Bluetooth discoverable

Mine is the same, can not believe Apple would turn off Bluetooth so I cannot send info between my iPhone, other phones or my Mac.
This phone could be going back within 14 days or sooner

The bluetooth on the iPhone is only designed to pair with headsets and some of the hands free car kits.

How hard would it be for Apple to turn these functions on and for what reason would they have turned them off

davidinlondon wrote:
Anyone else got the problem that their new 3G iphone does not detect any other bluetooth devices - whether they are other phones, computers or headset etc... ie the bluetooth just doesnt work on the phone at all?

I have the 1st generation iPhone with 2.0 firmware. So it should be almost identical to new 3G iPhone (minus 3G and GPS).

I can pair my iPhone with both 3rd party headsets and headset-like devices (for example my Garmin GPS that can act as Bluetooth headset works without any problems with iPhone). I can also pair it with my laptop without any problem (which is useless, since phone doesn't export any services that could be used by other devices).

Are you sure you are doing the pairing right? Your iPhone will only be discoverable if you go to Settings->General->Bluetooth screen. It will say on the screen something like "Now Discoverable" and should also give you a list of all Bluetooth devices that advertise themself as headsets and are in range and are discoverable. Check manual for your headset how to put it into discoverable mode.

Note that pairing for Apple's iPhone headset is a bit different. You simply connect both the iPhone and headset to the same charger cable.

Another note, you can't use iPhone's bluetooth for anything but to connect to headsets. While it will pair with other devices, it is useless. You even can't sync address book, or send individual contacts from your address book to other devices.

I don't know why Apple has crippled Bluetooth in iPhone so severely. If it was to prevent access to files stored on the iPhone, it's dumb. You can simply copy the original files in your iTunes library. If it was to prevent people to browse the web from their laptops using iPhone as a modem, it was plain evil (basically, forcing people to buy yet another data plan and additional device, despite the fact they are already paying for unlimited data plan on their monthly AT&T bills).

With my old phone, I enjoyed using Bluetooth for all kinds of everyday things it was designed for. Sending contact details from my address book to friend's phone. Transferring a photo or two I made with a phone directly to other device(s) without the need for cables. Browsing the Internet from the comfort of my big laptop's screen while being stuck in some waiting room (or connecting to work over VPN and doing some work). None of this is possible with iPhone 😟

Protocols would need to be written and tested along with figuring out how to prevent people from sharing copyrighted material (pictures, music, video, etc).

Personally, I find bluetooth to be very buggy and a battery hog. My Macbook absolutely wants nothing to do with pairing with a headset and my old work Treo will only stay paired to a bluetooth device if it's within about 10" of the device.

Tamara wrote:
Protocols would need to be written and tested along with figuring out how to prevent people from sharing copyrighted material (pictures, music, video, etc).

Protocols are already written. They are part of standard. If you had in mind implementing them on iPhone, may I remind you that iPhone's operating system is OS X. It already has support for most of this.

There's nothing special in the iTunes library that prevents you to share your entire music/video/whatever library with your friends. Except that they won't play on it, due to DRM. Well, at least most of the stuff purchased on iTunes store. iTunes library is even so nicely organized on the disk, that it's probably faster to navigate to the file from command prompt, than to find the song in iPhones interface. None of the other MP3-playback capable cell phones don't have restrictions. Because they would be stupid and inefficient. This whole thing about copying songs is not an argument. It's excuse.

Personally, I find bluetooth to be very buggy and a battery hog. My Macbook absolutely wants nothing to do with pairing with a headset and my old work Treo will only stay paired to a bluetooth device if it's within about 10" of the device.

Not all devices are buggy. Not so long ago, Bluetooth was not as widespread as it is today. Only higher-end cell phones had it, accessories were generally expensive, data transfers in wireless networks were limited to slow (and at that time expensive) GPRS. Back than, it was even legal to drive a car with only one hand on the steering wheel. Bluetooth was a feature vast majority of users were ignoring, so manufacturers could mostly get away with buggy implementations. However, even in those days, many devices actually had decent Bluetooth implementations. For example, my ancient Nokia phone works with Bleutooth accessories flawlessly. I'd still be using it today, if it wasn't locked to a cell network in different country. I also did have one other phone that had flaky Bluetooth, but I ditched it very fast.

Today, even some cheap phones come with Bluetooth (not crippled Bluetooth like in iPhone, but the real thing), and prices of Bluetooth accessories fell down considerably. This resulted in Bluetooth becoming an feature consumers are actually looking for. Especially in growing number of jurisdictions where usage of cellphones in cars is illegal without a headset. Today there is a critical mass of users that Bluetooth is no longer only a shiny line in the phone's specs. It's something that can affect sales volume for particular device. Even janitors at the place where I work have Bluetooth headset stuck into their ears every time I see them. It has become that widespread.

Message was edited by: Alex--

lbourdice wrote:
How hard would it be for Apple to turn these functions on and for what reason would they have turned them off

It would be next to trivial to turn them on.

Why they turned them off? We can only speculate. Some features Steve probably considered not important. Some might be omitted to lock users into syncing iPhones via iTunes only. Others, could be some kind of deal between Apple and AT&T to lower the usage of AT&T's network resources.

All in all, very sad and very pathetic. And consumer proved once again that they are sheep by buying crippled shiny product in huge volumes...

at the end of the day functions that are standard on any cheap phone, are either locked off or not available, on what is meant to be a high tech, top of the range, market leader.

If having all kinds of bluetooth is important to you then the iPhone probably is not the right choice for you.

Bluetooth is a feature I don't need but I also believe cars should be cellular dead zones too. No one is so important that they need to talk and drive at the same time.