I’ve always found it maddening that whenever a Windows laptop is woken, it auto connects to Bluetooth speakers, often causing the iOS or Android phone that was playing something at the time to pause, or add phantom issues to the connection.
Other than unpairing the speaker, I can’t see a way to prevent this happening, although years ago I bought my mum a Ruark R1 radio which allowed Bluetooth device connections to be managed easily on the speaker. (our current one isn’t that fancy).
Does anyone know of any Bluetooth device manager software out there that replaces the Windows default and allows for proper connection selection and control?
I assume this bugs plenty of knowledgeable folk and developers too!
Ha, how silly of me not to realise that - must go out and buy a pair of bluetooth headphones and a speaker for every PC and phone in the household immediately to mitigate shoddy software design!
My iStuff always wins the fights for BT headphone possession, being faster at the draw than my Windows or Android stuff. I often have to turn off BT on my iPhone temporarily to free the headphones for laptop connection when playing Windows games. What can you do?
You can use the headphone jack instead! Which my Lenovo laptop still retains and my Bose Q35 II headphones come with the wiring so I can go BT or wired, my choice.
I’ve never had a Samsung phone and an iPhone at the same time. Sounds like Samsung is doing things well, as one would expect from them on their premium devices.
We’ve got two iPhones here (I’m trying it through gritted teeth as the privacy focus appeals) and they both connect to the speaker, but then interfere with each other so the sound glitches constantly!
Ah, the FM transmitter. Good and fun memories there! I still miss it, though it was never any good here in Japan as FM radio here only goes up to the very lower frequencies that are used in the UK, as here they are quite full already.
And the N900. Such a wonderful device. Didn’t get me into programming though.
As for MS support… the state of it. The only time they’ve actually helped is when I asked them on Twitter. It seems that every big company ends up becoming detached from their users.
Yikes, that’s a nasty problem. I’ve never had two active iPhones at once so never run across that issue. iPhone and iPad have never interfered with each other on any BT accessory so I’m wondering if it’s a matter of BT implementation on the speaker side. Edit: or maybe because I never have two iThingies connected to speakers or headphone and playing something at the same time. I mean, I’m just one person so I don’t play multiple audio feeds at once.
Nice to know the FM transmitter made an impression on you too @Tams, I used to use it to send ‘internet radio’ to the HiFi at home after listening with headphones most of the day at work.
It really shone for sorting some decent tunes sharing a taxi with friends sharing after a night out though - 107.4FM always seemed to be clear in London.
It’s certianly frustrating @Dellaster, not helped by the fact I use a bluetooth mouse to avoid taking up the only USB A port on my HP Zbook X2 with a dongle, so bluetooth is always enabled on my laptop.
Considering that the Win 10 WiFi network management settings has a slider for ‘connect automatically’, it seems logical to include the same choice for paired bluetooth devices…I wonder if it’s any better in Win 11?
Anyhow, from this thread, it doesn’t seem like there’s a solution out there, so I’ll just put up with it till the non user serviceable battery in the speaker inevitably fails and then choose something which allows connection control on the device.
Yeah, the higher frequencies were usually fine in Europe.
But the vehicles I’ve bothered to try it on in Japan only covered 76-90 MHz, with my UK bought 808 only going down to 87.5, and the upper 80s being pretty jam-packed.
