Oh Bluetooth?!

[TonyLibations]

I just got my Shift about 2 weeks ago. I really thought the transition from my BB 8530 would be an easy one. So far, no.

To keep on topic i'll keep this post to the Bluetooth related issues.
1. Whenever I have Bluetooth turned on it bogs down my phone to the point that it's unusable. Paired or not.

2. I'm having the hardest time connecting my Shift to my car via Bluetooth. They'll pair but, they rarely connect. Last week it all worked fine. This week's not so great. If it weren't for the fact that they connected perfectly fine last week I'd think it was just a compatibility issue. When i press the call button in my car the dash screen reads: "Downloading Phonebook" and then says the same thing every single time i press the button.

Now that i have that all typed out i'm starting to think it's something phone related.

Any clues?

Thanks in advance!

 

[grandebob]

This is not right. I have blue tooth on all of the time because i'm too lazy to turn it off and on. 99% of the time it pairs with my car just fine. 1% of the time it only pairs as a phone, not as a stereo media device too, but that is rare and fixed with a reboot.

First try a wipe of the device. Test your blue tooth problems before you do anything other then the initial set up. If all is well, start tweaking your device how you like it.

If after a wipe/reset of the device you still have bad performance when BT is on, take it back to sprint and get a new one.

 

[Dave Blake]

Yah I agree there is something wrong I use Bluetooth all the time I never have any issues.

 

[TonyLibations]

Thanks for the help guys. While I'm less than thrilled about wiping my device I'm elated to know this isn't an Android shortfall that i'd have to live with until the end of this contract.

One thing though. I'm assuming that wiping the device will put it back to it's factory setup requiring me to reload all of my contacts and everything else. Is this correct? If you haven't noticed, this is my first Android. It's scary outside of the protective womb of Blackberry.

 

[Dave Blake]

Yah a wipe will reset your device to factory settings so make sure you have everything backed up. You can use App brain to back up your apps and Google can take care of your contacts and calender. You can also back up your contacts to your SD Card via export from contacts. Your Bluetooth issue sounds to me like a hardware issue but it could be an incompatibility with an app so make sure you test all of your Bluetooth devices before you start reading your apps. If everything works reinstall the apps and watch for any changes.

 

[TonyLibations]

Cool. Thanks for the quick response. I'll post my progress, or lack thereof.

 

[TonyLibations]

Well, I have yet to wipe my phone. I decided to delete a few apps. It turns out that GoSMS was the culprit. Once I deleted that i was able to activate the bluetooth and still have a useable phone. Since that I time deleted my car from my phone and vice versa and then reintroduced them. While i still have the same problem as before, I've noticed that it just seems to take an extremely long time before i can press the call button in my car without it saying "Downloading Phonebook." It's as if it's just taking a very long time to download the phonebook. So, today i went through my list of contacts, linked them together and deleted the ones that were no longer needs. Found some from over 10 years ago.. Wow. I still have the same problem though. So, tomorrow i guess i'll be wiping that sucker and starting from square one now that i've elimated everything else that i can think of.

 

[grandebob]

I've heard some stories that a corrupted contact can cause some issues with phone book downloading. don't remember where/when/why I heard that, but if you wipe your phone, and it doesn't solve your issue, wipe it again and set up a new gmail account with no contacts in it and see what happens.

So GoSMS was causing your phone to be slugish whenever BT was enabled?

 

[illadelphatic]

I have bluetooth issues too, but it might be related to the reciever. My car kit works flawlessly, but I use a crappy bluetooth reciever at work plugged into an aux jack. It doesnt give anyone else issues at work, but when I connect to it, the audio cuts out/skips every 10 secs or so. If I switch to phone speaker, the skipping stops (I'm on pandora) so I dont think its a streaming issue. It really annoys the hell out of me (and everyone else) when my music skips.

 

[grandebob]

I have bluetooth issues too, but it might be related to the reciever. My car kit works flawlessly, but I use a crappy bluetooth reciever at work plugged into an aux jack. It doesnt give anyone else issues at work, but when I connect to it, the audio cuts out/skips every 10 secs or so. If I switch to phone speaker, the skipping stops (I'm on pandora) so I dont think its a streaming issue. It really annoys the hell out of me (and everyone else) when my music skips.

Why not just plug your phone into the aux jack?

 

[TonyLibations]

Alright, I finally wiped my phone yesterday. Thanks Big D5 for telling me about AppBrain. That made everything a fricken breeze! It was soo easy, infact, that i might just wipe my phone every few months just to clear it of all the crap that i put on there that i don't really need. Then add back only the items that are actually necessary.

As far as the bluetooth dilemma. After wiping my Evo Shift i deleted it from my car's memory and then reintroduced them. I think there must've been a corrupt contact in the phonebook as grandebob mentioned. Now, once they Connect i press the call button on the steering wheel and it says 'Downloading Phonebook.." just like before. However, unlike before it actually finishes the job and is ready to use after about a minute. I just have to exercise a little patience as my Phonebook contains about a brazilian contacts.

Thanks again everyone!

 

[grandebob]

Alright, I finally wiped my phone yesterday. Thanks Big D5 for telling me about AppBrain. That made everything a fricken breeze! It was soo easy, infact, that i might just wipe my phone every few months just to clear it of all the crap that i put on there that i don't really need. Then add back only the items that are actually necessary.

As far as the bluetooth dilemma. After wiping my Evo Shift i deleted it from my car's memory and then reintroduced them. I think there must've been a corrupt contact in the phonebook as grandebob mentioned. Now, once they Connect i press the call button on the steering wheel and it says 'Downloading Phonebook.." just like before. However, unlike before it actually finishes the job and is ready to use after about a minute. I just have to exercise a little patience as my Phonebook contains about a brazilian contacts.

Thanks again everyone!

Glad to see things are working out for you. If you want an easy way to look at your contacts, you can export them from gmail (or most other places) into a CSV file. Then use excel to massage that file until you find the one with bad data. It might be as simple as a space in a field with no other text or numbers. It might be a foreign character. It will be much easier to see and fix via excel. Then just save the CSV file and import it back into gmail or wherever.

good luck.
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