Bluetooth Sound Quality Phone Poll!

I'm using a Motorola Razr V3 with Cingular. Before that, I had a Sony Ericsson T637 with Cingular. The quality is roughly the same with both. In my opinion, the major problem with the Prius Bluetooth carkit is the fact that it is a single-duplex speakerphone. This is a design issue, and has nothing to do with the phone being used. What it means is that the car can only send sound or receive sound, but not both simultaneously. This problem is very apparent when you are speaking with someone who is in a very noisy environment. The car thinks the noise means the other party is trying to speak, so it switches to receive mode. The net result is that very little of what you say gets sent to the other party, so they cannot understand you.

I looked over the Prius manual recently, and it even says something to the effect that you and the other party need to speak alternately. I really don't understand why the designers chose to go this route.

As for Caller ID, it does come through, but when I am driving, the Prius won't show me something so distracting as the name of the person who is calling.

Does anyone out there know if there is a way to upgrade the factory Bluetooth carkit to be a full duplex speakerphone?

 

(1) Motorola V551 (you could even get it free with contract + $75 rebate)
(2) Great sound quality
(3) Cingular (tied to the phone)
(4) Yes, if the caller info is stored in your phone book
Note: in order to transfer phone book onto Prius, phones from Cingular could be done relatively effortlessly compared with those from Verizon, which prohibits file transfer activity. It is a long story...

Yes, Verizon tends to have better coverage and signal strength. It is a trade-off for you to decide.

 

1) Nokia 6230.
2) Tinny, sometimes, but normally understandable.
3) Cingular.
4) I have assigned custom ringtones to caller groups, so I don't have to look at who's calling. This phone only has a few groups, so I assigned one to my mom, who calls me most often, and when I hear her song I know who it is. Other non-Bluetooth phones had individual ringtones per phonebook entry, and someday I want a Bluetooth phone that does that, and pushes the ringtone through to the car properly. Not all phones accomplish that...

 

Nokia 7710
Good both ways
Vodafone Germany
Caller ID - Yes.

 

1) Motorola e815
2) Good, both directions
3) Verizon
4) Yes, I have them assigned to the 1-touch so it shows even while I am driving, but only the short name that I had entered when initially uploading.

There was a lag and a spooky time when nothing was heard when we both tried to speak simultaneously (noted in the manual and by another poster) I am used to it now. It is still not as good as OnStar, and unless I preprogram the 18 1-touch numbers in, I cannot just tell the phone to dial a set of numbers (another OnStar feature.) For me, it is not a great problem as I have limited places to call and do not 'live' on the phone.

 

Motorola V710

Horrible sound quality! My best friend and son refuse to talk to me while I use the BT in the Prius (I'm NOT joking about this). I've taken to using the BT Jabra Headset now instead of the Prius BT.

Verizon

No caller ID

 

My experience exactly.

 

Same for me, although the sound quality isn't really that special. I only have 2 numbers set up in 1-touch and there is no display (when the car is moving). I just know our home is #1 and my parents are #2. This is because I don't have the ability (ie no laptop) to transfer the phonebook. Also, for me at least, when the cell rings, I hear the ring on my cell, not through the radio. Therefore there is no Caller ID on the MFD.

I'll repeat what wstander said:
For me, it is not a great problem as I have limited places to call and do not 'live' on the phone.

 

I use a Samsung i730, Verizon. The quality is not vry good. My wife claims she can barely understand me, though I can hear her clearly. The semi-duplex phone might be the issue.

 

good...t-mobile...not a complaint..so far...

 

I have a Motorola Razr (Cingular, Atlanta GA) also but have not had any real issues with the car phone portion. I think it makes sense to do the alternating thing as I believe there would be too much feedback generated otherwise.
Some of my complaints are the one touch boxes only have numbers ie 1,2,3 etc.. and don;t show the tel # or it would be better to name them like Home, work, Sam etc...
Also if I make a call from the phone itself it does not switch over to the speakerphone until the person has answered, so sometimes people hang up before I can speak.

Overall though I really enjoy having the car speakerphone option and think the quality is good.

Dan

 

If you have one (or both) of your car's phonebooks populated, you can assign some of those entries to 1-Touch positions. The names will then appear in 1-Touch.

 

I have tried numerous phones with my Prius (2005) and the sound quality has been the same with all, and that's not particularly good. On city streets it is reasonably decent but on the highway it is very difficult to understand. The sound is quite muffled and there's no way to adjust the sound settings. Its too bad they didn't run the sound through the stereo so you could use the settings available.

 

Phone sound adjustments can be made through the diagnostics menu. There are some previous posts about it.

Treo 650
Acceptable both ways (after minor adjustment)
Sprint
Caller ID from phone book entries

 

Ah, they added Echo? I think mine says 'Quality'.

 

Here is one Old Post
For me, the search function works better with fewer parameters. I just used "diagnostic".

Anyway, I had to decrease the outgoing volume as it was coming through distorted on the other end. Since then, I haven't had any sound quality problems.

 

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I've experimented with that but to no avail. I looked through the postings that you linked me too but it turns out that although they discuss it, no one reports any more success than I have had. The best you can do is to adjust the incoming and outgoing volume. You can change the "voice" setting but that doesn't make any easily discernible difference, at least in my car. Since I travel on the highway to and from work, I've disabled the BT in the car and gone back to my BT headset. It gives much better clarity on the highway. Low speed city driving with the built-in BT is "passable". Thanks for linking me with the info.

 

got a sprint LG 325, great BT functionality, sound is muffled and difficult for me to hear, but not too bad. other end appears to have no trouble. key word at my end is it is "muffled" or "furry".
same with my prior fone, SE 610 or was it 608?