iPhone’s Bluetooth is dumb, purposely crippled or both?





Did you know that there are roughly twenty-five Bluetooth profiles? iPhone only supports the Hands-Free Profile (HFP) and Headset Profile (HSP). You’ve heard my bellyache over the lack of support for Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP). If supported, these two profiles would stream music wirelessly from the iPhone to any supported Bluetooth headsets (i.e. Etymotic ety8) or wireless HiFi speakers (i.e. Com One Bluetooth Speaker System). Well, I’m back again with another Bluetooth bitch session.

Parrot Digital Photo Viewer

Parrot finally sent me their new 7-inch Photo Viewer. Nearly every single Bluetooth-enabled phone on the market supports the Basic Imaging Profile (BIP), File Transfer Profile (FTP), and Object Push Profile (OPP). Guess what? iPhone can’t send images to the Photo Viewer. Why? Because iPhone’s Bluetooth is either extremely dumb, crippled or both.

http://www.myitablet.com/media/parrot-photo-viewer.flv

While I’m on the subject, not that I would ever want to use dial-up networking over EDGE, iPhone doesn’t support the Dial-Up Networking Profile (DUN).

Am I alone or are you pretty p----d off too?

iPhone Support:

Hands-Free Profile (HFP)
Headset Profile (HSP)

iPhone Does Not Support:

Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP)
Basic Imaging Profile (BIP)
Basic Printing Profile (BPP)
Cordless Telephony Profile (CTP)
Device ID Profile (DID)
Dial-up Networking Profile (DUN)
Fax Profile (FAX)
File Transfer Profile (FTP)
General Audio/Video Distribution Profile (GAVDP)
Generic Access Profile (GAP)
Generic Object Exchange Profile (GOEP)
Human Interface Device Profile (HID)
Intercom Profile (ICP)
Object Push Profile (OPP)
Personal Area Networking Profile (PAN)
Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP)
Serial Port Profile (SPP)
Service Discovery Application Profile (SDAP)
SIM Access Profile (SAP,SIM)
Synchronisation Profile (synch)
Video Distribution Profile (vdp)
Wireless Application Protocol Bearer (WAPB)

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148 Responses to “iPhone’s Bluetooth is dumb, purposely crippled or both?”

  1. Russybaby says:

    I got the iphone just before Christmas and although the bluetooth picture swapping is a prob, if it was that important I’d download/upload pics from itunes on my PC to the phone.

    The camera doesn’t have a flash unlike my crappy LG Renoir which did produce excellent photos so if I go out at night, guess what…I take a compact digital camera!

    Other than this I ADORE my iphone 3gs and can’t put it down.

    Message to whoever comes up with a “bluetooth to other mobiles pic sharing” App……..you’re gonna make s***loadsa cash launching this!!!

  2. Debs says:

    I’m loving the iPhone but believe Apple have deliberately crippled the bluetooth functions. I can understand they don’t want us swapping music files…but come on…photos too?? And why no flash? Even the standard blackberry has a perfectly functional flash. Play the game Apple…!

  3. Stina says:

    So i wanted to send a friend of mine pictures from my iphone to her iphone. she could connect to me but i couldn’t connect to her. so i go to the att store where i bought my iphone only to be told iphone doesn’t support that feature? wtf kinda shit is that!? yes i’m totally pissed off too. except what doesn’t make sense is she has the 3G i have the stunning new 3GS… the difference? mine takes video..YIPPEE! so why does hers suck less than mine when it comes to bluetooth?… the world may never know. |:

  4. Vinicius says:

    Man, this is the biggest demonstration of disrespect with consumers that i ever seen! Apple sucks! What a shame.

  5. paul says:

    I have had very good phones in the past but thought i was going 1 better getting the i phone how wrong i am had i known of apples deliberate disrespect of the consumer regarding bluetooth capabilities and not been tied to a 2yr contract id give the phone back but i loooth to give my num up which ive had to long now come on apple put your consumer first instead of your greed for the all important chase of the pound, dollar euro yen you have corneed the market with the phone and everybody wants them even though the faults give the people what we want decent bluetooth and a better camera …………..

