makes it not worth the money for me to buy the phone.

Color me pissed.

[cameron]

I generally don't use bluetooth for one very important reason - power.

I never use my bluetooth headset, as the last thing I want is to carry around another charger. I'm on the road most of the time, and there's very limited space in my bag for chargers. I also never sync my phone with my laptop using bluetooth, as I carry around a USB charge/sync cable to charge my phone - again, no big plugs.

The only place I use bluetooth is for a wireless keyboard and mouse for my home PC - I've found that the bluetooth mouse uses less batteries than the RF setup I was using previously.

[emuelle1]

The only time I use Bluetooth is with my GPS. Until I got that, I had no real need for it. When my wife and I upgraded cell phones last year, I tried to get the Motorola v551 so I could transfer pictures to my Pocket PC through BT, but the Ericson z500a's were "buy one, get one free" so she "encouraged" me to choose wisely.

I do have a BT dongle for my laptop, but I haven't done anything with it yet.

[rob_ocelot]

Bluetooth, ahhh Bluetooth....

Where do I begin?

How about as many implementations and iterations of the format as there are devices that use it?

1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2,0 MS or Broadcom stack, advanced audio profiles or not?

Give consumers too many options and too many half-assed implementations of the product and you confuse them. Bluetooth was developed how many years ago? 15, I think. It's had ample time to mature. Plug and play Bluetooth could have potentially killed USB but now that there is a wireless flavor of USB in the works I highly doubt that.

I've had an HP4150 for almost three years now, and I've only just started to use Bluetooth for GPS. I would like to use it for microphone and headset profiles, also for keyboard and mouse (without lame drivers). What about Bluetooth Mass Storage? Toshiba's BT hard drive has quietly slipped off the radar. I would have bought more products (hear that companies, I want to give you my $$$!) if I could use Bluetooth to it's potential.

The only thing keeping me from buying a Dell X51v at the moment is the moronic BT implementation (and maybe USB host).

[martin_ayton]

I use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse with my laptop, a bluetooth headset and, occasionally, a bluettoth folding keyboard with my PDA. Though some of them were tortuous to set up, they are all just great now.
No wires is a wonderful technology.

The set-up is the issue: if the geeks who design these things could just get their heads around the fact that joe-average user wants to turn it on and have it work, then take up would be a lot higher. In the meantime, as this thread shows, only the bl**dy-minded amongst us will persevere long enough to get the benefits

Now, if someone would sell me a bluetooth receiver dongle that I could plug in to a set of PC speakers, or a bluetooth-enabled set of such speakers, so that I could walk into the office, plunk the laptop down and play music over something other than the laptop's own weedy tweeters, I'd be a very happy boy.

[volwrath]

It is hard for me to believe that not many PPC users use bluetooth. I have BT on 4 devices and use it all the time.

I use my bluetooth headset with my Treo 650 (some). I use it with my X50v all the time to listen to podcasts while I am laying in bed getting ready to sleep (no chance of jerking my ppc to the ground). I use my Treo 650 BT for DUN with my Axim when I need a good browsing or streaming experience or when I need to send a file from the PPC to the Treo (which is surprisingly often since I have no Treo Sync cable at work) I also use BT between my Treo and my laptop for DUN. I use BT for Treo/Treo transfers (a friends) as well as between PPCs. BT is the bees knees..

[Faenad]

I use BT everyday too. I don't know if there is a lot of differences between country, but here in Europe no bluetooth in a phone is often a deal breaker, at least for mid to high ranges phones.
BT headset are very useful.
I also use a HP BT headphone. It was one of the first BT Stéréo headset, but still quality is OK and I am happy with it.
BT GPS are also very common, or BT hand free kit for car or house.

BTW, I also agree that BT is not as easy as Infrared beaming. And there are still a lot of incompatibilities... I owned a Toshiba e830 too :)

And I am not surprised a lot of peoples never uses Bluetooth. A lot of peoples just uses 10% of the capacities of their devices.
For example, I believe the majority of PPC users (avereage users, no PPCthoughts reader :mrgreen: ) never install any extra software on their PPC. Does that mean all devices should ship with only 24Mo Ram?
Certainly not ;)

[huangzhinong]

GPS is the only way to use BT for me. BT headset is just a piece of crap, horrible sound and horrible battery life. wearing a BT headset is also ugly and embrassing. After I get a GPS builtin phone, BT will walk out of my gadgets.

[kiwi]

I use a BT headset with my SonyEricsson Phone (520i)

Now, trying to get BT working from my PPC to Phone for DUN always seems to be a tedious task and after spending hrs with it I gave up.


The technology has to be EASY TO WORK with for Joe Average Consumer to take it on - ie. Apple Products are easy to work with in General.

Also, in Nth America, esp. Canada BT is only now becoming mroe popular and then only with Headsets .

