First up, you need to follow the first 15 steps of my guide on how to seutp a Nokia N95 mobile phone as a Mobile Broadband Device because we need to update the version of the Bluez Bluetooth stack and pair your mobile phone. Once you get to step 15 where it asks about connecting the phone as a dial-up networking device, you can either choose to continue setting that up all the way through to Step 22 (after all, you might find DUN to be of genuine use to you if you’re a Mobile Internet kind of guy), or choose “Don’t connect” instead and just finish at Step 15 and continue on with this article.

Once you’re Bluetooth stack is updated and your mobile phone is paired, transfrerring files is simplicity itself:

1. Do a left-mouse click on the Bluetooth icon in your system tray. The Bluetooth Devices window will appear showing you your available or previously paired devices. Your mobile phone will be one of them.
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2. Do a right-mouse click on your mobile phone and choose “Browse” from the menu that appears (or select the mobile phone with the left-mouse button and then click on the “Browse” button in the toolbar).
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   NOTE: If you get a “Could not display ‘obex://[xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx]/’.” error when trying to browse, it means that the Bluetooth connection has not re-established itself between your PC and your phone after a previous pairing (ie: “Host is down”). To fix this, click on the “Search” button in the toolbar which will “awaken” your phone’s Bluetooth awareness and then choose “Browse device” again. You should also set your PC and phone to be “trusted” or “authorised” on both sides to prevent timeouts caused by either end asking you for permission to establish the connection.
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3. If your PC is setup as being “trusted” or “authorised” on your phone, within a second or so a Nautilus window should appear showing you the content of your mobile phone, or in the case of my Nokia N95, two Windows-like folders named “C:” and “E:” which represent the phone’s internal memory and my 8GB SD card in the phone. You can browse them like any ordinary folders including copying and pasting files. An icon for the phone will also appear on the desktop (I’m using a custom icon here).
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4. When you have finished dealing with the files on your phone, you need to cleanly disconnect the phone and end the Bluetooth session. You can do this one of two ways. Either click on the “Eject” triangle icon next to your phone’s name in the Places list of the Nautilus window, or in the Bluetooth Devices window, do a right-mouse click and choose “Disconnect Device” from the menu.
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5. That’s it! Happy file transfers!

Well, it’s finally happened. While Ubuntu itself hasn’t been updated yet, the Bluetooth package that Ubuntu uses has been updated by the parent Blueman Project.

So here’s a guide on how to update your Ubuntu Jaunty installation to the latest version of the Bluez Bluetooth stack, pair your Nokia N95 and how to setup a Broadband connection to go through it.

If you’ve already updated your Bluetooth stack to the latest and greatest version, then you can immediately skip to Step 10.

1. First we need to add the Blueman Project’s PPA to your Ubuntu Jaunty installation. Open a terminal and type in:

   $ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/blueman.list

2. You will be presented with a blank text editor. Type or copy & paste the following lines in:

   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
   deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

3. Save your changes and exit the editor.
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4. Now update your package lists with:

   $ sudo apt-get update

5. At the end you will see a NO_PUBKEY error because your setup does not yet have the GPG key for the Blueman repository to authenticate the packages with. To fix this, import the key with:

   $ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 6B15AB91951DC1E2

6. Update your package lists again as per Step 4 and you should find the NO_PUBKEY error is gone now.
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7. By now your system is probably prompting you that there are updates to the Bluetooth stack available to install. We may as well stay at the terminal and do the updates there:

   $ sudo apt-get upgrade

8. Once that completes, the Bluetooth stack is now up to date, but we now need to install the Blueman applet to replace the Gnome version of it:

   $ sudo apt-get install blueman

   (this will automatically uninstall the bluez-gnome package as we don’t want it anymore)