  6. Luke says:

    I used to Bluetooth my kids photos etc to the photo kiosks in the big stores and get good prints very easily but since I have got this restricted big brother iPhone I can’t do this anymore I hate this deliberate disfunction of this phone also you can’t send your friends anything via blutoothbalso you can’t delete songs without connecting to your pc – I am going to sell this phone made by the control freaks at apple ang go back to a good old do anything you want nokia or any other good smart phone I heard the new htc is better than this and you don’t have to have an iPhone to get loads of good apps.final words,if you like your freedom to transfer files etc and many other things without having to connect to your pc so that apple can restrict and keep tabs on everything you do, do not buy an iPhone.

  7. abdulrahman says:

    ihave i phone 3gs
    can i send pic or moive by bluetooth to any kind of mobile
    (sony ericssion.nokia….etc

  8. Oscar says:

    My old LG cell phone would detect my bluetooth earset immediately, every single time. With the iPhone, I have to open the preferences and select my jabra earset every time, because it is never paired automatically. It’s really annoying.

  9. Tony says:

    I just thought id let you all know that i e-mailed Steve Jobs personally approx 2 weeks ago (I have a few useful connections) regarding the iphone bluetooth issues and the mis-selling and mis-representation of said phone ad guess what?
    Ive had no reply at all!

  10. Onge says:

    If you a thinking of buying an Iphone, dont, you will regret it.
    Features that come with other phones you have to pay for with the Iphone later through their “Apps Store”.
    It is very disapointing, you click on what looks like a feature and it says go to the apps store. They have crossed the line I think, its just a promotion/money sucking machine.
    Extreamly disapointing.

  11. Luke says:

    No you CANT blutooth Movies/pics/files etc to any phone because Iphone will not allow you to, all transfers are BLOCKED – this is my main problem with the Iphone.
    Just when you are finishing a party and everyone is tranferring picks to eachother you will be sitting there dumb because you cant send or recieve pics bia bluetooth!!!!!
    iphone has a very bad battery life, and the camera has NO flash, its overpriced for a limited low life phone, the best thing you can do with the Iphone is to sell it and never buy it again,its realy designed for kids who like to play games.

  12. BicyclMan says:

    At least there is an app that transfers any pic to Facebook. I’m looking for a way to transfer pics from a cell phone to my iPod touch so I can send it to Facebook.

  13. MannyR says:

    I brought a Navigon GPS with bluetooth and so far no-go on the handshake. I think because most people are in love with there iPhone that they are willing to give alittle than to part ways with this really cool phone. Still, i think that not allowing the consumer full bluetooth capabilities is wrong. Isn’t bluetooth a basic feature these days anyway? When I purchase the phone I had the warranty pushed on me just to find out that if I dropped it and cracked the glass it was on me.

  14. Mark says:

    I’d like to say that i am happy with my new iphone but i’m not happy with not being able to send pictures via blue tooth to my family’s phones, they can find my blue tooth but i am unable to find them. how crap is that :-( you spend all that money and the only phone you can blue tooth with is another iphone but only if the correct app is downloaded first……. Apple you have made loads of cash on these excellent phones how about sending an update to the phones to allow us to send photo’s????

  15. Jukka says:

    Have had iPhone for a month or so, although the features are quite cool there are serious shortcomings in the phone. One of them is the missing profiles in Bluetooth and that you cannot connect to all other phones and devices. Pretty basic. Also it is very annoying that you cannot set mp3 as ringtones. Yes you can convert them with long procedure, but even then they can play max of 30 seconds. Pretty poor. Also the phone signal strength is quite poor compared to other phones especially to nokias. it is very annoying when you have lot of functionality but no signal. Should I have known these things before getting iPhone I would definitely not enrolled to 24 month contract. I cannot wait next version of nokia n900, apparently later this year. I am sure will beat iPhone thousand times.

