Here is Verizon's official answer...

I think that's a critical point. Address book sync is an ESSENTIAL feature nowadays... cell phones have always been fragile things that are easy to lose and break. The address book and phone book is critical information to a lot of people, so anything the phone can do to make it easier and more straightforward to do is always a big plus.

Entering 500+ names and numbers back into my phone because it crashed, or it broke, or i lost it and got it replaced is ANNOYING. I'd rather just sync it with my PC over BT and be done with it.

 

It's nice to have a smartphone. There is still a premium for that class of device, but it opens up a lot more freedom.

 

Quality of Verizon aside, Prius users want to use their phone with their car, and that only works well if you can get a phone book into the car. Since there is no manual entry, you really are dependent on the ability to transfer from the phone or some other device.

So, Prius owners are miffed that they have to work around a problem they don't believe should be there to begin with. I understand why they are upset, they just paid a lot of money, and they "just want to use it", not hire a technical expert to figure out how to get around some arbitrarily imposed issue.

I am a technical expert, so I got around the problem no sweat, but I really hate that I have to keep explaining to laypeople how they can get around a problem that should not be there to begin with. People just want to press a button and go. They don't want to play a lot of technical games trying to out-think Verizon.

Anyway, off my soapbox...

 

I suspect it has more to do with protecting applications. They don't want you pulling applications off or putting your own applications on the phone.

With my Nokia on Cingular, I can literally bluetooth a .jar/.jad or a .sis file over to the phone and just install the application. I don't have to pay a tax to Cingular to do that. With the V*, you're stuck paying them to get the applications they want you to have (unless you got a Treo or PocketPC phone).

 

I don't have 500 I have a few. Labor and Delivery, Urgent Care in my clinic, ER, 7th floor, 11 floor and that is it, but doing that quick and easily is like mission critical at times. I get the call I get in the car and I want to get details while keeping both hands on the wheel. I call L&D and talk to the nurse, give orders, get things going and set up so we can move when I get there. This is reality for many emergency responders in smaller towns and rural areas. Trust me this is way better than it was 20 years ago when I had to wait for a report give orders then leave. Minutes lost too many. The cell phone is a god send. But I am driving at the speed limits and pushing the car. I have had hands free phones for 8 years and they are invaluable. Nuff said.

 

I just bought an '05 Prius with NAV and have a Verizon V710, and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. It seems to me that the car is just as crippled as the phone, but not as many people are slamming Toyota about that.

First off, the phone and car link perfectly every time I start up. In fact, the phone will link up even if I leave it inside the house with the car in the garage, which was quite a surprise. So, the phone appears to me to work flawlessly with the handsfree profile, except there's no access to voice dialing. That's Toyota's fault, not the phone's, at least as far as I can tell. Also, the phone has WAY better voice recognition than the navigation system does.

The car won't let me dial or use the phonebook (except speed dial, which I can enter manually) when it's moving. So, what's the point of transferring my phone book entries into it if it won't let me use them when I really need them? I can use the phone to access all of these things, even when driving, so the phone is what works well and again, the car doesn't. If I'm stopped, it doesn't really matter to me if I use the phone book in the phone or the one in the car.

Also, I can sync my phone perfectly well with Outlook on my PC using the USB cable. Is that really so much more burdensome than using Bluetooth? I'd rather not leave Bluetooth running on my PC when I'm not using it, as it opens a potential security hole, so either way I'm plugging something in or enabling something.

So, while it would be nice to be able to use OBEX (and you can pretty easily turn it on if you have the E815, though it's still not clear to me if you can push phone book entries once you do), I find that the real issues are the limitations that the car imposes on me, like not being able to dial when moving and not being able to access voice dialing at all.

Is there something that I'm misunderstanding here?

 

I have an e815 with OBEX enabled, but there is no OPP, so you can't send the phone book. I don't have that many numbers I would need to dial while driving, so the one-touch works for me. The problem is that if I had entered the one-touch numbers from the Prius' phonebook, I would have the names there while driving. Right now they are blank, but as I have only a few I know that #1 is HOME, #2 is PARENTS and so on.

I've added occasional numbers (doctor, dentist, pizza) in the POI area of the NAV system. Touching their icon brings up an info button, which will allow me to dial their number. I have to have the NAV defeat in operation for this to work.

 

The advantage is when you add a number to one of the 17 one-touch locations from an uploaded phone book, you get a name associated with it. This means while you are moving you see names on your one-touch, not just '1', '2', '3'...

Also, if you put the numbers in the same format they appear in your phone's log (usually 10 digits for the USA), and a call comes it that matches a phone book entry, then you get the associated name displayed on the MFD when the call comes in.

Like you guys are saying, you sure can use the phone by itself, or with a headset, but when someone springs $5k for the top-end package, they want to be able to use it.

And I still think hands free is easier than fumbling with my phone while I'm driving, especially when I have my uploaded phone book.

Sorry...

 

I couldn't agree more. However, Toyota is as culpable as Verizon, IMHO. In fact, for issues such as the lack of voice dialing functionality and the speed sensor lockout, Toyota is 100% responsible. Further, although I'm not about to go out and buy a BMW, the BT kits in those cars have no problem dealing with VZW's BT implementation. Even with a V710, after the car is started, pairing and phonebook upload occur automatically.

 

Yea, don't get me wrong, I think Toyota's lawyers are WAY too involved ruining the end-product all the way around, but uploading the phone book helps you get around those lawyers, and the bean-counters who probably told the engineers they didn't need to spend money developing a manual-entry procedure because everyone should be able to upload phonebooks from their phone.

I thank God I'm a technical type, but once you get a phone book uploaded, the system really is quite useful. Even while moving!

 

You can hack into a Verizon phone for OBEX file transfer, but you will void the warranty and if you mess up the phone may be dead.
http://motomodders.net/Default.aspx?tabid=...tid=13470#13470

 

If it's the E815, OBEX will be enabled, but not OPP.

 

Plus, some of the phones that come out of Japan almost look as if they could be used for the self-parking feature. :lol:

I'm pretty sure they never considered that some phones would only be able to upload one contact at a time when they designed the system nor that some cell phone carrier would decide to have the requisite profile removed for phonebook transfer.