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why did they leave out bluetooth!?

C

capuman

Well-Known Member
i love my Hero i really do, but why on earth did Google seem to leave out the basic Bluetooth capabilities!?

Pretty much everyone transfers files between them selves from one phone to another via bluetooth, or connects to their car phone via bluetooth, 2 things which i cant do with my Hero...why??

I cant tranfer images from my old phone to my Hero and i cant use my handsfree car phone features because although the Hero finds both my old phone and my car, all it says is 'paired but not connected'

I really dont understand why Google did not inplement this basic bluetooth feature. I just hope its fixed in Android 2!

By the way, im assuming from reading in other posts that what i describe is not a problem with my phone, but a problem with Andriod right?
 
Your phone is working fine. Android has bluetooth limtiations at the moment.

It isn't that HTC elected not to include the functionality, it's that
the Android OS currently does not support many BT profiles. When the G1
was released, Google decided to only include handsfree profiles for
Android, and their reasoning was that they were not happy with the
current state of their bluetooth API, and didn't wanted to get locked
into supporting it by releasing it in a "finished" product. Jump
forward some 11 months, and we've had a reasonable major update of the
base OS (Cupcake) but this only added a few more profiles.

Android Bluetooth FAQ

Whilst
I'm sure HTC could've coded up their own support, they probably didn't
want to fragment the OS by providing an implementation which will end
up being incompatible with whatever finished product Google eventually
cook up.
Click to expand...
 
capuman said:
i love my Hero i really do, but why on earth did Google seem to leave out the basic Bluetooth capabilities!?

Pretty much everyone transfers files between them selves from one phone to another via bluetooth, or connects to their car phone via bluetooth, 2 things which i cant do with my Hero...why??

I cant tranfer images from my old phone to my Hero and i cant use my handsfree car phone features because although the Hero finds both my old phone and my car, all it says is 'paired but not connected'

I really dont understand why Google did not inplement this basic bluetooth feature. I just hope its fixed in Android 2!

By the way, im assuming from reading in other posts that what i describe is not a problem with my phone, but a problem with Andriod right?
Click to expand...

It's because Android is a relatively new phone operating system which has been implemented pretty much from scratch in the recent past (last two or three years), and advanced Bluetooth functionality (file transfer, stereo headset) will be low down the list of features that must be present before the phone/OS can launch. In the first smartphones based on Symbian OS (R380, P800 in the late 1990s), BT functionality was either not present or was limited to the most basic profiles and even those were pretty flakey. Phones would often pair with some headsets but not others, or send files to some devices but not others. It took a couple of generations before the implementation matured enough so that the advanced functionality worked smoothly and reliably. I'm less familiar with Windows Mobile, but I assume the story was similar there.

I would expect that the BT functionality in Android will improve over time. My particular beef is that the stereo headset profile isn't as well implemented as the one on my old Sony Ericsson W960: I can start and stop playback and I can skip to the next track, but I can't control the volume or skip to the previous track if shuffle is enabled.

I guess we have got used to the functionality that has been in the older smartphone OSs and we want/expect Android to be at least as good. I'm sure it will be, but we may have to wait a while :p

BTW, my Hero does seem to work on my car handsfree, so I suspect that your problem is one of the 'will only talk to some devices' kind.

Regards

Pete
I've worked with Symbian OS phones since
 
Bhav said:
Proper bluetooth support is coming in Android 2.x (which is coming to the Hero in 2010)
Click to expand...

Has a release date been announced for this update? I have a HTC Hero with Sprint and can't wait for this update. I am ready NOW!!! If anyone knows when...let me know! :D
 
Ive always been confused why the t-mobile pulse ran off android 1.5 but allowed bluetooth file transfer when much more expensive handsets dont.
 
capuman said:
... or connects to their car phone via bluetooth, 2 things which i cant do with my Hero...
Click to expand...

My Hero connects to the factory bluetooth in my car without a problem. Perhaps you could borrow another Hero and see if that one works to check it's not a problem with your particular one.
 
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