Bluetooth Audio and the iPhone

[cmalberto]

Since iPhone's 3.0 update now supports BT Audio, I was excited to see that the Prius does BT Audio too. I got this setup yesterday. Never having the capability to use BT in a car, I found some peculiarities.

1. The BT Phone and BT Audio will not connect at the same time. Seems odd as I thought these 2 tasks could run co-operatively. So what happens when a I am listening to BT Audio and a call comes in? I haven't been able to test this yet.

2. The BT Audio controls appear to be primitive. It appears I can stop and start the audio for an existing playlist. Not sure what happens if there isn't a playlist already started. Obviously(or can I?) I can't manage the selection of the playlist from the BT Audio interface. Is there a way to skip to the next entry in the playlist? How about fast forwarding or reversing?

3. I listen to a lot of Podcasts on my iPhone. They are typically longer than most songs in that some are up to a couple of hours. The point is that when I turn off the car an exit the vehicle, I am not sure what happens to the iPhone as far as stopping the selection playing. What I have found(and most annoying) is that the position on the selection is lost and the selection starts over when the BT Audio is restarted in the vehicle. This is a PIA when half way through with the previous session. It would be ideal to be able to start from when the selection was stopped. No perhaps I am not doing something correctly that should be done differently. Is there a recommendation or has someone else experienced this?

What I do know is that my podcasts are setup by the provider of these to have the keep last position set. This fact works well if use the AUX cable to connect. I can simply pull the cable which stops the iPhone selection and I can restart by plugging back in and pressing the play switch on the iPhone.

I will probably repost some of this on the Apple Discussions site as this may be a limitation to the BT stack on the phone itself.

I know the list is long. If you guys can comment and or point me to where I can address these, it would be most appreciated. I really do want to utilize the BT Audio and eliminate the Aux input if at all possible.

I have heard the USB interface will be available at a cost soon. This may be a solution abeit a costly one. I am hoping to remain cable-less(except for chargin) as much as possible.

Thanks again.
--Mickey

[jay_man2]

Everything you describe has been discussed in a couple of threads. I haven't had an opportunity to test it, but think that with regard to 1., the car will switch from BT streaming to telephone mode when a call comes in. And you pair the phone mode and BT streaming in two different pairing screens.

[cmalberto]

Point 3 is an issue with the iPhone's OS. I found reference in the Apple Discussions site. Bummer.

--Mickey

[a priori]

Originally Posted by cmalberto

1. The BT Phone and BT Audio will not connect at the same time. Seems odd as I thought these 2 tasks could run co-operatively. So what happens when a I am listening to BT Audio and a call comes in? I haven't been able to test this yet.

I have them both connected simultaneously. I used the same name and password for both setups and that seemed to make everything work well.

Originally Posted by cmalberto

2. The BT Audio controls appear to be primitive. It appears I can stop and start the audio for an existing playlist. Not sure what happens if there isn't a playlist already started. Obviously(or can I?) I can't manage the selection of the playlist from the BT Audio interface. Is there a way to skip to the next entry in the playlist? How about fast forwarding or reversing?

Aside from volume and pause/start, all other selections must be done from the phone. If you simply select the BT audio mode, you'll get the last thing played, as far as I can see.

Originally Posted by cmalberto

3. I listen to a lot of Podcasts on my iPhone. They are typically longer than most songs in that some are up to a couple of hours. The point is that when I turn off the car an exit the vehicle, I am not sure what happens to the iPhone as far as stopping the selection playing. What I have found(and most annoying) is that the position on the selection is lost and the selection starts over when the BT Audio is restarted in the vehicle. This is a PIA when half way through with the previous session. It would be ideal to be able to start from when the selection was stopped. No perhaps I am not doing something correctly that should be done differently. Is there a recommendation or has someone else experienced this?

This is a pain. I don't like it for regular music selections, but it really is a pain when listening to most classical music or podcasts. You have to pause the podcast and view the time (or time remaining) so that you can find your spot again after restarting the car. I haven't found a way to ensure I'll be right back at the same point without taking this action.

[rstark18]

All and I mean ALL of these issues are Apple limitations. PLEASE call apple to complain about this. I did this and it was noted. Hopefully if they get enough feedback they will upgrade AVRCP from 1.0 (current version) to 1.4. If they did that it would give us the ability to actually control the iPhone. As for the current song/podcast reseting to the beginning after turning the BT off, I don't think that is an AVRCP issue, just a bad BT stack implementation. Complain about this also so they'll change it.

[pri-serious]

Phone and bluetooth works really well together, the phone rang, music paused, when I end the call, music came right back. While iphone was steaming through BT, I plugged in the usb just to see what would happen, usb took over and starts playing music (pandora plays fine too when the usb is unplugged, BT started streaming right away. I thought that's pretty nice.

[johntt]

Originally Posted by cmalberto

3. I listen to a lot of Podcasts on my iPhone. They are typically longer than most songs in that some are up to a couple of hours. The point is that when I turn off the car an exit the vehicle, I am not sure what happens to the iPhone as far as stopping the selection playing. What I have found(and most annoying) is that the position on the selection is lost and the selection starts over when the BT Audio is restarted in the vehicle. This is a PIA when half way through with the previous session. It would be ideal to be able to start from when the selection was stopped. No perhaps I am not doing something correctly that should be done differently. Is there a recommendation or has someone else experienced this?

What I do know is that my podcasts are setup by the provider of these to have the keep last position set. This fact works well if use the AUX cable to connect. I can simply pull the cable which stops the iPhone selection and I can restart by plugging back in and pressing the play switch on the iPhone.

This has finally been fixed in iphone OS 3.1.2. I got in my car and noticed my podcast didn't start from the beginning, but where it last left off. I thought it was a random occurrence, but it to worked several times after that.

Now if I could only control the track selection through bluetooth...

[cmalberto]

Originally Posted by johntt

This has finally been fixed in iphone OS 3.1.2. I got in my car and noticed my podcast didn't start from the beginning, but where it last left off. I thought it was a random occurrence, but it to worked several times after that.

Now if I could only control the track selection through bluetooth...

Yes, yes, yes...I guess I should have tried to find this post and reply to it. It actually corrected itself for me in 3.1. Me likes it now. Very usable. No more cables, except when my dang battery is pooping out.

Track selection would be the ultimate. Now is this a problem of the phone or the Nav system? I am ok with it none the less.

--Mickey

[rstark18]

Track selection is a limitation of the iPhone Bluetooth stack. Currently it's A2DP and AVRCP is needed. HOPEFULLY Apple will implent this before I breakdown and get a VaisTech interface.

[bighouse]

Originally Posted by rstark18

Track selection is a limitation of the iPhone Bluetooth stack. Currently it's A2DP and AVRCP is needed. HOPEFULLY Apple will implent this before I breakdown and get a VaisTech interface.

rstark,

Can you explain whtat A2DP and AVRCP is? Also, what number did you call to complain to Apple? Maybe we can start a grassroots complain chain! When I call I want to know what I'm complaining about and asking for!

Thanks,

Robert

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetoo...le_.28AVRCP.29