  16. sid says:

    The iphone is very resricted, however once the phone is jailbroken its brilliant..

  17. Simon says:

    Apple really suck when it comes to their restrictions… Why the hell do they do it? I have to jailbreak my iPhone just to get bluetooth working properly. Which dumb idiot at Apple decided to turn off all the options in bluetooth? Seriously fire him/her, he’s\She’s too stupid to even get a job sweeping streets!

    Want to send a picture to your iPhone…. No can’t do that…. BIG BROTHER APPLE. You market the phone as a social tool and yet you can’t even share your photos via bluetooth… TOSSERS!

  18. Hoos says:

    Another among the chorus of voices bemoaning Apple’s poor implementation of BT.

    They either should have left it off or at least provided full aural support and picture sharing.

    It’s the one thing that really irks me about the iPhone and Touch.

  19. Grant Burtt says:

    Apple have illegally disbled the open bluetooth on the iPhone so that it can only connect to ertified products also the emerging products move to their protocol. IE they are trying to box every one into their way of thinking. Yes apple iphoner is good in the day time. Apple iphone sucks at night and is a peice of crap when it comes to multimedia email. swapping pictures via bluetooth but if you have email just send via email. But then we stil have network and costs. Apple suck and yes i am P***ed off.

    It is illegal to even call what they have bluetooth wothout all of the bluetooth functionality. they have to make a patch so that it enables all bluetooth functionality otherwise a class action will be launched. you cant sell an item with bluetooth that does not fully support the function as stated in the name of what it is designed to do. look up definition of bluetooth.

  20. ohmygod^^ says:

    oh my god … i just bought my iphone and find out that the bluetooth is not working with other phones . this is an idiot idea to the maker to disable the use of bluetooth. if only i can return the item i will do it immidiately …

  21. scotty says:

    just bought the iphone, assmmed it had full bluetooth capability, talk about your bubble bursting, i was buzzing now im selling, i refuse to be penned in by them, im going back to the nokia 6300 that ive had for years and does everything i need it to, screw you apple

  22. Wugga says:

    Hi very gutted about the bluetooth issues, if I’d known about that prob woulda got a different phone, cmon apple make Bluetooth work !

  23. Good info on cell phone unlocking. I love cell phones and work at a little cell phone shop where we unlock phones and mod them for people. Add http://free-cell-phone-unlock.com to your list of free cell phone unlock sites, I use the downloads there a lot to help me unlock phones for customers, don’t be mad but hey I have to make a living some kinda way!! lol.

    Anyways, I figured you could use that in your bag of tricks too :-)

  24. Michael says:

    I don’t think it was a good play by Apple. I have had my 3Gs for a while and the amount that you CAN’T do is so annoying that I had to jailbreak it. I just couldn’t bear the lack of functionality any more. From a hardware perspective, it’s an extraordinary device, but it has been crippled by Apple. When I bought it, I told myself that I wouldn’t jailbreak it, because I didn’t need to and it violates the T&C, but honestly, the device is almost useless without it. The thing is that jailbreaking is SCARY in how much it opens. 3rd party app stores? I don’t think that’s right. Free, yes. Selling, no. On the other hand, Apple left me with no-one to turn to. I think that if it had been less crippled in the first place, Apple would have kept a lot of custom on its iTunes store.

  25. passant says:

    hay, Im so much into this iphone, i love its touch screen andthe way it looks like, its the most elegant device i had ever seen,

    but idont have it yet, thinking about getting one and let my nokia device, i have a nice nokia touch screen, and thinking of the BB.. so i need your help to take my decision

    1- does it have a bluetooth? can i send, recieve photos or music files with any other phones like nokia or my hp laptop??

    2- does it havedrafts in the messages??

    3- is it mail connected like the BB?? with the same fees???????

    4- where can i get its applications?????

    5- is there an application for it to support this free texting (chatting) service like bb?????

    pls someone has to help me :((

  26. passant says:

    can i get an application for the VPN????????/

  27. Robert Sole says:

    Perhaps it’s just me, but don’t you lot think it would be a good idea to investigate a product BEFORE you buy it?

