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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Symbian phones > Why did they drop Bluetooth Auto mode from P900/910 Bookmark topic

My P800 has the capability for Bluetooth to be set to "auto" as well as off or on. This gives a significant improvement to battery life while having the ability to receive calls using my bluetooth headset. (my old R520m had this too).

Having upgraded to a P910i I find that this feature has been dropped. Why on earth have they done this? To me it was a killer feature that Ericsson phones had over Nokia and now they've thrown it away.
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Posted: 2005-01-09 00:37:23
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Yes, I fully agree with you. I used to be able to share my HBH-35 between my P900 and T610 and this combination works flawlessly in auto mode. But now, I own P910i and K700i and damn it, both immediately lock themselves to the BT headset when activated and refuses to release the headset to the other at times of needs unless I manually disconnect them... what on earth are the brainless SE engineers thinking? The used to be a super feature of their BT implementation is now gone and instead they now follow Nokia's method which suck the battery life ever so fast using handsfree profile??? I've complained to my local SE support about this and the answer is sowehat like this... "sorry, this is how it is implemented and there's nothing they can do about it"... Now I gotta spend more $$$ to find a new BT headset that supports multilink profile... does anyone know of such a headset available in the market?
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Posted: 2005-01-09 02:14:20
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Yes such a head set is available. I read a thread about it some time back. Sorry, that is all i remember. The author was successful in using two devices on a single headset. Btw, what exactly is auto mode? This message was posted from a K500
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Posted: 2005-01-09 02:27:43
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I have not try it. but thu AX from Nextlink suppose to be able to pair w/ up to 8 devices. I only own 1 phone w/ bluetooth.
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Posted: 2005-01-09 03:19:00
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Hi,

this will be a bit lenghthy, I will try to explain:

BT auto mode means when turned ON, the icon will be the normal blue "B" icon and whenever you try to make a phone call or when there's an incoming call, the "B" will automatically look for a headset and when found, it will connect to the headset and the icon looks like "B". Once finishes the phone call, it will auto go back to "B" mode, thus releasing the headset until the next call.

A lot of people are confused between multilink profiles and devices that can be paired with multiple devices.

Multilink - devices that can connect to multiple BT devices simultaneously, meaning I can use BT headset to chat, transfer files between 2 BT devices, etc all at the same time without the need to disconnect anything. The only phone in the market I knew that supports multilink profiles is the P910i.

BT that can be paired with multiple devices - many headsets such as HBH-35/300 and all SE BT phones can be paired with up to at least 7 devices, but without multilink profiles, you can only use the BT ONE at a time, eg, if I am connected to the PC and am transferring files, and suddenly there's an incoming call, I cannot use the headset at all until the file transfer is complete and that the "B" icon is returned to "B" icon.

All my headsets (HBH-35 and HBH-300) can be paired with multiple devices, but does not support Multilink profiles, thus it can only connect to ONE phone at a time. This spells bad news cos both the K700i and P910i instead of following the good old standards of Automatically connects to the headset for incoming and outgoing calls, and later automatically release the headset once the call is finished, they both will instead "lock" themselves to the headset permanently and whichever one locks first will not release the headset for the other to use at times of needs until I manually release it. The K700i and P910i has a different BT icon as compared to the above and instead of the normal "B" and "B", the K700i's icon is a full "O" when locked to a headset and that of a P910i's icon is an icon that looks like a, well, "headset".

In the past, when I own a P900 and a T610, all I need to do is pair my HBH-35 one time each to both the devices and from then onward, everything is auto for incoming and outgoing calls. Now that I've "upgraded" (or should I say downgraded) to the P910i and K700i, SE tells me to live with it cos they had decided to follow Nokia's BT implementation and that I need to carry 2 headsets daily in order to use the BT of both phones
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Posted: 2005-01-09 03:26:49
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Thank you for such a detailed explanation. It's good to know that I'm not alone!

So the P900 still retains the auto option does it? Well I may just move on the P910 and hang on to a P900 I just aquired which I was going to sell (long story!).
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Posted: 2005-01-09 04:03:35
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adnhk1, actually Auto mode didn't respond to outgoing requests from the headset. If you wanted to make an outgoing call via the headset, you'd have to call from the handset, then the call would automatically be transferred to the headset. In "ON" mode, the headset button can initiate a voice-tagged call.

