News

Naviplay Bluetooth - "works with all phones." Except...

Buy the Naviplay stereo headset, and free your iPod from wires. Well, yes; it works, say users - but as long as you only use it for your iPod. Whatever you do, do NOT attempt to connect it as recommended, to a Bluetooth phone.

If you do, you're on your own. Neither Sony Ericsson, nor Ten Technology can help you. We've tried...

AS you can see on this diagram, the makers of Naviplay, Ten Technology, do specifically say that you can use this as a Bluetooth headset for your phone. That makes sense - who'd want to carry two Bluetooth headsets around, one for voice calls, and the other for music?

The trouble is, Ten doesn't know which phones. It says "all Bluetooth phones" but when a NewsWireless reader tried the trick, it turned out not to work.

The disappointed customer wrote to Naviplay tech support: " Got my Bluetooth Naviplay and the iPod link works like a dream. But connecting it to the phone seems to be a different issue," he wrote. "I can go through the entire pairing process without any apparent issues. The phones (Sony Ericsson P900, T610 and S700i) all pair with it but seem to be unable to connect to it post pairing."

Kristen Regelein, Customer Experience manager, offered new firmware: "The naviPlay firmware with cell phone support which you can download from our site does support cell phone function. The Sony Ericsson is one phone that has issues."

After a very long conversation, our reader managed to load the firmware, re-load the firmware, then re- pair the phone and headset, and found that "it works for music, but not for voice." Ten's response was that they did not have a compatibility list, but "definite incompatibles are Sony Ericsson- so far  models that we have tested: Sony Ericsson: t610, t630, p800, p900." To that, our reader can add the K700i.

Sony Ericsson's technical support says that the problem has to be a Ten problem. "The K700i is the most advanced Bluetooth phone in the world," said an official, when contacted by NewsWireless. "We're even supporting streaming protocols that aren't official yet, in Bluetooth. If something won't work with that, it's faulty - sorry, I can't help beyond that."