  28. I would like to say thanks for putting up this website. I just getting in to this will give me a kickstart.

  29. misterb says:

    i love my ipod 64gb
    i love the new ios4, it works ok
    i hate the fact that i cant use previous/next button on
    both nokia bluetooth headset that i have
    (bh405 and bh905)
    both headset have been tested with 36 different phones, all works like a charm, but on my frikkin’ ipod it just won’t do!
    so i’ve seen a program in their app store called bluetooth helper
    and it’s cr*ap! instead of the actual button’s the program works like this:
    next song: press the play/pause button 2 times
    previous song: press the play/pause button 3 times

    is it just me, or are these guys really missing the point here?
    apple: fix your sh*t!!!

    (i do like the fact that the audio quality is improved with the new os…)

  30. Androider says:

    Message to Apple – I am not impressed…

    Yes, iPhone Bluetooth is thoroughly crippled, and yes it is deliberate. Its really only there for control interfaces (headsets etc), and transfers appear limited to sending photos (one at a time) to a bluetooth device.

    Pity I couldn’t connect to anything. I am yet to successfully connect to any usb device. And this is in OS4! Garbage!

    Apple seems to want all file transfers directed through iTunes. We are watching you … You can of course connect to the storage device via your USB connection – as a drive. iTunes however, stores everything in SQLite, in a way inaccessible for standard transfers, and you can’t see the files you store on the drive in the iPhone interface. There isn’t a file manager as in Android, and most other mobile phones for that matter.

    I award the palm to Android – sophisticated, open source, unrestricted and not directed to the almighty money wallet of the very rich directors of Apple Inc. Great to write for too.

    So if you can ignore the prettiness and the hype, make your next smartphone/pad Android, or at least embedded Linux based. True multitasking and all that. Oh, and make your next PC Linux based, if you can. Beats the crap out of the others these days.

    To Robert Sole: that’s a good point, as long as you get a salesman who will admit the limitations of the product – no Apple brochure I ever saw, or salesman I ever listened to did anything but drool over Apple products. Besides, most people don’t know the questions to ask.

    Bottom line – always go to a good forum first and formulate your list of questions, then go see the salespeople.

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  33. Josh says:

    Basically wether im late in and someone has already sAid ibluenova does file transfer or jailbreaking gets the same results

  34. chelsea says:

    i purchased an iphone a few months ago and no being able to bluetooth anything is REALLY messing with my temper. are apple stupid, or trying to rip off customers? someone needs to make a bluetooth app! if they dont i dont know what im gonna do!

  35. Norman says:

    Upgraded to os4 on my 3gs. Wished I hadn’t, now my bluetooth headset is so noisy in use I can voice dial, Can’t hear what the other person is saying & they can’t hear me.

    Apple has made a crap bluetooth feature even worse. With their restrictive control of what we can do with our Iphones it a wonder why people queue up to get the Ipad.

    Can’t wait till my contract expires so I can get a smart phone that works in a smart way.

    Unless this is sorted before the end of the 24 month contract this will be the FIRST & LAST Apple product I EVER get.

    If I can’t revert to the ver. 3 os then I will have to consider Jailbreaking my Iphone to get something that is usable.

  36. husee says:

    could any one help me guys with my i phone becuase when i received
    music files ” photo file i ccan not find it even vedio files
    so if there is someone can tell me why
    i’ll be waiting

  37. Veeru says:

    Very informative Source ur Site is ,it would be a good idea to investigate a product before you buy it? iam bookmarking ur site for reference

  38. wayne says:

    The only way possible for downloading all free apps is by having your iphone jail breaked, once done, you can download any app available, but be warned….. if you jail break your iphone, then you will lose any garuantee and warrenty, that comes with the phone, and apple can check,if anything does ever go wrong with the iphone, they even have ways to see if you have jail breaked your phone…. hence then, no warrenty! but still no chnange on the bluetooth even with jail breaking it.

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