Any techies out there who'd care to offer some advice with the following little gem ?

I've had my HTC Touch Dual paired perfectly with my Columbus for 3 months now. No issues whatsoever. Works first time, every time. Then, the other day I updated my contacts list (deleted some out of date contacts & numbers, plus added a few new ones) and re-synch'd it with the Columbus. Since then, the phone exhibits the connect/drop/connect problems that others have reported when trying to pair up other phones with the car. (ie, phone connects, then drops the bluetooth connection, then re-connects etc)

So, I borrowed a friends Superb, and connected my phone to their Columbus and it worked perfectly...... UNTIL I went to synch my contacts with the Columbus. At that point it mimicked my car and did the connect/drop/connect routine again. If I don't synch the contacts, the system works fine (can dial out, receive calls etc perfectly).

Having gone back to my car, deleted all the profiles and reconnected my phone, it works perfectly until I synch the phone book. At that point, it all stops working.

I've checked my contacts, and no obvious anomalies. All numbers are in the +intl - area - number format (which worked fine previously), and there are no duplicates in the phonebook.

Anyone have any ideas, or suggestions to try ?

Are you running the latest version of the HTC firmware on your touch.

yup, made zero changes to the phone prior to this problem. Only thing I did was update the phonebook.

Ok, further update on this.....

Deleted the car/phone pairing, and removed all traces from both devices, and then renamed the car, before reconnecting the phone (basically to ensure a "new" connection with no details of the previous connection - probably not necessary, but it was worth a go). Then, when asked if I wanted to allow access to the SIM to download the phonebook, I said no.

Since then, 100% perfect connection, with no dropouts (with over 4 hours driving in the car). Granted, I don't have phonebook in the car memory, but the connection hasn't dropped, and I've made and received calls just fine.

So, it doesn't seem to be the bluetooth stack in the HTC that's the problem, but rather something else, either in the SIM card or in the actual phonebook itself. I'll need to dig out another handset or SIM, and test it, but at least I know its not the phone that is broken (my first assumption, given it had worked for the previous 3 months).

If anyone else has had problems connecting their phone to the car, can I ask them to try the same as I did, and see if it holds the connection when there is no phonebook loaded.

More updates as I get them.