How to confirm Bluetooth is actually available?

Question

Does the following report indicate I should have functioning Bluetooth, or does it only indicate the software bits are in play? I haven't found a mechanism that tells me how to confirm my Bluetooth address or device name:

$ sudo service bluetooth status
● bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-07-21 15:46:10 MDT; 23min ago
     Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)
 Main PID: 2432 (bluetoothd)
   Status: "Running"
    Tasks: 1 (limit: 4653)
   CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service
           └─2432 /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd

Jul 21 15:46:10 backhoe systemd[1]: Starting Bluetooth service...
Jul 21 15:46:10 backhoe bluetoothd[2432]: Bluetooth daemon 5.48
Jul 21 15:46:10 backhoe systemd[1]: Started Bluetooth service.
Jul 21 15:46:10 backhoe bluetoothd[2432]: Starting SDP server
Jul 21 15:46:10 backhoe bluetoothd[2432]: Bluetooth management interface 1.14 initialized

I'm confused by my evidence:

1. other CLI commands report nothing, similar to How to debug bluetooth question
2. cell and laptop don't recognize each other--cell confirmed elsewhere
3. Applications/System Tools/System Settings/Bluetooth has yet to discover and list any device; my phone does although that could be anecdotal with nothing to compare to
4. System Settings calls my device "unknown" while discovering
5. Wingpanel Bluetooth status icon is absent and apt tells me wingpanel-indicator-bluetooth is already installed

One doable thing I'm avoiding is opening the hood to see if there's actually a standard OEM antenna inside. Finding a physical antenna and daugherboard would only tell me it might work, and Murphy's law states I'll break something--although this Dell was designed for easy repair.

Answer 1

Elementary is based on Ubuntu 18.04 and use an old Kernel (5.4). The only way for me to use my Bluetooth devices was upgrade to newest kernel (5.13.4)

1. Add the repository:

   echo 'deb http://deb.xanmod.org releases main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xanmod-kernel.list
   

2. GPG key:

   wget -qO - https://dl.xanmod.org/gpg.key | sudo apt-key --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/xanmod-kernel.gpg add -
   

3. Then update and install:

   sudo apt update && sudo apt install linux-xanmod
   

4. Reboot.

more info: https://xanmod.org/