9. Once that completes, logout and log back in again so that the new applet loads up to replace the old one.
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10. Do a right-mouse-click on the Bluetooth icon in your system tray and choose “Setup new device” from the menu that appears. The Bloetooth Assistant Wizard will appear.
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11. At the welcome page, click the “Next” button.
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12. You are shown a list of detected Bluetooth devices which should include your Nokia N95 and any other nearby Bluetooth devices. Choose your Nokia N95 from the list and then click on the Forward button.
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13. You are then asked how to do the pairing. Choose to “Use a Random Passkey” and then click the Forward button.
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14. You will be shown a generated PIN number and your Nokia N95 will prompt you for it. Type the number into your phone and click OK on the phone.
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15. When your phone accepts the PIN, the Wizard will then ask you how you want to treat the device as. Choose “Dialup Networking (DUN)” and then click the Forward button.
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16. After a brief delay, you will be prompted for your password so a DUN adapter can be setup. Type it in and hit Enter or OK.
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17. When the connection has finished, you will be told that the device was added and connected as a DUN unit successfully.
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18. Within a couple of seconds of finishing, if you haven’t already got a Broadband Connection setup in the Network Manager, the “New Mobile Broadband Connection” wizard will appear. This part is really straight-forward, so I haven’t bothered doing any screenshots for it. Click on the Forward button.
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19. Choose your Country and Provider from the list shown, then click the Forward button.
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20. Finally, in the Summary, you are given the option to provide a custom name for the Broadband connection. When you’re happy, click the Apply button. The Wizard will finish and close.
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21. You can now do a left-mouse click on your Network icon in the system tray and you will see your chosen Provider’s name (or custom name if you chose something else) listed in the menu.
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22. Choose your provider name from the menu and after a brief moment, you will be connected!

Happy surfing!

So, to that end, here is an update to my previous HowTo for connecting a Bluetooth mobile phone to Ubuntu Gusty or Ubuntu Hardy.

EDIT August 2009: If you are wanting to connect your phone using Ubuntu Jaunty or later, you should follow these updated instructions instead of this article.

Pre-requisites:

• Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone (I’m using a Nokia N95 in this guide).
• USB Bluetooth adapter or PC with built-in Bluetooth such as a modern-day notebook. Your adapter must be Bluetooth 1.2 compliant or higher.
• A PC with Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Intrepid Ibex installed.

Difficulty level: Mind-bogglingly easy. Point and click, essentially!

1. First, plug in your USB Bluetooth adapter or enable it on your notebook. Ubuntu should recognise it immediately with no need for additional drivers. You can optionally confirm that by jumping into a terminal as issuing the lsusb command to list your USB devices:

   $ lsusb | grep tooth
   Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1310:0001 Roper Class 1 Bluetooth Dongle
   $

2. You’ll be happy to know that Ubuntu comes pre-installed with everything you need to get Bluetooth running, and if the driver is loaded successfully, you will see a Bluetooth icon appear in your system tray, awaiting your bidding.
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3. Do a single left-mouse click on the Bluetooth icon and a menu appears showing “Setup new device…”.
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4. Once you choose the menu option, the Bluetooth Device Wizard will appear.
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5. Click Forward and your system will begin scanning for local Bluetooth devices. Whatever it finds will be shown in the list (note that this may take a few seconds to update). One of them should be your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone (which will initially appears as its MAC address, but then after a few seconds will change to the name assigned to that device). If you cannot see your phone after a few seconds, make sure that Bluetooth is enabled on your handset and try again from Step 3.
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6. Select your phone and his Forward. Ubuntu will then generate a random PIN number and commence a pairing request with your phone. Your phone handset, meantime, should immediately prompt you to enter the randomly-generated PIN number.
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7. Once you have entered the PIN code on your phone, Ubuntu will complete the pairing request and that’s it – pairing done!
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8. Now we can start doing things, such as file transfers. Go back to the Bluetooth icon in your System Tray and this time do a single right-mouse click on it. A new menu appears. Go to “Browse files on device…”.
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9. You will be asked which of your paired Bluetooth devices you wish to browse. Choose your phone from the list and click the “Connect” button.
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10. After a brief delay, a Nautilus window should pop up showing your phone’s “drives”. In the case of my Nokia N95, the phone’s internal memory is presented a Windows-esque C: drive and the memory card is presented as E: drive. What appears here is ultimately down to how your phone manufacturer has implemented the filesystem.
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11. At this time, an icon for your phone will also be added to your desktop (I use a custom icon on mine):
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12. Browse and copy files as normal. When you are done, you should disconnect your phone by unmounting it with the Unmount or Eject right-mouse menu options (or the Eject icon next to your phone’s name in the Bookmark list).
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13. And that’s it! Pat yourself on the back. Job done.

Less widely known is that you don’t actually have to use these devices to get Mobile Broadband on the go. You can use your own 3G or HSDPA mobile phone if packet data is enabled on your phone plan. I have previously covered how to do this via Bluetooth and fiddling around with RFComm configuration and PPP chat scripts, but NONE of this is needed any longer under Ubuntu Intrepid.

EDIT August 2009: If you wish to setup your Nokia N95 using Bluetooth instead of a USB cable, then stop reading any further and refer to my updated article for Bluetooth using Ubuntu Jaunty.