I too miss the AUTO function on the P910i. But I have noticed that they made significant battery improvements on it... it doesn't drain a lot of power in ON mode vs OFF (Assuming you don't use it) So battery drain isn't really an issue anymore vs. Auto.

The only problem is the one stated above where the headsets are now locked into the device.

Just a side note... my HBH-30 doesn't stay locked to my P910. So basically, it's like my phone is on Auto... I can receive calls via the headset, but can't initiate a voice call from it. Might be the headset firmware or something... won't know til I try my HBH-300 when it arrives.

The main advantage of SE's new BT system is the one that's actually causing the problems. The new 'sniffer' mode. That's the system that locks the headset to the phone... the advantage of this is, instant response when making or answering a call. It responds as fast as a wired headset. No long "beep...beep...beep...BEEEEEP" to make a voice call. And no 10-sec wait for the phone to connect to the headset while it's ringing.
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Posted: 2005-01-09 04:16:29
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Hi jplacson,

oops, apologies. actually, I mean ON mode for both my old P900 and T610. To me, BT ON mode does not suck battery at all until it initiates a connection for incoming and outgoing calls, else it will always be left in idle mode, as long as you do not turn on dicovery mode. This me saves so much more battery life as compared to sniff profile on the P910i, cos sniff constantly look for and locks itself to the headset and after testing for a day during a weekend when my usage is low, my P910i sucks more than 23% over a period of 12 hrs when connected to my HBH-300 and left idle without making a single call (I purposely divert all calls to my K700i). For my P900, it only drains 7% over the same period of time.

With careful choosing of headsets, and once you find one that works flawlessly with your phone, you do not have to wait for 10 secs just praying for the headset to pick up the call from your phone. I tried 3 HBH-35 from the same shop before purchasing, cos after having numerous issues with my old HBH-20 and 30, I noticed that not all BT headsets of the same model are made of the same quality, and thus during my purchase of the HBH-35, I purposely do extensive tests on 3 headsets (made 10 calls for each headset) and realises 2 of them either took too long to connect to my P900 or disconnects just after 1 min of talking, etc and only the 3rd one works flawlessly with my P900. Since then, this HBH-35 has been serving me well for 1 year connected daily automatically to both my P900 and T610, until it died on me recently.

SE's attempt to "solve" the issue of taking too long to connect to their headsets by using Nokia's way of constantly connecting to the headset is NOT a real viable solution, cos the real problem does not lie on the phone's BT but rather the QA on the BT of the headset themselves. I have the luxury of changing 3 HBH-300 prior to finally settle down with the 3rd one cos I had other issues not related to this thread, but at least I can confirm again that out of this 3 HBH-300 that I had tested with, again 1 of them have battery performance issue and belive it or not, it lasted no longer than my old HBH-35 while the other one also faces connection issue with my P910i whereby too often than not, my P910i was not able to establish a connection to it and locked itself to the headset permantly, and i had to reboot the headset numerous times before my P910i can finally "find" it and locks on to it. This makes no diff whether or not sniff profile is there cos if the BT headset is not of good quality built, then no matter what you try to do, you will still very often faces issues with connecting to the headset.

I sincerely hoped SE engineers are looking into esato's thread cos we, the consumers are the best "TESTERS" for them when comes to such issues, and really hoped they can spend sometime thinking about what we said here

Cheers
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Posted: 2005-01-09 04:57:25
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Well, thank the Lord.

I was at first thinking that I may be only one more than a little bit p*ssed off that SE have got rid of that excellent AUTO setting in the Bluetooth settings.

They really should give it back to us.

By the way, does anyone know if there are issues with the HBH-200 bluetooth headset connecting to the P910?


.
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Posted: 2005-01-09 10:23:31
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I've always been so proud of Ericsson's implementation of BT on their phones and the automatic connect to headsets when dial/recieve calls was such as WOW factor that all Nokia fans can only admire in AWE... but now... wonder what's wrong with SE's engineers' mind that makes them think that Nokia's stupid implementation of locking to the headset is FAR SUPERIOR to Ericsson's Auto connection mode Please wake up SE engineers... and give us back our ON mode with auto connection rather than locking to our headsets and refuses to release it automtically!!! This implies to both the P910i and K700i (and I would assume S700i too)!!!
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Posted: 2005-01-09 11:02:58
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