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Can't transfer phone contacts

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by dkittleman, Mar 26, 2012.

  1. dkittleman

    dkittleman New Member

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    I have a Pantech Pursuit II and am trying to get the contacts to transfer to my car.

    It says that it is paired and connected via bluetooth and I will hit "Contacts" to which it will say, "Phonebook is empty... blah blah blah... Transfer contacts?" I will say yes. It then says that It needs to disconnect devices and I will say Okay and it will start the transfer.

    It will say "transferring contacts" but then "transfer failed" and it won't say why.

    When I first purchased the car at the dealer, he helped me set it up and it transfered the contacts and the call history. However, I noticed that it was a few contacts (not the complete list). I realized which contacts were missing, altered their phonebook listing and went to transfer them again and nothing.

    Anyone have any insight? I'd like to have my contacts in the system.
     
  2. gaurav47

    gaurav47 New Member

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    Try if you're able to play music via bluetooth on car's audio system. If you're able to do so, then go up to phone and try transferring the contacts again. Important thing here, is pairing the bluetooth device with car's audio system.
     
  3. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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  4. Danger

    Danger Member

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    Does a small notification pop up on the top of the screen asking to confirm? I had to do that with my Droid X and I heard other ppl too. Its so hard to notice since your not paying attention to it.
     
  5. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    In talking to Toyota service today, they noted that a lot of the contact transfer issues are service provider related, Verizon, ATT etc. and not allowing Bluetooth transfers of the contacts list. Apparently this is a security issue for the phone.

    However, my Escape Hybrid saw all my iPhone contacts with phone numbers (ATT) no problem. Not sure why the Prius has such difficulty. Not all my contacts show up, most are greyed out as though Prius sees them but nothing attached to them. Those that are there are problematic. Prius can see some phone numbers and some addresses but no pattern I can see.
     
  6. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    Hi - both of my Nokia phones are unlocked GSM, so, no service provider to set blocking of Bluetooth transfers.
     
  7. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Hmm...you have to have some wireless provider or are you just using the phones as ipods? The provider will download their software to your phone if you do have wireless service in order for it to work with their service.

    One of my friends was wondering the same on my iPhone, if I "jail broke" it would it then better see the contacts?

    There are so many variables, I suppose it understandable that there are so many issues with device interfaces. When I purchased my Escape Hybrid in 2009, it had the Ford/Microsoft Synch system with Bluetooth. My Treo was on the list of "approved" phones but just wouldn't work. Worked my way up to the MS guy in charge of the Synch and he said "Get an iPhone" (coming from the MS guy) which I did and everything worked. Now it is the iPhone being cranky, no Bluetooth internet (unless you pay ATT to make it a "Hotspot") and issues with the Contacts for phone and nav.

    Because it seems without a pattern, my guess is that the Prius unit is expecting a rigid data format and when it doesn't get see the data in the what it considers the "correct" field and field order, it ignores it.
     
  8. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    I'm just saying, when service providers "lock out" certain features or functions of phones, they do that by providing the specs to the phone manufacturers and telling them to lock out those functions, and then selling the phones in their company stores (e.g. AT&T). An unlocked GSM phone has all features as designed with nothing "locked out" by the software, and just slipping in your SIM card for AT&T or T-Mobile can't deactivate any of the features on the phone.

    I have a feeling the Prius HDD nav interface just doesn't like Nokia non-smartphones. :-( Oh well, if I am never able to transfer contacts and always have to initiate the call on my phone, I won't be happy but I'll survive. That's what speed dialing is for. ;-)
     
  9. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Try this link, plug in your carrier and phone and Toyota will tell you how much love they are giving to your particular phone.

    Phones

    Turns out the number of phone contacts is limited and what is happening in my case is my contact list is too big and gets truncated. Those that are on with addresses are showing up and the Nav will plot a route to them. Kind of gain/loss. Toyota can navigate to contacts on the phone list but it can only see a limited number of the contacts. Ford could see them all, dial them all but not use them for navigation.

    I think I've found a workaround as Toyota has a "Stored Contacts" list and this can be uploaded and downloaded via the USB port per the manual.

    I'll create a .vcf file of 100 of my main contacts with addresses and load them via the USB to "Stored"...hopefully. This might work in your case if it won't see the phone book at all, create a .vcf with your top contacts and load it via the USB.

    Does the Prius see your call history. Another cheating way to get the contacts in stored, call all the contacts you want stored on the Prius and then call up the Call History in the phone and then Add them to Stored.
     