Purpose: To setup a Nokia N95 (or similar 3G or HSDPA capable mobile phone) as a Mobile Broadband device to an Ubuntu Intrepid based laptop and connect to the Internet via a mobile network carrier.

Pros:

• Internet available anywhere at anytime (as long as you are in a signal area)
• Reasonably quick – faster than dial-up!
• True mobile Internet – you are not physically connected to a wall socket – you can surf the Internet while you drive your car, or ride a train.
• Convenient

Cons:

• Eats up your mobile’s battery.
• Internet access via mobile phones can be costly.
• You cannot receive voice calls whilst using your mobile phone as a Mobile Broadband device.

Pre-requisites:

• Any 3G or HSDPA capable mobile phone. In this example I will be using my Nokia N95 which is both 3G and HSDPA capable.
• A data plan with your mobile provider. In this example, I will be using Vodafone Australia.
• USB lead to connect your phone directly to your PC (Bluetooth cannot be used in this example, at least not yet, since Network Manager does not yet support connecting through RFComm (to allow connection to a Bluetooth device) – when this support has been added, I’ll update this article. There is a bug reported on Ubuntu Launchpad regarding this already).
• Laptop or desktop PC with Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex installed. In this example, I will be using my EeePC 701 legtop.

Difficulty rating: You could do it in the dark. With bells on.

WARNING: Internet access via your mobile phone can be a costly exercise. Make sure you are fully aware of how much your provider charges for packet data access so you don’t get any nasty surprises on your bill. In my case, Vodafone Australia charge $0.90 per 5 minutes of access or part thereof, regardless of whether data was downloaded or not in that 5 minutes. There is no upper data limit.

1. Fire up Ubuntu on your laptop/desktop as normal.
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2. In your system tray, look for the Network Connection icon and do a single right-mouse click on it. You will be presented with a menu. From it, choose “Edit Connections…”:
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3. You will then be presented with the Network Connections window, of which you should already see at least one wired connection there (your PC’s ethernet port):
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4. We’re not actually interested in this section, however – we want the Mobile Broadband tab, so click on that and you will see the following:
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5. Now click on the “Add” button. You will be presented with a Wizard for setting up a new Mobile Broadband connection. Click Forward until you see the following window:
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6. Choose the country and provider relevant to you (Australia & Vodafone in my case) and then click Forward.
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7. You’ll be asked to confirm your selection. Confirm it by clicking on the Apply button. You should now see Vodafone listed in the Network Connections window.
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8. Now click the “Close” button. We’re done for this part.
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9. Connect your USB data lead to your mobile phone and then connect it to your PC.
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10. Nokia N95′s generally prompt for what mode you would like the phone to be in. Most people would plump for “Data transfer” mode to utilise the phone as a USB flash drive, but we’re not going to do that. Choose “PC Suite” instead.

    
    Click for full size (201K)
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11. Confirm that the phone connected to Ubuntu as a USB ACM device by checking the output of dmesg. In a terminal window, type in the following:

    $ tail /var/log/messages

    …which will show the last 10 lines. You should see something similar to this:

    Nov 19 11:16:37 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9987.192045] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
    Nov 19 11:16:37 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9987.406518] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.149546] cdc_acm 1-2:1.10: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.153658] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.154256] cdc_acm: v0.26:USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.241789] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.272359] usb 1-2: bad CDC descriptors
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.273520] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.292404] usb 1-2: bad CDC descriptors
    Nov 19 11:16:39 eeepc701 kernel: [ 9989.292965] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_wlan

    (I’m not entirely sure why I got the “bad CDC descriptors” error, but this didn’t stop the phone from setting itself up, so I ignored it).
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12. When Ubuntu detects the ACM device, it recognises that there is a Mobile Broadband device connected and it will enable Vodafone for selection from the Left-Click menu of the Network Connections system tray icon.

    

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    Additionally, you will see that the phone itself will show a USB icon confirming that it is talking to the PC via USB.

    
    Click for full size (310K)
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13. Upon choosing Vodafone from the menu, a PPP session will immediately be automatically started in the background (you can see it occur in /var/log/messages) and once handshaking with your provider is complete, Ubuntu will confirm that you are connected to the Internet via your mobile provider:
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14. You should now be able to open your browser and get to the Internet without a problem! As you surf, depending on your model of phone, it may indicate data packets transferring with an icon on the phone’s display. In my case, the 3G icon lights up.
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15. When you are done with the Internet, don’t forget to shutdown the connection by going back to the single-left-click menu of the Network Connections icon in the System Tray and select “Disconnect” from the menu.
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16. That’s it! Happy mobile Internetting!