Is Bluetooth Worth It?

Dan, I've got a Treo 650 also and am deciding whether to spring for BT on my upcoming Prius. How quickly do the calls connect between the Treo and the Prius (both incoming and outgoing)?

 

I've just set up bluetooth with my Nokia 6230i - pretty seamless too. I too had to upload some key numbers (instead of the entire address book) but it's fairly simple and I don't make too many calls in my car anyway. I simply exported my phone book entries as a vCard ('Business Card'), while enabling 'Start Transfer' on the screen. No problems - and adding the numbers to one-touch is simple and works a treat. I'm surprised how much I've found it useful. Go for it.

 

Yep, it's worth it. Works great. When I get a call the radio stops and switches to the phone. A mic is in the ceiling and I simply talk without touching the phone. No extra charges at all. Also I can store phone numbers in the car and call them with a one button push while driving.

Very handy.

 

Cingular has several BT phones, none of which are crippled. If you're going to send the phone book to the Prius, some will work better than others, but this is more a function of the Prius not handling BT connections/vCards properly than the phone not doing it's part.

 

Anybody else have this experience: I take or make a handfree call, it lasts 10 minutes or so, and at the end of the call, I sort of 'wake up' to my surroundings. Not exactly a 'where am I' feeling, but a feeling that I am now more in tune with what's happening around me after the phone calls as compared to during the phone call. Sort of like my body has been in autopilot during the call to get me to the current point.

Even though I am using the phone hands free, I still think being on the phone has degraded my driving awareness somewhat.

 

I was really excited about the bluetooth capabilities of the Prius, but the phone book limitations are really a downer.

Now that the Bluetooth features are separate from the NAV in 2006 models, what do you think the chances are that they'll improve the phone book for newer models?

 

Yeah I get that too. Also during the call, i'm extremely distant and really can't hold a meaningful conversation with someone other than "Uh huh... ok... uh huh."

It's really true what they say... doing anything while you're driving other than driving... including talking to a passenger, talking on a phone (even if it's hands free) or whatever... does take away attention and put you more at risk.

 

Yes, a car is not a phonebooth, restaurant or library.

 

or movietheater! :lol:

 

It depends on if they rewrote the phonebook (and to a lesser extent their BT stack) or not.

It's definitely not a hardware problem, my limited futzing with the BT in the leads me to believe it drops connections after each OBEX transfer, not when the actual connection is closed. Some phone will push a number of entries together at once, and some will send them one at a time, but in a single connection. I chalk this one up to the guys at Toyota having one phone to test with, and they developed their system to work really well with that phone.

Second, the standard for pushing address book entries is vCard via OBEX, which falls under the GOEP (generic object exchange protocol), or OPP (Object Push Protocol). The vCard spec states that you can have multiple contact methods per entry, and I haven't seen any phone which doesn't allow this, at least not in the last decade. When the Prius gets a vCard, it just picks the first or last entry in the card and drops the rest. Ideally, it should prepend the contact type onto the name, and create a new entry for that. So if an entry had more than one contact type, you'd get John Smith -- Home, John Smith -- Cell, John Smith -- Work.

With the newer MIDP 2.0 phones, it's entirely possible to create a java app that will kind of do that parsing on the phone end, and then transfer entries to the car one at a time. Kind of spoofing the Prius into doing something useful with the phonebook. I was going to try this with my 6620, but unfortunately Nokia hasn't included the Java PIM(among many other things) in their MIDP 2.0 implementation.

It'd still be doable for most other phones tho. If anyone wants to take on that project, I'd be happy to help.

 

I would say it depends on what kind of driving you are doing at the moment of the call. That is my personal experience.
If you drive in a congested area where you have to be extra cautious (city traffic e.t.c) or if you are travelling at freeway speeds where the reaction time is reduced any unecessary distraction can cost you and you are more prone to have an accident when your are talking on the phone whether hands free or not.

 

bigdaddy,

what you experience is normal. several studies show that driving skills are impaired NO MATTER WHAT METHOD IS USED on a cellphone. facts are, to effectively communicate with the person on the other end of the line, it takes a level of concentration that is taken away from the task of driving.

 

Having A.D.D. is a drag, but one nice thing about it is that while on the phone, I definatly continue to pay attention to everything else. VIRTUALLY NOTHING gets my full attention. Just ask my wife and/or daughter. OH LOOK, THERE GOES A CHICKEN :^)

Back to Bluetooth: Who can tell me how to hack into the disable feature that prevents dialing when the car is in motion? I need that.

gary

 

Well, as aaf709 mentioned, the NAV override dance does let you use the INFO button to dial Points of Interest from the NAV:

http://priuschat.com/forums/kb.php?mode=article&k=34

Also, as Doc Evan said, there's a wire you can interrupt for the Bluetooth to disable the Bluetooth speed sensor for the phone:

http://www.priuschat.com/forums/-vp22605.html#22605
http://priuschat.com/forums/download.php?id=477

With this mod you would flip the switch, use the features of the phone system that get greyed out while moving, then flip the switch back when you are done.

 

I got an '05 with Package 4 because I had a bluetooth phone and earpiece for about 2 years and didn't see the need for the Navi package. I had been using a bluetooth speaker phone in my Honda Accord for a about a couple of months (www.driveblue.com). It is powerd by a 12 v outlet. For about $100 I have gotten excellent sound quality autoconnection to my Nokia 3650 evertime the car starts. The initial downside about this setup with a Prius is that the 12v outlet is mounted closer to the passenger side so the internal microphone is far away from me, making my voice sound a bit echoey at times. When I get the time I'll need to experiment with either moving the 12v outlet closer or repositioning the external mike (now dangling off the rear view mirror). One plus about this setup is you can voice command calls (using your bluetooth phone's voice recognition), and receive calls without interrupting other use of the Prius display.

A general comment on bluetooth technology. In general it's really cool technology that will enable you to do just about anything you could dream up in trying to get a phone, car, stereo, and personal computer to talk to each other. However, in practice it's not uncommon to have to hunt for the best matched set of bluetooth devices. Depending upon the make and model of the device you'll get varying performance and features. As time goes on and bluetooth becomes more common place the compatibility of bluetooth device will only increase.