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I have owned a Jabra BT8010 bluetooth stereo headset for a year or two now but haven’t used it much lately.  I used to use it with my Samsung Blackjack which was sweet but then I bought a non-3g Blackberry Curve which couldn’t stream music.

After I retired my Blackberry Curve for my iPhone 3G, I thought for sure I’d be bringing back my BT8010 to listen to streaming music and music on my iPhone’s hard drive.  It was a sad day when I finally realized my iPhone 3G didn’t have A2DP capabilities.  Wow.  Lame.

Fast forward to last week.  I got my iPhone 3.0 update and can finally stream audio from my iPhone to my Jabra stereo bluetooth headset.  What’s even better is the new Sirius/XM app was released which means I could listen to Opie and Anthony and Ron & Fez wirelessly.  Awesome!

Just like everything else in my life, nothing can work right for me.  So, here I am, all excited to finally get my headset back in my life when low and behold, the damn thing starts dying out every 5 seconds.  Over and over, when I turn on the Jabra BT8010, sync it to my iPhone, then start a stream of 202 The Virus, after about 5 seconds of crystal clear audio, the sound would start to fade and crackle until it no longer was audible.  I could turn the headset on and off and get 5 more seconds of audio at a time but that’s just silly.

I googled about this fading out problem and found a possible solution.  I’m writing this as I test the solution so I hope this ends on a happy note. Here’s what you do to fix your Jabra BT8010 headset (hopefully this works!)

1. Go to the Jabra BT8010 Control Center.
2. Download the BT8010 Control Software.  Once installed, this program will let you manage your BT8010 headset’s Phone book (30 phone numbers you can bring around to any phone you sync it with), Add additional language packs and, what we’re really interested in, updating the firmware.
3. Download the Firmware.
4. Install the control center. (You might have to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. You’ll be prompted to do this and it will guide you through install.  Easy.)
5. Update your firmware.
6. Pray (if you believe in that sorta thing).

So there we have it.  Your bluetooth headset should be working fine now.  No more fading out! JUST KIDDING!  Mine still doesn’t work.  Same annoying cut-out after 5 seconds.

*Note – I did have to remove the BT8010 from my iPhone’s list of profiles (”forget this device”) to get it to work again with my iPhone. and when I say “work”, I mean be just a problematic as before I did the firmware upgrade.

If you’ve gone through this with your BT8010, let me know in a comment.  If you’ve had this problem, and fixed it, please please pleeeeeeease let me know in a comment.

** UPDATE 07-01-2009
I began fiddling with the settings just to see if ANYTHING would make this headset stay on and…..I found something that works!  I’ve been listening to Sirius/XM  on my iPhone this morning with no interruptions now for 15 minutes….a new record!  Here’s what I did.

I went into the settings and changed the ear I was listening on, the brightness and vibrate alert.  I was desperate to get this bluetooth headset to work, so I was trying any and everything.  I was seconds away from doing a factory reset when I decided to check out my EQ settings.  When I first got this headset, I changed the EQ to the Jazz setting.  I usually like the Jazz setting for everything because I like a lot of highs.  Well, I decided to change this setting to Rock and maybe the others, before I do the factory reset, just to see if it would help.  Changing the EQ setting fixed the problem I’ve been having.  Now I’m at about 20 minutes of uninterrupted listening!  I’m wondering if the computer in my headset has some type of defect and can’t process the Jazz EQ setting properly which causes it to fade out and distort.  I haven’t tried any other eq settings because I’m scared this thing will stop working again.

I hope this helps any of you out there who may have been experiencing the same problems as I have.