2005 Prius. Palm Centro / AT&T Phone. When I initiate a call from the Prius touchscreen (not initiated from the phone itself), a loud "horn sound" or "tone sound" is heard (from the driver's door speaker) prior to hearing the phone ring. Once the phone begins ringing, the "tone sound" stops. Typically, this will occur only on the first call since the Prius was started (though it might occur on the second call, but almost never on the third or subsequent calls). Un-pairing, and then re-pairing the phone will bring about a temporary reprieve from the very annoying sound. PriusChat will not allow .WAV files as an attachment, so please go to Prius Documents - Folder Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage and listen to: Prius Bluetooth Noise Tone.wav if you wish to hear a recording of the sound. I'd like to hear from anyone else who has experienced this.
I was doing some searches trying to pinpoint my girlfriend's Bluetooth problem and this came up. She was having an issue with this exact same problem. Down to reinstalling it would temporarily fix the issue. I've tried an older Bluetooth phone and it works fine. She's using a Motorola Zine phone and i'm wondering if it's come compatibility issues with 4 years of Bluetooth advancements.
I have the same issue with a new Motorola i9 - the horn sound is intermittent. What is also odd is that with this i9, when I dial from the phone itself (rather than from the navigation screen) I hear no ringing sound, nothing, until the call is connected and the person is speaking.
I have exactly the same horrific blast of noise when intitating a call with my Palm Centro / AT&T Phone. I was rather surprised, since I never heard anything of the sort when using my old Motorola V551. It appears that no one has found a persistent solution to this problem yet.