Bad Bluetooth range. Where is Antenna?

[sageuvagony]

I have both an 8100 and an 8120. I bought brand new black housings for both phones, each from different sellers. I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem though.

The Bluetooth range is great on my 8100 but the Bluetooth range is horrible on my 8120. The I could be listening to music on my Bluetooth Motorola Stereo headphones on the 8100 and walk across the house and still get great reception to my headphones. The phone can be on 1 corner of the house and my headphones on the other corner, and reception is perfect.

On my 8120, I can't move the phone more than 1 1/2 to 2 feet away without it going in and out. These headphones use the A2DP profile for music.

The reason I mention new housings is because I notice the housings have some sort of antenna on them on the bottom of the phone. Not sure what antenna it's for though. Wifi maybe? Cell tower antenna? Bluetooth? All of them? I get very very good cell phone and wifi reception so I'm not sure what's going on. I could try putting on the old housing but I'm a bit lazy at the moment. Blah maybe tomorrow.

Anyone know where the Bluetooth antenna is?

[sageuvagony]

PROBLEM SOLVED!!! WOOHOO!!


Just thought I would mention that I have fixed my issue a few hours ago. Hopefully this can help others as well. I've been dealing with this bluetooth problem for months now, always unable to move ANY other bluetooth device away from my phone (Pearl 8120) more than a foot or 2 without it crackling or losing the connection. Tonight I was trying to transfer files from my 8120 to my PC, but the range/connection issue enraged me to the point to where I almost threw my phone across the room.

I remembered, that before I switched to my brand new housing, everything was fine. Because of this, I came to thinking that the antennas must be located on the housing itself and not the circuit board and that maybe there was something wrong with the new antennas, or that there was a pin/contact issue. My plan was to re-use the back half of my old housing to fix the issue.

Once I took the phone apart again, I realized that there many areas (pressure pin contacts) that the circuit board makes contact with on the back/antenna half of the housing. What I did was, I bent all of the pressure pins (on the circuit board) UPWARDS so that when you go to clip down the housing with the antennas, the pressure pins push against the antenna contacts much harder. I also made sure to clean them. I hope I'm making sense.

I proceed turn on the phone, pair it with my PC to use my PC as audio speakers for the BB (advance audio,) start to play a song on the pearl, start hearing the song play on my PC speakers, then start to walk away from the PC with the Pearl 8120 in my hand, and notice that the song is still playing through my PC! I was literally able to walk to the other corner of my house while the Bluetooth connection continued to work wonderfully!! I was so incredibly happy!!

I then tried the newer half of the housing that didn't work, and whadoyaknow!!! It works!!!! It seems that since the newer housing is aftermarket, there were some imperfections that affected the shape. I noticed that the gold contacts on the newer aftermarket housing were a bit more recessed (indented a bit more) therefor, the pressure pins weren't making good contact with the antenna contacts. I wish I would have taken pics while doing this fix. I really don't feel like taking this phone apart again since it's working perfectly now.....BUT!!!!! I'll still do ya'll a nice favor.

Since I don't feel like taking apart my 8120 again, I'm going to take apart my 8100 and take pics of the pins on that phone. It should be similar, though there may be less pins/contacts/antennas on the 8100 since the 8100 doesn't have wifi. That shouldn't matter though since all you need to do anyway is to slightly bend up ANY pins you see on your 8120 circuit board. I think I counted about 8 pins I had to bend up. If I were you though, I'd try to leave the camera flash pressure pins alone unless those aren't making contact either. I'll have the pics up in about 10 to 20 minutes.

w00t!!

[Leadfinger]

Well done Sageuvagony.

I had exactly the same problem as you and solved it as well by doing a similar thing.
My chassis layer was that badly damaged, so I reverted back to it and just replaced the other components. I bent up all the pins like you suggested though, and now I have a great range and connection with my Bluetooth signal.

Thanks for posting your recommendation.