Test Rig:
Laptop: Acer 5022WLMi + Windows Vista Ultimate
Phone: Samsung i780 + Windows Mobile6 Pro
| 1. DONGLE |
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Start with checking that your Bluetooth connection is the latest version. This is critical if you are running Windows Vista on your laptop, but not as important if you are running Windows XP. If you are running Windows XP then click here for advice on how to deal with XP as opposed to Vista. The Acer laptop I use does not have built in Bluetooth, and I am running Windows Vista, so the first step was to buy a Bluetooth dongle. The one I selected was the Anycom USB200, which I bought on Amazon. Follow the instructions and install the drivers and then the dongle. This is critical if your are using Vista – if you are using XP the install will work normally… |
| 2. PHONE |
| In the Bluetooth settings on the Samsung i780, you will see a dialogue box with 4 tabs (Devices-Mode-COM ports-FTP) – all phones/PDA’s with Bluetooth will have similar options – somewhere! – even if they are running Symbian rather than Windows Mobile6. |
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| MODE – Set Bluetooth ON – make the device VISIBLE to others |
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| FTP – Tick all the following boxes o Bluetooth authentication o File transfer authentication o Able to write o Shared folder = \My Documents |
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Now select Internet Sharing and you will see two drop down boxes: Now select “Connect” and you should be given a confirmation that the process has succeeded.. “Device setup finished. On the PC connect Bluetooth PAN” So this is showing that you “connect” the phone to a PAN (personal area network) first before connecting the laptop to the phone…. |
| 3. LAPTOP |
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| Assuming your Bluetooth dongle is installed and setup correctly on your laptop, you should see the Bluetooth icon in your task bar.
Right click on the icon and select “Join a Personal Area Network” |
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| You should see a box that displays your phone as an icon and also confirmation that it is acting as… o Network Access Point o Bluetooth NAP Service ….Click on Connect |
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| You should now see the network icon in you task bar jump into life … – hover over the icon and it should display the name of the network (PAN) it is connected to and show that access is “local and internet” |
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Launch your browser or email client – you should be able to access the internet at about 1Mb/s … in the London area this may even exceed 2Mb/sec – that’s higher than some people get on their wired broadband after contention with everyone else sharing the line!…but for our purposes I am assuming you are in a less well served marina or along the coast somewhere. |
While you are browsing the phone can still receive calls and SMS text messages and will operate as normal. I have found that certain operations disrupt internet sharing such as having an alarm set in my diary which goes off – this seems to stop the phone doing anything until the alarm is cleared.
If you are going to browse the internet for a while – say 15 mins or more I would advise plugging the phone power charger in to keep the batteries topped up – Bluetooth is very draining on the phone’s battery.