[Jeff00000168]

I use bluetooth all the time! It's kinda tricky at first but once you get the hang of it, it's a stroll in the park. I have a Jabra BT250V headset which I use with my Dell Axim X50, Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook and my Sony Ericsson T610! Transferring files between my notebook, pocket pc and phone via bluetoth works perfect too! I got ActiveSync to work with my pocket pc and notebook via bluetooth and can surf the web on my pocket pc via bluetooth within 30 feet range from my notebook but of course is slower than wifi........ but it works! :D

[aquanaut]

Use it every day -- Fujitsu S-series notebook, h4150 ppc, bluetake mouse, holux g230 gps, bluespoon ax2, and t610 phone.

Bummer the h4150 doesn't have the headset protocol for pocket skype, but skype with the ax2 and my notebook remove the wires so I'm not tangled up in the headset. Prefer WiFi, but occasionally sync ppc to notebook (AS3.8) over bluetooth. Oh, and I connect my ppc to the internet (t-mobile gprs) through the t610.... just a tad slower than broadband :wink: , but very useful while on the move.

I think many have poor experiences because the hardware vendor dropped the ball... e.g., Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX... what a nightmare! Since disposing of that 'jewel', I actually think my hair is growing back!

I was bummed to find out Sony didn't implement the headphone service on my wife's TR1B... she doesn't like the bt dongle hanging out the side, so prefers to use a wire headset for skype calls... drag. She only uses a bluetooth mouse and transfers pictures to and from her notebook and Razr over bluetooth.

Bluetooth is good!

[alese]

Bluetooth, let's see.
I have two phone editions, Wizard and Universal with BT always on. Also both my notebook and my home PC have BT and I sync both my phone editions with them over BT. I have and use Motorola BT stereo headset (can't wait for AKU2 ROM upgrade, to be able to use it also with PPCs).
In addition I use my Stowaway BT Mouse with both Universal and my notebook and Universal also works great as UMTS modem over BT.
Now I just need to get BT GPS and new BT Headset...

[dma1965]

I use bluetooth on my Pocket PC phones all the time, and all of my regional managers, who formerly had SX66's and now have Cingular 8125's can not live without bluetooth headsets. My assistant just leaves his 8125 at his desk, and walks around with his bluetooth headset answering calls all day, and he can answer calls and carry on a clear conversation from anywhere in the office. Bluetooth totally rocks!!!!

[Take1]

My first introduction to any form of wireless device was the original Palm Tungsten. It was pure hell getting the d@mn thing to connect with the computer and surf the web. There was a 100 page thread devoted to setting up bluetooth on PalmOS at Palm Infocenter and it was not fun scrolling through the posts finding the info I needed to get it up and running.

The software that came with the PC dongle was worthless for PDA use as none of the services in the B/T manager on the PC did what it was supposed to. I tried several companies and discovered each seemed to have different methods of doing things and none of them really did what it was supposed to without a SERIOUS investment in time and effort.

When wifi became more popular on PDAs I was shocked how fast it was to get set up and online (something like 2 mins). It was a fantastic experience -- since then I've forgotten about BT.

BT has it's uses, but I'm not giving up WiFi on any PDA for surfing or synching. If I get a B/T phone and need a headset, BT is my choice. If I want to pair a PDA and a cell phone for mobile internet access, B/T is my choice. I don't do either and so B/T is a non-entity.

[emuelle1]

Same here. If I had BT enabled cell phone and a data plan, I'd probably use BT more often as it would be a way to connect my Pocket PC to the internet. Having Cingular, that's not too big a problem. I've heard that those on Verizon can't use their phones for internet access because Verizon neuters BT.

I would leave the BT dongle in my laptop and Active Sync over that, but I've heard BT has some security flaws and I haven't had much of a chance to follow up on that.

For now, wi-fi is much more useful to me. I think BT would be a very useful service if only somebody sat down and decided on a standard and a set of features that the average user would need. Wi-fi is a fairly simple and standardized feature, well defined, and well deployed. BT seems like an afterthought that nobody knows what to do with, but they keep putting it on deviced anyway in the hopes that the association will sell the device. "Look, this has Bluetooth!" "What's it do?" "Who cares, the device has Bluetooth!"

[Franc_Furter]

I use Bluetooth to transfer MP3`s to from my PC, iPAQ, and Moto e815. I also use to active sync although this is still buggy. Mostly I use it for my Plantronics 320 either with the phone, with with the iPAQ and PC for Skype. But I agree the fact that i can't use my iPAQ to tell my phone to dial a contact who has just emailed me while wearing the headset is very annoying. The e815 can only accept one bluetooth request at a time. I don't know if this the Telcos nobbling good tech or a poorly implemented Blutetooth Stack.

Either way, the way Bluetooth has been rolled out is nothing liek the way it is touted.

[alanjrobertson]

I use BT a lot - headset for my SE K750i (I still find SE have some of the best BT implementation), to transfer pictures to/from that phone, using DUN via the phone to connect to GPRS - either from my laptop or PDA. Incredibly useful to be able to just leave your mobile in your pocket whilst you're travelling by train or as a car passenger and connect to the net.

It's dreadful that so many North American mobile companies seem to restrict DUN access to the BT features on phones - that's one of the key advantages for me! The only problem over here is the extortionate price for data plans :(

Cheers

Alan