Reader Norm has a bit of a beef with the iPhone’s Bluetooth support—namely, it has some limitations with his brand new Lexus LS460. Though the compatibility page from Lexus says that the iPhone works with the handsfree mode in the car, it doesn’t support Norm transferring his phonebook entries to his car, meaning that he can’t use the car’s controls to dial the phone. Such functionality does work with other AT&T phones like the BlackBerry Pearl and Motorola RAZR, but not the iPhone.
Combine that with the lack of support for voice dialing on the iPhone, and this raises an interesting question: can you use your iPhone safely while driving? Unlike conventional phones, the lack of a tactile keypad means that dialing requires you to look at the phone in order to dial. Now, if most people were sensible and concluded from the above “Hey, I’d better not use my iPhone while driving,” I’d applaud Apple for its design solution—but, well, I’m from Boston, where people can’t drive even before you add cell phones into the mix.
So I ask you, readers, have you come up with any safe way to use—or, more specifically, make calls with—your iPhone while driving? Norm could sure use your help. Until such a time as it’s safe to do so, I have to fall back on the age-old adage: “Hang up and drive.”
I never place calls while driving. That's just me. I have this strange idiosyncrasy that makes me not do things that tend to shorten my life prematurely. Call me crazy. But I do get the occasional call *in* that merely requires a tap on my Apple Bluetooth Headset to answer. That's all I need, and I extremely satisfied with it!
I hate making iPhone calls from the car; I became used to voice control on my RAZR, and lacking that facility and a tactile keyboard does make the iPhone more dangerous. But I've found a better way to make calls with it. I keep "Information" at the top of my Favorites list, so it's relatively easy to locate. I have it dial GOOG 411, which is the next-best thing to voice dialing. I can give it the city and name of whom I want to call, and it locates the number and places the call without any further interaction on my part...and no extra charges, to boot!
I heard some people report that that there iPhone work perfectly with there car and that it will support voice dialing when plugged in. I think the level of compatibility depends on the car.
I have an LS460L and the iPhone works perfectly.
"can you use your iPhone safely while driving?"
Hand it to your passenger. Nothing drives me more insane than someone diddling with their phone, iPod, etc. when there are other people in the car just as capable.
Studies have shown you can't use any phone safely while driving. You shouldn't fall back on the addage, it should be a mantra we all repeat.
Interesting article re: the Lexus iPhone incompatibility. I have an aftermarket system installed in my 2007 Chevy Avalanche made by Parrot. It's the CK 3100 model. It works great with my iPhone. It automatically uploaded my address book and voice dials perfectly, although I have to pre-record my voice tags for each contact that I want to be able to voice dial. The 3100 is a few years old so I'll bet that the iPhone would work even better with the current model.
my iphone works in my lexus RX 330 but only because i upgraded from a motorola razr. i inputted the phone numbers last year with the razr and the car 'remembered' them when i switched to the iphone. my recommendation: find a friend with a razr and use it to input several quick dial numbers into your new lexus.
The iPhone syncs completely with my 2007 BMW 550. Newer BMW's (2006+) that support Bluetooth have impressive phone support. The entire phone book is uploaded to the car and kept up to date. You can select who to call using the steering wheel controls or using the i-Drive system. The phone signal strength is displayed. The integration is much better than in our 2006 Lexus RX400.
I'm not too surprised to hear about Norm's troubles. Yesterday I took delivery of a 2008 Mercedes C 300 (a new model) with the complete multimedia package. The iPhone paired with the car perfectly and quickly and the hands-off call receiving and talking work beautifully. BUT -- my iPhone contacts won't upload. I just spent close to 2 hours online in various forums and it seems as though this is a universal problem with the iPhone and Mercedes.I have a call in to my salesman and I'm going to ask him to have the resident techie call the company and try to get a definitive answer to whether or not the contacts will upload. Ironically, I have a Garmen gps system I used before and when I paired my iPhone with that, the contacts uploaded automatically and completely the way they should with bluetooth.
Finally, the iPod adapter that is an additional 400 bucks in the Mercedes won't work with the iPhone. Well, it works in the sense that when you plug it in you can hear your music over the car's audio system, but you have no control over what's playing. You can't even control it by hand as long as it's plugged into the adapter.
Martin
Don't know much about car bluetooth. I wonder if it's possible to pair the computer (that has your numbers synchronized already) to the car. And then you would transfer the numbers from computer to car.
In order to upload info to my Lexus from a Palm Treo I was forced to create a single category I named 'Lexus' then I duplicated all the contacts I needed and placed them into the 'Lexus' category for easy management. I deleted everything from each contact except for the name and the one phone number I wanted to program. Simplifying the data in this manner let me upload the names and numbers without generating garbage data in the Lexus system. Personally I don't need to change the numbers much so I only had to do this once. It still works after changing to a different brand phone. Hope this technique helps you with the iPhone.
