Now I admit that this really doesn’t have something directly to do with Symbian, but what are a Symbian-powered handset without the convenient ability to synchronize your contacts, transfer files and most importantly backup your data to a computer. This is where accessories such as the Atomic Pico bluetooth dongle come in. This dongle is said to be the the world’s smallest out there and it definitely got me curious. Does being so small have any disadvantages or is this a must have accessory?
Let’s first look at some of the specifications listed up from the Mobilefun website about this product. It supports A2DP, that is streaming music over bluetooth, secure pairing and encryption of devices. The most important ones are that no drivers are needed for basic operations, plug ‘n’ play support with Windows XP (Service Pack 2), Vista and Windows 7. Of the following operating systems it support all newer versions of Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X. No word is mentioned about it being compatible for Linux users, so unfortunately as usual these users are left out.
The packaging comes in a small blisterpack and displays the bluetooth dongle in all its glory with a paper mentioning all the different devices you can connect to, a big heading that says “Plug and Forget”, and two pictures of Windows Operating Systems on the bottom right.
There is not much content inside the package and you won’t find any thick instruction manual here. What you get is the Atomic Pico bluetooth dongle and a software CD containing the Bluesoleil software. As you can see the dongle is really small and it’s just slightly bigger than the hole on the CD, very nice.
Without any further ado, I plugged the dongle into my laptop and it didn’t stick too much out at all. The black part is just enough to pull it out and that’s it. Now saying that no drivers are needed is partially true as the plug n’ play process is in fact a driver installation, but you don’t need to install any other drivers besides that. Out of the box and plugged in, it was detected.
Now trying to pair my phone, this wasn’t as simple as the first part as I couldn’t find any software to use it to do so. I therefore was forced to use the included CD to install the software. After that it went a bit better.
Launching up the Bluesoleil software I was finally able to detect my N97 and pair my laptop with the handset and the three icons displays what kind of protocols it supports.
After looking around in the Bluesoleil application some more, I was finally able to browse the different drives on my N97. Trying to copy files to and from the handset went partially as the application without any notice would suddenly stop the transfer. That being said, I do have a laptop with bluetooth built in and this was more than likely the cause for my lousy experience. To confirm that I went to a friend who runs Windows Vista on his computer and plugged it in. This time I was able to get the bluetooth icon appearing and upon pairing with my N97 his computer asked for permission for driver installations that were able to recognize my N97. So on a Vista machine the plug and play works flawless.
Overall while most of the setup process goes well, you have to install the software included in the CD to be able to use the extra functions provided by the Atomic Pico bluetooth dongle. Basic functions such as pairing your handset to the computer and transfer of files works great out of the box.
Worth mentioning is also that this is definitely not something you would want if you already have built-in bluetooth on your computer as this may cause confusion to the operating system. Now you might ask why you would do that and the answer is that perhaps your built in one has a very weak signal. For those of you who don’t have built-in bluetooth and looking for a dongle, this one is the smallest out there and you can almost plug it in and forget about it. I wasn’t able to test this on a Mac, because I simply don’t own one. However a review I found over at Gadgetoid says that it works very well.
You can get the Atomic Pico Bluetooth Dongle from Mobilefun for around $15. Do you go for the wireless option when syncing your phone or transfering files or do you still stick to the old cable connection?
