I had a Motorola V95 phone. The bluetooth was flawless. I teased a friend of mine about how staticy her phone was. I thought she had a bad headset. Then I "upgraded" to a Perl. Suddenly with the same headset, my bluetooth sounded like crap. The common thread was the Blackberry phone.

So I decided maybe my headset was old, so I got a different one. A Plantronics 655. Still lots of static in the bluetooth.

Whats up with Blackberry phones and bluebooth? It should like my Motorola did when I walked 50' away from it. With the Moto sometimes I forgot that I should stay by the phone and would tell people to hold on a sec since I had strayed. With the BB I know right away if I move more than 5' away.

Are these phones using an underpowered bluetooth radio?

I guess I will try to take this phone back. Maybe they have poor production control. I just tried the headset with my motorola and its flawless. With the blackberry is sounds like shit. Also, when my car stereo tries to like to the phone while the headset is linked to it, it causes tons of static. This also does not happen with the Motorola.

Maybe my phone is just junk.

Dunno. I've used a 7100, 7290, 8700, 8800 and 8310 with bluetooth headsets and never had problems with any of them...

Despite the intent of Bluetooth, not all headset-phone pairings behave the same from what I've seen.

I used to have the same problem with my Motorola H12 headset using it with my Blackberry 8320 Curve. It worked great with my Moto KRZR but people could never hear me on the Curve. Once I upgraded the Phone OS to v4.5.0.42 Platform 2.7.0.60 the problem magically disappeared. Best I can figure is it is the OS's on the phones that are causing it.

Bluetooth has been working flawlessly on my 8110. It connects fine with my aftermarket car stereo and I have been on long calls (30 mins sometimes) while driving. Listeners at the other end can make out that I'm on a speakerphone; no other complaints. Also, I listen to the music stored on my medial card all the time on my car stereo (A2DP) and audio quality is pretty good. So, I don't know if the problem is with BB phones...

It's more than just a single variable (which people tend to assume). I've used my Voyager 510 with my BB's at distances of at least 20 feet -- possibly up to 40 feet. Certainly much more than the 5 feet stated by the OP.