Verizon customers in the US have been waiting for years for the appearance of the first phone with Bluetooth capabilities. The announcement that Verizon would carry the Motorola v710 resulted in cheers from coast to coast. The first v710s appeared for sale at Radio Shack stores a couple of weeks ago (available only to new Verizon customers) but the phone still has not been offered by Verizon directly.

Some investigation has turned up that Motorola released the v710 with a problem in the Bluetooth software effectively crippling the ability to use the phone with mobile devices. The headset profile works fine but there is currently no way you can connect to your PDA or mobile computer wirelessly. Verizon is aware of this and pushed back the roll out of the phone until the firmware can be updated. A Verizon rep I spoke with expects the phone to be available from Verizon in about a week with the Bluetooth problems fixed.

Customers who bought the phone with the crippled Bluetooth will have to take their phone to Verizon to re-flash the software once Verizon has released the phone internally.