cell/mobile phone has to be added as an input device to be used as a Bluetooth remote control

[Simon Ruggier]

I've managed to get my cellular phone (a Sony-Ericsson z520) working as a remote input device, but in order to get it working, I had to:
Open Bluetooth preferences
Select the service tab
Select the input service
Click the add button under the list of input devices
Click on the "show all devices checkbox"
Select my phone to be added

Once this is done, I can successfully initiate a remote control session from the phone's UI. If I remove my phone from the list of input devices, then attempt to initiate a session, the phone says it is connecting, then that it's "connecting remote control", and then it fails there. It would be better if this worked without needing to add the phone to a list of input devices before making an attempt.

[Luke Faraone (lfaraone)]

Triage recommendation: Wishlist

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

The experience should be greatly improved here with BlueZ 4.x. It won't be improving from the current situation however any time soon. Retry it in intrepid and see what you think now.

[komputes (komputes)]

I have a Sony Ericson Z520a as well. I can confirm this bug in bluez 4.51 on Ubuntu 9.10 and 10.04LTS Lucid Lynx Alpha. I would like to request it to be fixed in upcoming versions (if possible, it would be nice to have a solud BT stack for the LTS release). The issue is that I cannot start bluetooth remote control service from the phone.

Process which works:
-BT Menu > Setup new device
-Select phone, phone gets message "Add to my devices?",enter pin
-Phone prompts: <host> requesting access to your phone as a remote control -> Yes

What doesn't work:
-From phone, go to bluetooth "My devices"
-Select <host> and then show services

Result:
Error is displayed on phone "Service supported: no local services found"

Expecting:
Either one of these would be good:
1) Find out why you cannot start a service from the phone and fix it
2) Have a way to prompt the phone to be a remote from the BT applet & Preferences window

Currently, every time I want to use the phone as a mouse/remote-control I must remove it from BT > Preferences, and use the "BT Menu > Setup new device" wizard.

[Andrea Caminiti (nrayever)]

I have this issue too. I try to use my Nokia N810 as a bluetooth keyboard but if really difficult to set it up. Is there any other way to this easily? If you need some more information for me, just let me know.

Regards, Andrea.

[Konrad Zapałowicz (kzapalowicz)]

This is reported against an old version of Ubuntu and many things has changed since then. Because of that we won't fix this issue however if this behavior repeats on a modern version please fill a bug report against it and we will take it from there.