Merbil Gonzalez
I own a 2008 Toyota Prius and my iPhone works beautifully with the Prius bluetooth. The only flaw is that I cannot transfer phone numbers from the iPhone to the Prius. Voice commands work just fine; in fact the Prius will only let me use handsfree/voice dialing when the car is moving!
You could do what I do in my Acura TSX
My TSX does not support transferring phonebook entries from the phone to the car, and if the blackberry 8700c has voice dial, I've never used it.
However, the TSX does support voice dial. I simply create a phonebook entry in the car for those people whom I call frequently, and add their name to the entry, then when I say "call home" it dials perfectly.
Or, you could do what people did before cell phones- memorize the numbers you need to call often and just tell the car to dial 555-555-5555
To echo Richards comment, my 2006 BMW 330i with iDrive works perfectly with my iPhone. I can use the iDrive wheel to scroll through the address book, choose a number and dial, all with my right hand. Quite nice..
Don't do it often because it's damn distracting.. but handy when I do need to make a call.
Possible work-around, at least for calling businesses: Manually enter the number for GOOG-411, Google's voice-activated, number dialing service.
Info at:
http://www.google.com/goog411/
The other problem with the iPhone bluetooth that I have, is that the audio does not transfer at the correct time.
I have the Uconnect system in my Jeep (same system used in all chryslers). When I make a call from the iPhone, it shows the Uconnect system while it's dialing but does not actually transfer the audio to the car until 1-2seconds after the call is connected. Everytime I call someone, they think I hung up. I have to say hello several times and hope they don't hang up.
I LOVE my iPhone but I wish apple would get off their ass and FIX some of the real problems with this thing. So far all they've done is FORCE a crappy DRM music store on us, and make sure we can't install applications that they didn't sell to us.
Other problems that could absolutely be fixed, but apple won't do until they find a way to sell them to us:
1. Speaker phone is completely useless.
2. Can not send MMS at all, or SMS to more than one person.
3. Can not delete photos from the phone unless they were taken with the phone.
4. Can not sync notes or SMS messages (only backup)
5. Mail downloads only headers (sometimes) and won't download the full message
6. Safari needs some plugin help!
7. Can not search anything, music, contacts, etc..
8. Can not use in disk mode.
9. So many more but I'm sure no one is reading at this point... lol
The article is not completely accurate. The statement "meaning that he can't use the car's controls to dial the phone" is incorrect. I have a Prius, which uses the same software as does the Lexus. I was previously able to upload my contacts from my RAZR. Now that I've switched to the iPhone, I can use the car's phone book to dial out on my iPhone using the previously entered numbers.
So am I understanding this right..NO ONE can sync their iphone contacts data with their LS 460? I just got a 2008 LS 460 and when I try to transfer phone book data, the car's screen says "transferring data" but it stays stuck there forever and never seems to complete the task. Does anyone know why this problem even exists?
I own a 2006 GS430 and the iphone. My problem is whenever I make an outgoing call an annoying sound precedes the outgoing dial tone. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Any input to fix it would be a welcome relief to my ears.
Thanx in advance.
I try to transfer my iPhone contact list to the bluetooth I have in my new Lexus rx350. The screen says its transferring data, but nothing happens. Any solution?
I just got an 08 GS350 todat and have the same issues synching my iphone phonebook, too. Just says "transferring data...." - and nothing else. It's always something with the iphone. You'd think for $400 you's get all the same functions/features a $59 phone has! Totally frustrating.
The Prius (and likely the Lexus) use the Bluetooth Object Push Profile (OPP) to receive phone book entries. This is a protocol that requires the phone to "push" the entries to the BT Kit in the car. The iPhone does not support OPP. The iPhone software stack does register that it support the Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) but apparently doesn't really (maybe it will in the future) ... Apple only claims to support the Headset and Hands Free Profiles. PBAP is a newer profile and is more dynamic (and I'd suggest more useful) and is likely to be the one that Apple eventually supports. I doubt we'll ever see a software upgrade for the BT Kit in the car. So I wouldn't hold my breath for the two to ever work together at that level.
So the only solutions that I can come up with are to manually enter the numbers in the car's BT Kit or to use your computer to sync your iPhone's address book to a device that does support OPP and then sync that device to your car. The Motorola RAZR has good iSync support on a Mac and would do the job nicely. The MissingSync and some suitable phone would also work.
i want to know if when your iphone is pluged into a genuine iphone compatible aux input, and say your playing music through your cars head deck, then you recieve a call, what happens ?
does it, go directly to speaker phone ? and cut out the music ?
do you need a bluetooth compatible incar phone system ?