Can one boost the power of the bluetooth signal?

[ZmjbS]

I recently got this spiffy new phone that I'd like to connect to through bluetooth (in fact, it may be the only way I can). I had no problems setting up bluetooth support using the Gentoo Linux Bluetooth Guide; the interface went up and modules were loaded correctly.

The only problem is that in order to establish a connection, the phone needs to be lying on my keyboard (flush with the left side for best results) or held close to the screen. After searching and detecting a few devices one day on the train, I figure that the problem lies in the signal strength from my computer's bluetooth card.

I tried searching the Internet for information about tuning the signal strenght, but without any success. Does anyone know if this can actually be done (or if there is some other issue that I'm overlooking)?

The computer is a ThinkPad X31 and the bluetooth card seems to have the Actiontec chipset (the official site with the specifications appears to have gotten lost in the move to Lenovo).
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