OK the idea is I would like to find a bluetooth phone for use on the Sprint network that will do the following: 1) Allow voice dialing through the car 2) Allow call to be answered through the car 3) When phone rings (if this is possible) send the ring to the car so a ring sound is heard through the car ALSO, I would like to leave the phone in the car when I leave the car and be able to use a headset inside my house to access my phone (within a 30' range). So I want the phone to basically work the same as it does from the car when using a headset: 1) Allow voice dialing through the headset 2) Allow call to be answered through the headset 3) When the phone rings (again if this is possible) hear a ring sound through the headset so you can know a call is coming in and answer it through the headset. I looked on the Sprint site and listed all the phones I could find that said they had bluetooth support. If any of the phones in the poll support 1 through 3 for both the car and the headset, please vote for it. If the phone you are using does most of these things but not all, don't vote for any of them, just post a message and say what your phone does or doesn't do. If phone is not listed in poll or you are commenting about what it does or doesn't do please include make/model# in your post. My understanding is the Prius supplies certain calling or voice functions when a phone is linked to it, even if the phone isn't capable of a certain function by itself. So, if a phone requires a special headset to enable the headset funtions I have listed, please make a post noting make/model# of the phone & headset used.
1) Allow voice dialing through the car - This is a feature of the car, not the device. The prius is not setup in a way that would allow using the voice dialing function of the phone. The audio channel is opened once the prius is ready to make the call. For voice dialing using the phone's internal software, the audio channel needs to be opened prior to placing the call 2) Allow call to be answered through the car - This is normal BT headset operation 3) When phone rings (if this is possible) send the ring to the car. - Cant do this. The car has its own ring, that is the only ring that is heard. ........ On a sidenote, you have a pretty wide variety of phones listed. I mean, you have 2 PDA phones, and 2 EV-DO phones. What are you looking for in a phone? Right now, it looks like only Bluetooth. That would not be the way I would go about purchasing a phone. Do you even want a bulky, PDA phone? Do you want to spend the money for one? Is size more important than features. My family has one of each of those phones listed (although the 6700 & 900 are only in my direct family). We have our 900 pair with the Prius. My 6700 works perfect with my Cellpoint Flamingo headset as does my dad's Treo 650. My mom's 920, we have not tried any Bluetooth yet.
OK, maybe I'm not stating clearly what I am trying to say. When I say ring through the car, I don't mean it has to pass the exact ring sound or ringtone the phone has, I just want a ring sound of some kind to come from the car so if I have the phone sitting in the armrest, I can still hear the phone ring. I don't know if that clarification makes any difference or not. Vagabond, I guess I didn't read your post on the other thread closely enough. You did say that bluetooth doesn't pass the ringer sound, only that a call is coming in. But that's what confusing to me. Does the Prius do anything with this information passed by bluetooth when the call comes in like make a ring sound of it's own? I'm sorry if I am asking stupid questions but I haven't had any experience with bluetooth and am trying to understand how it works before I decide if I want to bother trying to get a phone with bluetooth. Do headsets provide a ring sound of some kind when a call comes in? Or does it depend on the phone and the headset? Onceler, I don't really know regarding your question about the wide array of phones. I was mainly interested in hearing what people thought about the various bluetooth phones and how satisfied or not they were with the bluetooth performance of them mainly through the Prius, but also with headset use if they used both the car and a headset at different times.
My main point was if you don't limit your phone down to what you want, you are going to be unhappy with your purchase when you use your phone outside of your prius. For instance, if a PDA phone is what you are after, you will be dissapointed in the functionality of the 900/920. If you want a phone and not a PDA, you will be dissapointed in the size of the Treo or 6700. If playing media on your phone is important, the 900 might dissapoint you as there is no external media slot like there is on the 920. As for phone ring, I am pretty sure that there is a default ring of the prius. I don't drive the car, so I am going off memory. I know the radio or other sound you were listening too mutes and I thought a rather generic ring sounded as well as the NAV display changes.
