Great Dell Axim x51v news – now, the Bluetooth functionality is heavily enhanced!

http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showthread.php?t=114983

The last few days have brought something that Dell Axim x51v owners have always wanted: heavily enhanced Bluetooth functionality. A bunch of AximSite forum members (please see this thread) have been working hard on making the best Bluetooth stack (Widcomm) work on the Axim. The (current) state of this project is really promising – now, it may already be worth completely switching to the new, Widcomm Bluetooth (BT) stack, particularly if you want BT Personal Area Network (BT PAN for short; for games or BT access points like the D-Link DBT-900AP) or OBEX file transfer. Of course, every bean has its back. The current implementation doesn't support Dial-up Networking (DUN for short) at all throught Bluetooth. This means you won't be able to access the Internet via a Bluetooth GPRS/EDGE/3G etc. phone. This won't be a problem at all, however, if you don't plan to dial into the Internet via BT. Furthermore, it has problems with some other Bluetooth peripherals; most notably, the HP Bluetooth keyboard. The ThinkOutside StowAway BT keyboard, on the other hand, works just great. This means if you use Bluetooth to dial in to the Internet frequently or you want to use your (incompatible) Bluetooth keyboard, do not upgrade! Otherwise, on the other hand, it's highly recommended if you ever plan to use BT PAN or the also highly useful OBEX file transfer. In addition, its OBEX file transfer could be faster. It currently only delivers about 8.7 kbyte/s speed (in both directions), which is about the third of native Widcomm PDA's. But, again, at least we have OBEX support - the original MS BT stack doesn't support it either. Finally, much as it is supposed to support A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), it still doesn't seem to be able to do so. If you want OBEX support, BT PAN support and considerably wider native Bluetooth support than with the original, Microsoft stack, it may be worth upgrading. It will really pay off if you plan to play multiplayer games (please see this roundup on them) or to use short-distance communication with, say, Microsoft Portrait. All you need to do is getting this ZIP file (alternative download here) and doing everything as described in the BroadcommX51V02\Install.txt file in it. (Note that the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services\BTHIDSVC is not guaranteed to exist and, should you be looking for a registry editor, you can find a full overview and link collection of Pocket PC registry editors here). Note that this distribution file contains two DLL's (in the Windows Files directory) that you may want to change to two, considerably newer and more compliant Widcomm 1.50 files in the trial version of the excellent multiplayer game Battle Cake. If you haven't installed Battle Cake before and don't want to do it either, just let the installer run (just click Cancel when ActiveSync asks you where you want to install the game to) and go to c:\Program Files\Microsoft ActiveSync\BattleCakeWMDemo\. Then, extract the files BtCoreIf.006 and BTSDKC~1.007 from BattleCakeDemo.CAB in there. Rename the first to BtCoreIf.dll and the second to BtSdkCE30.dll and overwrite the already-existing ones in the Windows Files directory, before copying the latter over to the x51v as explained in the Install.txt file. (I'd, however, install Battle Cake. It's a very nice game - the same league as 4Pocket's excellent Gold Rush and the also excellent Infinite Dreams titles). Why is this needed? It's pretty simple: some programs that access the Widcomm BT stack natively will not work with the version that comes with the x51v BT upgrade, unlike with this version. The most imporant of these programs are the Infinite Dreams games (check them out if you haven't already done so; again, please see this roundup on them) Again, note that you are not forced to use these two DLL's. In everyday use, it may be beneficial to upgrade to them, though.