Now that I had picked up a Belkin Bluetooth adapter for myself, it was really easy to get it hooked up to my PC. Just plug it into the USB port and i was ready to go. Unfortunately I needed something that I could connect to before it would be of any use to me. Being a bit of a collector of gadgets, I don’t always think things through when I purchase them – it just seems like a good idea at the time, so I decide to do so.
Luckily, when playing with my phone, I remembered that it had Bluetooth. So I enabled it, and a whole lot of nothing happened. The two just sat there like the proverbial bumps on logs. It turns out that more needs to happen before you can do anything useful. But it’s actually not hard to make the two talk. You just need to know a few things that will allow a little back-and-forth action between the phone and the PC.
See and be Seen
First, the phone has to allow itself to be seen (or discovered). While many devices – especially PCs – will allow you to turn on discoverability on a constant basis, the phone will not. Since this is the first Bluetooth phone that I’ve owned, I can’t say if this is a common thing or not. My guess is that it’s going to take a lot more power to broadcast the fact that it’s available than to not do so, so I suspect that most phones will default to being off when it comes to this setting.
On the 8600, you simply press OK -> 9 (Settings) -> 7 (Bluetooth) -> 3 (My Visibility) -> 1 (Visible). Once you do, the phone will be visible for one minute, so you have to act somewhat fast. It’s not a race, but you can’t dawdle either. Just keep that in mind. The next steps may vary a bit depending on your software, but they should be similar enough that you can figure them out no matter what you use.
Discovering New Devices
In the Belkin software, you simply open My Bluetooth Places, then select Add a Bluetooth Device. You will receive a warning about only being able to see devices if they are discoverable – it’s at this point you’ll want to go back and make sure that your phone is visible if you haven’t already. Then click Next. If it’s found, you will see your phone on the next page. It will show up as an LG AX8600. If you have a Verizon phone, it may show up as an LG VX8600 – I understand that they are very similar.
In the window, just click the device, then click on Next to establish a connection. This is where it gets a little tricky, because buried in the documentation is where you have to figure out how to connect the two devices. Since neither the phone nor your PC actually has a code in it, you will need to set one. By default, it appears that most devices use a code of 0000. It also says that 1234 is used occasionally, but I used 0000 and it worked fine. Try both and see what happens.
The first thing you’ll need to do is accept the connection on the phone. Then you’ll be required to input the security code. This is where you enter the 0000 (or 1234). Once you do, you’ll have a brand new device that will show up in your Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood. After you have the phone there, you can do all sorts of interesting things with it. Just double-click to begin.
Connected – Now What?
On my phone, I have five icons. Bluetooth Modem, BT DIAG, OBEX File Transfer, OBEX Object Push and Voice Gateway.
The Bluetooth Modem allows you to use your phone as a modem. It works pretty well, though I found it dropping connection quite a bit. I’ll elaborate on that another time. I haven’t figured out the BT DIAG as yet. The OBEX File Transfer allows you to send files back and forth – useful for transferring items like photos, ringtones and video. The OBEX Object Push seems useful for transferring contact information, but appears to work only with Outlook and Outlook Express. I haven’t been able to get it to do anything with Thunderbird as yet. The Voice Gateway allows you to use the phone as an audio attachment to your PC (think microphone – probably a rather expensive replacement for one).
I suspect that the most interesting utility for people will be the File Transfer, though the Object Push may prove useful if you use Outlook, and the Modem can be helpful in a pinch as well, if I can get it to stay connected for any lenth of time. More on that in the future. Let me know if you are able to dig up any other information.