Bluetooth

[dave123456]

Evening,

I’ve got a number of Bluetooth devices, most of which connect to my phone.

Some of them seem to have an inbuilt obsolescence, where they just stop working. Others refuse to connect to certain phones.

To give 2 examples I have a small pioneer desktop speaker that was my saviour during COVID, working from home would have finished me without it. It also worked well as a telephone speaker so I could have calls without holding my phone. Fast forward 4 years. It can’t be found on an (admittedly new) phone so is useless.

I have a pair of headphones that will work on my personal phone but my work phone won’t connect. And another (different Sony) speaker that will connect to my work phone but not my personal phone.

I’ve tried forgetting the device on my phone but is there something more fundamental that I’m missing?

TIA

[Mr E]

Bluetooth by design is backward compatible. I’d expect older stuff to work.

Do you mean it was connected and now it’s not, or do you mean when you try to put the device in discoverable mode and pair the device from scratch the phone doesn’t find it?

[dapprman]

Also you might have to factory reset them as they may already have too many paired connections. I assume BT can cope with far more than in the old days but I remember having headphones and a car speaker that would only pair with two things,

[dave123456]

Mr E said:

Bluetooth by design is backward compatible. I’d expect older stuff to work.

Do you mean it was connected and now it’s not, or do you mean when you try to put the device in discoverable mode and pair the device from scratch the phone doesn’t find it?

The second. So it was connected to whatever iPhone I had in 2020 and my newer phone can’t the speaker when it’s in pairing mode.

[eeLee]

some cheaper BT accessories need you to de-pair the device previously connected to be able to connect a new one.
those might allow a connection when the previous device is not connected to it.

I have some really crappy speakers that behave like this.

[McGee_22]

Both the answers above could be true, the maximum number of devices and the having to disconnect the previously connected device. Bluetooth can be fantastic but the protocols written in the older devices aren’t intuitive or in anyway intelligent.

[dave123456]

Thank you. Is there a ‘standard’ way to depair? I’ve probably lost the instructions for most of them.