iOS 6 and Toyota Entune

I thought iOS6 added support for the Bluetooth MAP profile, which implements at e-mail/SMS functionality? But they have pulled e-mail support, per the previous post?

And yes, the e-mail/SMS functionality works great on the Blackberry. Additionally, all of the Entune apps works fine on the Blackberry over Bluetooth (except for the Plug-In Advanced apps which are not supported).

And my personal addendum:

If a great media player is important to you, get an iPhone.

If great e-mail/messaging functionality is important to you, get a Blackberry.

(and yes, I know Android does a lot of things very well, but I was thinking of iOS vs. Blackberry here).

Different strokes for different folks.

 

That fixed it for me, notifications were off in bluetooth settings on the iPhone. Thanks smurs. So, you can only reply to messages when you are stopped?? That is crazy dumb.

 

I *think* that you can still get email notifications IF they are designated as a VIP -- but I haven't tried that since an early beta as well...may also need some configuration in the Notifications center...

 

AGREED! If the car can sense when there is a passenger and turn the airbag on/off, then I think it should allow for text entry when moving (or nav entry) when there is a passenger. I love my baby though...

 

That's lame! I was hitting one of the quick replies and getting an error. Bummed by this news.

 

The entertainment/Bluetooth system on my Basic PiP is great at doing everything I want, but it's terrible at the useless Internet features that I don't want.

As I understanding it, Entune is the feature of the entertainment system that is Internet-connected via your smartphone. And I would agree that "garbage" is the correct word to use when describing it. For starters, my iPhone battery will deplete if I use it on Bluetooth while plugged into a 0.5A power source. So I plug it into the cigarette lighter outlet with a 1 A charger. To use the Entune feature, though, I need to plug into the 0.5A USB power source. And when I do that, I can no longer use my 16 GB USB stick that holds all my music.

But that isn't why Entune is garbage. It's garbage because it works very poorly. It virtually stops working altogether when the car moves. And when it does work, it is slow. I can point my smartphone to MLB.com and get the baseball standings on a single page in about 15 seconds. But Entune grinds away endlessly to bring up screen after screen until you get the stat you want. So what's the point? I can pull over and read a baseball score or make an OpenTable reservation, which I can do at least four times faster with my smartphone. And since Entune requires a smartphone, it's not doing anything I can't already do. I honestly think that Toyota needs to change how they go about doing this, and let a certified smartphone app drive the touchscreen in a safe manner. And I think that if the passenger seat airbag sensor indicates a passenger is present, the system ought to work while the vehicle is moving.

The entertainment system in my Basic Prius Plug-in is hit-and-miss. The music aspect is really exceptional. I absolutely love it, and I've used lots of other units. I have a 16 GB USB stick, and it indexes all of the music via meta-tags, and it sorts it and plays it. It is fast and responsive. And I love the way the radio portion integrates AM/FM and Satellite channels. I have presets for my favorite channels all on one screen, and the text display is very good. The musical sound quality is fair; it's not bad but certainly a speaker/amplifier upgrade would help.

Also hit-and-miss is the phone integration. The Bluetooth is the best I've ever used, which means it works about 85% of the time. Sometimes, my iPhone 4s still won't connect. I don't know if it's iPhone or Toyota's fault, but it works most of the time and it works well. The voice activation feature of the car is an utter joke. I hope Toyota maps that button to activate Siri; that would make me very happy and provide a good solution.

The navigation is fair. It's about as good as my 3 year-old Garmin, but when I really need to get somewhere, I use Waze GPS on my iPhone, which gives excellent turn-by-turn directions over the car speakers via my Bluetooth connection. This software lets me avoid traffic and it works really beautifully. But Waze is a huge battery drain, so it's important to have that 1 A charger. It's too bad I can't get video of Waze to display on the car's screen. It's almost like Toyota has a lot of prideful engineers who are too insecure to admit that other people write way better software than they do, and as a result, we get a worse product.

The upshot is that it is the best system I've ever used, and I had a $1,000 super-duper Kenwood in my last car which was the best of all I'd found up to that time. The GUI and the controls work very well, and the really good thing is that the features that work poorly don't get in the way of the features that work well. I can listen to my 16 GB of music, AM/FM or Satellite radio, I can use Bluetooth for my phone calls and for Waze navigation all very flawlessly. So I'm happy, just a bit disgusted at engineers and product managers at Toyota who know perfectly well that they are shipping some features in the product which are, frankly, piss-poor. I honestly can't imagine that an engineer or product manager at Toyota pulls his car over and actually uses OpenTable to reserve a table, knowing perfectly well that the phone can make the reservation in 1/4 the time. I wouldn't use this poor review of mine as a reason not to buy the car, just be warned that some features of Entune simply don't work at all, but they don't get in the way of the other features.

 

I'm assuming no support for data over bluetooth with iOS 6. That means to traffic info, internet radio, weather, etc. I'm currently running IOS 5 jail broken with tethering and it works great, but won't upgrade unless I can verify if data over bluetooth is supported.

 

For what you're asking, no, you'd have to set up iOS 6 the same way with tethering on the DA unit.

 

Guys

I have HDD and iPHONE 4S with iOS 6.1.3 . I get notification on the HDD screen that I have new messages and when I hit READ it reads back the messages I received on my iPHONE... However I am not able to send messages from HDD screen via iPHONE. If I select a pre-formatted message like " I am driving. Will call later" and hit SEND, it immediately fails and gives me an error message SEND FAILED.!! anyone has success sending SMS messages? If latest iOS supports MAP (bluetooth) then shouldn't I be able to send messages?

 

Send doesn't work. Read worked for me for a while and now doesn't work.


iPad ? HD

 

Apple doesn't support sending messages out, only new messages coming in.

 

Man I hate this Apple thingy now..Switching to Galaxy S4 in June when my Sprint contact is up..

 

The feature compatibility list at Toyota.com - Connect notes that an updated feature list will be available in mid-May.

I'm hoping The Tweddle Group who makes the Nav/Audio system for Toyota will offer some updates soon.

 

I tried my wife's new HTC ONE and it works great...Receiving and sending texts is a breeze..

 

Android users don't seem to have a problem, and even on my lowly Blackberry, messaging functionality and phone functionality and the Entune media applications (like Pandora) all work great. It's weird that people are having so much trouble with iOS, since usually iOS is the first platform that gets fully supported and gets the most attention from application developers.

 

From the Toyota.com - Connect website I output a PDF of the feature compatibility list for the following combination:

2012 Prius PHV / Premium HDD Navigation with Entune™ including Plug-in Hybrid Applications and JBL / Apple iPhone 5, (AT&T Wireless)

The PDF shows many multimedia messaging and email features are missing from the above combination. I'm actually impressed that so many features actually work.