Windows Bluetooth driver for S III?

[clh42]

Okay, am I the only person that wants to bluetooth pair my phone with my Windows computer? I've searched all over the place and can't find hardly any posts on any forum anywhere about this. The very few I did find have generic answers, none of which work (it's like the people who try to answer have no actual experience with the S III and are just throwing out general bluetooth tips).

So I want to pair my brand new Samsung Galaxy S III (Sprint, Jelly Bean) with my computer (Windows 7, tried both 32-bit and 64-bit, no luck on either). It goes through the bluetooth pairing process, makes the initial pairing, the phone shows up in the bluetooth devices list, but then Windows shows it's usual "Installing drivers" message box, then after a minute or so says it failed. If I look in Device Manager I have two "Bluetooth Periperal Device" items listed under "Other devices", and both have the yellow triangle with the exclamation point on them.

I've checked Samsung's web site and they have USB drivers, but no bluetooth Windows drivers. I have Samsung Kies installed on the computer and the phone does connect via USB just fine, but I can not get it to connect via Bluetooth becuase of this missing driver.

IS there a Bluetooth driver for the S III for Windows? If not, why not? This was a standard function in my 4 year old Windows Mobile 6.0 phone. Don't tell me they've taken a step backwards in basic phone functionality in the last 4 years.

 

[WAWood8]

The BT driver on your PC is NOT for your phone; instead, it is for the BT feature on your PC. And ... that is tied to the specific BT hardware you have either resident on the PC motherboard, or on a BT card/dongle that you have connected to your PC.

I would first look through Device Manager to see what it says in terms of BT devices.

 

[silentwitness]

Can i ask why you need to connect the phone to the pc via bluetooth? I mean what exactly are you trying to do?

 

[clh42]

The BT driver on your PC is NOT for your phone; instead, it is for the BT feature on your PC.

I appreciate the response, but yes, I know that. I'm an IT PC support person myself so I know exactly how the drivers work. But sometimes a separate driver can be required on top of that for the device itself. Take USB for example. You have drivers for the USB controller on the PC, and many devices are recognized by the computer without extra drivers (flash drives, hard drives, etc.), but there are still separate USB drivers for the Galaxy S III phone itself to be recognized properly once it's plugged in to the USB port. I didn't know for sure, but I thought it could be the same thing with Bluetooth. It made sense that Windows had built in support for my old Windows Mobile phone (all Microsoft) but might not have built-in drivers for other devices.

Can i ask why you need to connect the phone to the pc via bluetooth? I mean what exactly are you trying to do?

Mostly I want PAN for teathering, and then file browsing. I know there are other ways to do both of these things, but I find it convenient do over Bluetooth. (If I'm copying a large amount of data, then I'll dig out the USB cable, but if I just need a quick copy, it's easier to do via Bluetooth.)


All that said...

After several more hours and a few more searches of various different combinations of terms (after the several hours I spent searching and trying several suggested solutions I had found in various searches before I posted this original question) I finally got it working. Ultimately it was a driver issue with the drivers for the Bluetooth on the computer, but there was more to it that also made it more complicated to figure out.

If anyone reading this wants more detail on what I figured out, read on. Otherwise you can probably skip the rest of this.

First, I STILL SEE the unknown "Bluetooth Peripheral Device" items (I actually see 3 of them) in Device Manager, but it works in general even with that. (I never found any drivers specific for the Galaxy S III). So I just had to learn that if everything else worked per the next two issues, then just let these unknown devices go.

Secondly, it essentially ended up being a driver issue with the Bluetooth drivers for my computer, but figuring that out wasn't as easy as it sounds. I had tried 2 different computers with the same result on both of them originally (I got the unknown Bluetooth Peripheral Device items with nothing else). The manufacturer of the computers (HP) did not have any newer drivers for the two models of computer posted on their web site. (Two different models, but both HP computers.) I had tried installing the generic WIDCOMM drivers directly from Broadcom (the HP laptops do have Broadcom Bluetooth hardware) based on one search result, but it would not instal on the HP laptops. BUT based on a suggestion I found in another search, I looked for Bluetooth drivers for one of the latest models of HP laptops, found a much more current one there, and just tried it on my 2 laptops. Sure enough that driver installed and worked. I was then able to pair the phone and, while I still got the unknown generic "Bluetooth Peripheral Device" items, I now also got other valid Bluetooth profile devices (hands free, bluetooth audio, Object push, etc.). BUT I didn't get ALL the profiles that I though I should, which leads to the next paragraph.

Lastly, apparently the Galaxy S III doesn't have a few Bluetooth profiles built in to it by itself. I was missing PAN (for Bluetooth teathering) and file browsing. I already have a PAN tehering app, but I didn't realize I had to actually start it up before the phone would advertise the PAN profile to the computer (my old Windows Mobile phone just always advertised all of it's Bluetooth profiles whether they were currently turned on or not). Then, after more searching I found that apparently the SIII (and maybe all Android phones?) doesn't have any Bluetooth file browsing capability built in at all, and I had to download an app to enable that, so I got "Bluetooth File Transfer" by Medieval Software off of the Play store.

 

[john_g]

I don't know whether my issue is the same as yours, but Bluetooth used to work fine for me but, after updating yesterday to Jellybean 4.1.2 (which included a Kies update on my PC), it stopped working. I've found that there is a new Kies update (21/12/2012) which has reinstalled all the drivers and now everything is working correctly again.