iPhone 4, iOS4.1 and Nokia 616 Bluetooth Compatibility Problems

Steve Morgan — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:56:00 GMT

I've posted previously about iPhone compatibility with the Nokia 616 Bluetooth car kit and made a few updates along the way. But having regressed in terms of compatibility with the iPhone 4, I thought I'd break out a separate post.

You'll find the previous post here.

Today, iTunes offered me the latest iOS version 4.1 for my iPhone 4. Among the release notes I was pleased to see "Bluetooth improvements". I was keen to see if Apple had addressed the issues that, having been resolved with the iPhone 3g and 3gs, were now plaguing the iPhone 4. So, I let iTunes do its thing and ventured out to the car to check.

On connecting to the phone, the car kit asked me the question it always asks (because it's never worked previously): "Download contacts?". I hit the green button and waited a few seconds. The display on the Nokia 616 displayed "Downloading" and a progress bar. Then, the Bluetooth connection was dropped and the display changed to "Download not supported". These are the same symptoms that I've had since upgrading to the iPhone 4.

To be on the safe side, I deleted the Bluetooth pairing from both the car kit and the phone, then set them up again from scratch. On attempting to download the contacts, I had exactly the same error.

The long and the short is that the problem still isn't fixed. You get prompted to download contacts every time the phone connects and you can only dial by using voice dialling (which works fine over Bluetooth) or using the keypad (which is dangerous on the move). I do wish they'd sort it out. Handsets come and go, but having a car kit fitted is a longer term commitment and having cracked the problem with the iPhone 3g/3gs it's a real disappointment to see it return with the iPhone 4.

As ever, I'll keep you updated if I learn more or until I change the car!

iPhone 3G works with Nokia 616 car kit

Steve Morgan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:33:00 GMT

Well, that came as something of a surprise!

I finally got round to pensioning off my Nokia N70 last week and replacing it with an iPhone 3G. Now, I'm no disciple of all things Apple, but the iPhone appealed to me for a number of basic reasons; it does lots of things that I like, it does them mostly quite well and it looks nice.

There were two potential deal-breakers for me, though. The first was that I didn't want an iPhone unless it supported 3G; of course, Apple addressed that with the launch of the iPhone 3G. The second, I was much more sceptical about. It had to work with the Nokia 616 handsfree kit in my car. Now, it was reasonable for me to be sceptical. Firstly, the Nokia 616 doesn't seem to play very well with many of Nokia's own phones! It was only a couple of weeks ago that I managed to get the contacts from my N70 downloaded onto the 616. People who had tried the original iPhone with the 616 had had no success at all, from what I could find. Given that there was still plenty of (perfectly justified) moaning about the Bluetooth implementation on the iPhone 3G, I had no reason to believe that would be any different.

The only practical way for me to find out was to take the car to my local O2 shop and get one of the sales staff to try it. So I did. It took a while but eventually we managed to pair the phone and the car kit. However, it wouldn't download the contacts. Given that the iPhone doesn't support voice dialling, it meant that there was no way you could legally make a call while on the move, but receiving them was no problem at all. That was near enough for me, so I signed the paperwork and walked out with an 8GB model.

After some more faffing about later on, I was shocked to find that when I paired my own phone to the 616, it downloaded the contacts quite successfully.

It would be nice if voice dialling was supported, but other than that, it's working great.

So, I've had a week of fun with my new toy and I'm very, very impressed. I can't wait to see what Apple do with the next version!

EDIT: I upgraded to the 3GS in July 2009 and I'm pleased to report that it also works just fine.

EDIT: So far, not so much luck with the iPhone 4. See the comment, below, from June 27th 2010 for more details.

EDIT: iOS 4.1 doesn't fix the problem with the iPhone 4. To avoid clutter, I've split the iPhone 4 content into another post here.

Steve Morgan - Technology Spot : handsfree

iPhone 4, iOS4.1 and Nokia 616 Bluetooth Compatibility Problems

iPhone 3G works with Nokia 616 car kit