Help Problems with making calls over BT car kit

[tengler]

Hello everybody! I have a strange problem with my Samsung Galaxy S2. I spent many hours by googling on the internet but haven't found anything useful so I'm trying my luck at this forum.

I have a Parrot 3100 car kit and I connect my S2 to it via bluetooth. The current status is that the phone connects without problems, pairing is ok, contacts are synchronizing. If I make a call the radio gets muted and I can hear the called partner from my car speakers. So far everything is fine. But the problem is that the partner doesn't hear me. If I switch the voice to internal phone speaker, it works, but it's hard to listen the other party in the car noise. When I switch back to the car kit, the voice goes in one direction only.

Actually, when I started to use the phone, everything worked excellent and I was able to make calls without problem. But then I got a notification that a firmware update is available so I installed it (I upgraded from Android 2.3.3 to 2.3.4). Since that time the calling partners don't hear me. I tried another phone and it worked so the car kit and wiring is ok. The problem is in my S2. I decided to downgrade back to 2.3.3, which is not so easy task but I managed it yesterday evening with guidance found on the internet (unfortunatelly I had to do work a factory reset to bring it back to life).

After the downgrade I tried to make couple of calls from my car this evening. The first call was ok, the voice was transmitted in both directions. Wow, so I made another call to my mom. Several minutes was fine and then, suddenly, she started to repeat if I can hear her. I could but she didn't hear me even I was screaming. I restarted the phone but with no luck. I tried to make couple of more calls with the same result.

I have no idea, if it's a ganeral Android problem, problem of car kit compatibility, or anything else. The forums are full of posts about problems with bluetooth on S2 but I haven't found this specific problem. Does anybody here have a clue what could be wrong? Thanks a lot in advance for any help!

Reards
Martin T.

 

[lunatic59]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums, Martin!

I'd be suspicious of the BT kit. There have been reports of various problems with phones pairing properly or having all the features, but it seems to be specific to the card or kit, not the phone. For example, My SGS2 works perfectly with my Mistubishi Fuze hands-free setup. My Nexus One and Captivate also worked fine. I have a buddy whose Honda has nothing but problems with his Captivate.

One thing you might try is to un-pair the devices and then clear the device from your car and re-pair.

 

[tengler]

Hello, thanks a lot for your reply and warm welcome.

I did unpair the phone, deleted all phones from the car kit and paired them again. But it's still not working. It looks like "something" is muting the microphone channel in the kit. I tried to reboot the phone and make a call right after it started up to avoid any applications running in background that could interfere somehow with the audio volumes.

I will try to update the firmware in the kit as I get some time to dowload the update software to my laptop and spend a while in my car (it's quite cold here these days ).

I still can't believe it could be a problem of the handsfree kit when other phones work. It's a Parrot, which is known by its good compatibility with a vast range of different devices. That was the reason I purchased it and replaced the very old Nokia set I used before. Before SGS2 I also used Palm Pre 2 and even it's quite an exotic toy, it worked excellent with my Parrot. Does SGS2 have some non-standard BT protocol implementation?

Well, I'll give a try to updating the Parrot firmware and if it does not help, I will probably go back to my Palm Pre. I will not replace the car kit again (I purchased it few months ago), I rather give up on using SGS2 as it's a company phone (for free) than I would pay again for another new car kit.

Thanks again for your hint. I will try to talk some my colleagues with the same phone into some experimenting with my BT kit to confirm if it could be a problem or not.

 

[tengler]

So, this morning I upgraded firmware in my Parrot handsfree car kit to the latest version (5.00). In the evening when going home I made three calls. The first call started ok, after 3 minutes my wife stopped to hear me. I hung up and dialed her again then we had another call with no problem. So I dialed my mom and she didn't hear me from the very beginning. So the result? Three calls and three different results . So I still didn't manage to resolve the issue. Tonight I'm returning back to my Palm Pre and I'm going to live with it for couple of days and will do as many testing calls from my car as possible. If it dosen't then the problem is in the car kit and I will reclaim it. If it works then the problem is in my Samsung phone and then I have no idea what to do next .

I will let you know in couple of days. If anybody has any idea or you have the same experience, please let me know!!!

Cheers
Martin

 

[tengler]

Well, yesterday I found out that with another phone the same problem appears too (Palm Pre 2 on webOS) so this is apparently a problem with the handsfree kit, not with the phone . I already used the same Palm Pre for a month without any problem when I purchased the Parrot kit (so the phone is definitelly above suspicion). So the problem is in the kit and it must have appeared week or two ago. I already spoke to our Parrot dealer and they will have a look at it and will try to fix it (or replace) in the beginning of January.

 

[lunatic59]

At least you are getting to the root of the problem and your dealer is willing to help you sort it out. Good luck and I hope they have a fix for you.

 

[tengler]

Thanks a lot lunatic! Have a nice Christmas!