To begin with some definitions, there are 2 ways that you typically connect to a phone for internet. Bluetooth DUN (Dial Up Networking) and Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network). Bluetooth DUN is the “old” way to connect, and some of the updates Microsoft is pushing out to their Windows Mobile devices are disabling it. Unfortunately, this is the way that the N800 uses to connect to the internet.

To fix this problem, some maemo hackers put together a package called “maemo-pan“. This package enables the ability to connect to a bluetooth PAN and use the shared internet. The announcement and directions are here. In summary:

• Go to the system preferences and add your phone in the phone settings. Do not enter the wizard for configuring the dialup settings. PAN does not use them.
• Start internet sharing on your phone. It depends on your phone how and where to do this. On Windows Mobile 5, open the Start menu and select “internet connection sharing” from there.
• Make sure that Bluetooth is enabled on your internet tablet. Now open the connection dialog and you will see that there is a new connection called “Bluetooth-PAN”. Select it and you will be connected to the internet via PAN.
• When you’re finished, just close the connection the usual way. Wasn’t this easy? :)

Now on the 8525, this didn’t work for me flat out. I was using rom named “vp3G” which was Windows Mobile 6.0 which was released before the official AT&T one. I don’t know if this was causing my problem or not. I couldn’t get the N800 to find the 8525. I could get the 8525 to find the N800 but I still could not get bluetooth pan working.

I decided to flash the 8525 to a new cooked rom, because it had been several months since I had done so. To hedge my bets, I picked a ROM that included the old Bluetooth DUN package. There is an excellent webpage with far more information than I could provide on the subject of Flashing your 8525/Hermes – see MrVanx’s ROM Flashing Guide here. I chose Schap’s WM6.1 4.40 ROM. After the flash was complete – I tried to pair the two and had much better results.

I first paired them and it seemed to take this time. After that, I click “Internet Sharing” in the Programs on the 8525 and enabled it. Then I went onto the N800 and selected “bluetooth-pan” as the type of connection. Voila – it worked! I was surfing on a nice 3G connection. So for anyone out there trying to get this work without success – keep trying! It definately works but takes some configuration.

On a side note – being able to access an internet tablet via SSH is very cool. Here is top while playing Borat: