Bluetooth compatability.?

Question

I work for a major car dealer and some new vehicles come with bluetooth links for handsfree in some of the top of the range cars. Some cars will only recognise certain phones. I was aware of bluetooth 1.1 and 2 and thought that bluetooth could talk(pair) with any bluetooth. What is the difference and why is it different?

Answer 1

dont mean to be rude with you but if your investing money in these items forget it ..... next year all bluetooth will be replaced via Wibree technology ..... all mobile hand sets ... i have added these links as im in IT and working on this as we speak ...
www.wibree.com
Wibree is a digital radio technology (intended to become an open radio standard) designed for ultra low power consumption (button cell battery) within a short range (10 meters / 30 feet) based around low-cost transceiver microchips in each device. Wibree is designed to work side-by-side with and complement Bluetooth. It operates in 2.4 GHz ISM band with physical layer bit rate of 1 Mbps. Main applications include devices such as watches, wireless keyboards, toys and sports sensors where low power-consumption is a key design requirement.

The technology was announced 2006-10-03 by Nokia. Partners that currently license the technology are Broadcom Corporation, CSR, Epson and Nordic Semiconductor. Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia's Research Centre, claims the technology is up to ten times more efficient than Bluetooth[1] and will have an output power around -6 dBm[2].
ABOUT BLUETOOTH TO YOUR ANSWER
This version is backwards compatible with 1.x. The main enhancement is the introduction of Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) of 3.0 Mbps. This has the following effects (Bluetooth SIG, 2004):

3 times faster transmission speed (up to 10 times in certain cases).
100 meter range
Lower power consumption through a reduced duty cycle.
Simplification of multi-link scenarios due to more available bandwidth.
Further improved BER (bit error rate) performance.

Bluetooth 1.1
Many errors found in the 1.0B specifications were fixed.
Added support for non-encrypted channels.
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)

[edit] Bluetooth 1.2
This version is backwards compatible with 1.1 and the major enhancements include

Adaptive Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (AFH), which improves resistance to radio frequency interference by avoiding the use of crowded frequencies in the hopping sequence
Higher transmission speeds in practice
extended Synchronous Connections (eSCO), which improves voice quality of audio links by allowing retransmissions of corrupted packets.
Host Controller Interface (HCI) support for 3-wire UART
HCI access to timing information for Bluetooth applications
HOPE THIS HELPS