The phone name assigned automatically by Android on my new phone prevented Bluetooth pairing and connecting in Linux

I recently installed Lubuntu 20.10 on a desktop machine, but Bluetooth did not work with my new phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with Android 11). Bluetooth had worked fine in Lubuntu 18.04 on the same desktop machine with my previous Android phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with Android 9).

The first thing I discovered was that, although the Lubuntu 20.10 Installer had installed Bluez, it had not installed a Bluetooth manager, so I installed Blueman:

$ sudo apt install blueman

Then, I re-installed Bluez just to be sure:

$ sudo apt install --reinstall bluez

The Bluetooth device was detected but Lubuntu 20.10 would not pair with my new phone.

The Bluetooth device was definitely unblocked:

$ rfkill --output-all
ID TYPE      DEVICE TYPE-DESC         SOFT      HARD
 1 wlan      phy0   Wireless LAN unblocked unblocked
 2 bluetooth hci0   Bluetooth    unblocked unblocked

Now, the phone name Android 11 had assigned automatically to my new phone was Fitzcarraldo’s Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G. After trying many things, I began to wonder if the apostrophe in the phone name was causing the problem, so I changed the name in the phone (Settings > About phone > Edit) to Fitzcarraldo Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G. Blueman/Bluez were then able to pair with, and connect to, the phone. Problem solved, but what a silly cause.

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