I just bought a 2010 prius and it is having problems with my iPhone. The phone features all work great and it synced my phone book without a problem. The prius immediately pairs up whenever I get in the car, so receiving a call is seemless. the problem is with the iPod connection. I sometimes plug in my phone so I can also listen to music through the Aux link. The iphone immediately tells me it's not an approved device but neither is any other device I use. When I open the Aux menu no data shows up. It doesn't list songs or artists or anything. It worked once but that's one time out of a dozen.  Has anyone else had a similar problem?
I have the exact same problem. Just got my car this week. It is very intermittent. Sometimes it works. I stopped by a Toyota dealer and they told me it is only for ipods. I am not sure they understood that the phone is considered an mp3 player as well. Hopefully they can figure out how to make it work consistently. I'll post it if I get it working. I am trying different methods of turning it on. I don't think there many cars out there yet with the usb. We should probably report it to Toyota.
The iPod interface is just that. Like that in my Infiniti, it only utilizes the iPod function of the iPhone. In doing so, it disables the phone function. I don't like it either. If you plug it in to the usb port with the adapter plug it will integrate with your car's controls and the screen in the car will show the songs and playlists you have on your iPod (iPhone). But, if you use the accessory port, it won't show your songs or lists and will just play them. You'll still have to control it thru the iphone or iPod.
Thanks for the reply, However problem isn't that I'm plugging into the Aux port. I use the USB port so the car should recognize it as an ipod. If fact, everything works about 10% of the time and for that time I'm really happy with it during that time. Even when it does connect though, it occasionally drops out mid-song. I'm just looking for some consistency. One possible complication is the Bluetooth connectivity. I've found that if I disable bluetooth on my phone, it works about 33% of the time. Unfortunately, this means I'm giving up on the phone capabilities, since I live in an area where hands free is required by law. I'm not sure if what's causing this problem but I've just about given up on using my iPhone with the Prius. It seems like a software problem they should be able to fix! Considering the USB port is part of the reason I bought this this package (and other problems keep piling up) I'm growing more disappointed by the day.
Per the Owner's Manual (or perhaps it's the sheet for the USB Connection) the iPhone is a non-supported device and isn't compatible with the USB for audio...only dedicated iPods are supported devices. Search the forums there has been a LOT of discussion on this topic.
do yourself a favor, get a cheap 4,8, or 16G flash drive, dump your music on that, and leave it in the car. Set it up like you do the play lists on your ipod. The only time you need to futz with it is to update it.
If you do wind up going with the Aux port route (bummer that the built in iPod feature doesn't work with iPhone!), may I suggest you take a look at FlickTunes? It makes controlling your iPhone/touch super easy and makes using the aux jack a really viable option... I use it all the time, and not just because I wrote it. I wrote it because I needed it...
Flicktunes is great, nice job! I too am into iphone app dev. Well, I am also experiencing the above issues. When I first got my car, 5 days ago, I was able to connect my iPhone 3G to BT and Stream music. But it only worked once. I am, however, able to use BT to talk on the phone. I also was able to use my USB to play music, although the airplane mode question did come up. Now, it is giving me the message that the application is not made for this device.
