Opening Up

Android Doesn’t Support Bluetooth Dialing

Well, in my first Aha! moment - three days into my switch from Blackberry to Android - I’ve come across a pretty significant piece of information. I took for granted that any of today’s smartphones would support Bluetooth headset voice dialing. Amazingly, Android 2.1 does not!

Issue 1412 for Android on Google Code has been gathering complaints on this issue since December of 2008 and as of today nothing has been done about it. I use my phone about 5% of the time for voice and 95% for data so this isn’t a deal-breaker for me. But there are plenty of upset people posting on the aforementioned page that they took their phone back to the store because of this singular issue.

In California,

 23123 (a) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving.

I’m not sure if I take that to mean you can’t touch your phone at all while driving or that you just can’t talk on it while holding it to your ear. My first idea is to pick up a mount for the car that holds the phone up. This would offer the ability to touch the Voice Dialing application easily and also prep the phone to act as a GPS through Google Maps. I haven’t tried that feature yet…