Like a lot of people on this forum I cannot decide to buy a 9500 or 9300. I do not care about the camera but my ideal phone is the 9300 with WiFi. I am planning on buying a 9300 and Bluetooth Access Point to plug into my LAN with the intention of accessing email & web via bluetooth/LAN/Broadband. Has anyone attempted this? Do I need a special Bluetooth Access Point to support the Bluetooth profiles supported by the 9300?
Connecting 9300 to LAN via Bluetooth Access Point
Firstly, the 9300 doesn't have WiFI. That leaves Serial/ Infrared / GSM, GPRS and Bluetooth for network connections.
I have a 9500 and can tell you there seems to be no means of connecting it to a network via bluetooth as the connection settings in the control panel don't even allow it as a choice. You can use IP Passthrough via a serial cable, however, manipulating bluetooth on the phone to emulate a serial cable would probably require 3rd party software. It seems the sole purpose of bluetooth on a Nokia 9500 is for pairing it to other devices such as headsets, although, I believe it can be paired for synchronisation too, which would be slow for file transfers and is limited to PC suites bluetooth version compatibilty. I have a PC dongle whose software cannot be upgraded to a version of bluetooth drivers acceptible to PC suite. I can however, use the bluetooth software provided with the dongle to transfer files, which I find much better than using PC Suite / USB cable anyway.
Obviously, the 9300 lacking a WiFi card may well have a more extensive use for bluetooth, but 9500 firmware seems to assume that a WiFi connection will always be used, therefore Bluetooth -> PC -> internet connections would never be needed.
As I work in an office that lacks WiFi and my sync cable is at home, I find this one limitation rather dissapointing as I am sat here with a bluetooth enabled PC with a high speed internet connection, yet I have to connect to the web for email, via a GPRS connection that costs me money. More dissapointing because I was given a Nokia Ngage which I easily setup to do this very thing and wrongly assumed a more advanced device, coming from the same manufacturer and touted for its connectivity, the 9500 would at least have the same functionality.
Before you buy a 9300, check you can use IP Passthrough / bluetooth networking first.