Mrs. ExGMan complained for three days that her Verizon Palm Treo 700wx had stopped pairing with the E60. I tried everything to get it to pair...'phone off...BT in phone off...BT in E60 off...turned everything on...nothing happening. iDrive menu said the 'phone was still on the top of the list, but the car would not recognize the 'phone. Finally, Mrs. ExGMan pulled out her Motorola BT earpiece and turned it on to see if the 'phone would recognize it. Mirabile Dictu! The activation of the BT earpiece (normally never used in the E60) somehow convinced the car's BT to recognize the 'phone. She turned off the earpiece power and the Treo stayed connected to the car...and we made a call to test it.

I have no explanation for this (perhaps someone else has one), but maybe the information will help somone else.

 

Are you sure the phone wasn't paired to the earpiece the whole time it wasn't pairing with the car? Maybe when she turned the earpiece on, she really turned it off which dropped the pairing and freed up the phone to allow it to finally pair to the car?

 

That was my first thought, but the earpiece was definitely off when she pulled it out of her pocketbook (this was on Sunday evening, and it had been sitting in there unused, for sure since Friday). When she activated the earpiece power, the blue light on the side of the unit came on...and the BMW iDrive screen lit up with her address book. The little phone icon and antenna/power indicator icon came on at the same time. I know it doesn't make sense, but it happened that way. She then turned off the BT earpiece, but the BMW/Treo pairing remained. I will try to replicate this by asking her to pair the earpiece to the 'phone here in the house (the car's in the apt. garage 150' below us), and see if the same conditions exist.

 

Then it sounds as if it was just a fluke/quirk in the Treo. That's one of the reasons I'm happy I switched from Palm to the BlackBerry. After using Palms since their inception, I switched to BB and am constantly amazed at how much better the BB works -- not only in hardware but in user interface too!

 

I thoroughly agree regarding the BB. Mrs. ExGMan's IT person told her that the BB would not work with their email system, thus the Treo700wx was the only so-called smartphone which could be used. Seems to me like it's compromised in so many ways that it's hardly worth the price, frustration, etc. Just one example is the number of machinations required to get even a few 'phone book entries to display on the iDrive screen.

 

It sounds to me like the IT person is misinformed -- unless they're using some heavy proprietary mail system or protocol because the BB usually can do whatever the others can do and more...

 

I never tested the 700wx but I did test the 700w and it paired consistently although we found the voice quality iffy.

The Treo 680 did very well in our tests by comparison.

I have been told the test report should be online later this week.