  10. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    Unless I'm missing something, the phone compatibility check at the web address is for Entune, not for transfering contacts. The web site says any Bluetooth phone can do hands-free calling. And you can check Entune compatibility on the web site. But I don't see anything about compatibility (or not) with transfering contacts. I did the Entune compatibility check and the phone list is very limited. I picked another Nokia non-smartphone and the web site said, "Sorry, your selected vehicle and phone combination has not been tested."

    Thanks for the suggestion about call history. I don't remember for sure, but I think it does show my call history - but only for calls dialed by entering the phone number into the Prius display, so, I think it showed a list of numbers I had dialed but there's no way to associate names with them. These days I certainly don't remember the numbers for most of the people I call, so, it's not very helpful.
     
  11. jdcollins5

    jdcollins5 Senior Member

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    I just recently paired a new Verizon Pantech Hotshot to my car with no problems. It transferred all contacts in one shot. Of course this is with the Nav previous to the Entune.
     
  12. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    Very interesting, thanks for the info. Yeah, I don't know what the difference is, but maybe I can look up your phone on the web and figure something out.
     
  13. Tideland Prius

    Tideland Prius Moderator of the North
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    You may have to transfer the contacts one by one. My RAZR and iPhone transfer contacts differently. The iPhone does it as one phonebook (so all contacts at a time) and I use the "Add New Contacts" rather than Replace Contacts. With the RAZR, I had to use the phone and send it to the car one by one.
     
  14. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    Thanks, but I did try that - with the phone connected to the car via Bluetooth, on my phone I went to my contacts list, selected an entry and tried to send the contact info over Bluetooth. I forget exactly what the error message that I got was, but, it didn't work.
     
  15. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    The call history is your phone's call history that it is reading from the phone via Bluetooth. So every time you call someone on the phone (or they call you), you can then Store them in the car's Stored Contacts list.

    But you can do what I'm going to do (I hope), create a list of 100(?) contacts via Outlook or Apple Contacts, save as .vcf file and, according to Prius manual, upload to the Stored Contacts list. Should be easy enough to do. Multiselect in AddressBook and then "Save as Vcard file" to USB drive and upload to Stored Contacts.

    My weekend project.

    Those not in the list you can add when you call them or they call you on phone.
     
  16. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    About "call history", no, on my car it clearly is -only- calls that I have initiated by entering the phone number on the car's LCD screen. Most of my calls I've been making by using speed dialing on my phone, with the Bluetooth connection active and I talk through the hands-free, and those calls do not appear in the "call history" list on my Prius LCD.

    I'm very intrigued by what you wrote about putting a .vcf file onto a USB drive - I must have totally missed that in the manual, thanks I'll go back and look it up and try it.
     
  17. Matt M.

    Matt M. Member

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    ProximalSuns, OK I might be dense, but I just searched through the whole audio-nav manual for "contact" and "USB", and I don't see any reference anywhere to what you wrote above, that it's possible to put a vcf file onto a USB drive and load it into the hands-free calling address book. If you could point me to where you saw that, I would appreciate it!
     
  18. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    It was in the manual on the electronics. If you look up Stored Contacts in the index that should have one of the page numbers. It had a section on downloading your stored contacts to a .vcf file and noted that you could "restore" it by uploading contacts the same way.
     
  19. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Found it. This is explained on pg. 56 of the Display Audio Manual "Quick Guide" section.
     
  20. NineScorpions

    NineScorpions Economy, Meet Style!!

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    Unfortunately you are gettting some bad information. They are pawning off their own problem onto the service providers which is simply not the case. Contact information and the ability to transfer contacts has nothing to do with your service provider or even if your phone is connected to the network at the time of transfer. Perhaps there is a case in existance...but I would like to see it. The provider does not download anything to your phone to enable it to work with their service. That involves the SIM lock which is coded by the network provider to deter provider hopping...but still has nothing to do with this issue. Of course I am talking in the GSM, WCDMA, and LTE realm. If you have Sprint or Verizon...then you are also working with CDMA. The GSM and WCDMA network backbone is driven by SIM card...you can put your SIM card in any phone and get service (assuming it is unlocked and has enabled RF bands that support your region).

    Based upon my experiencing in telecommunications and my knowledge of the phone OS...this issue is simply based upon compatibility between the Prius receiver SW and phone OS file formatting. The car receiver seems to only be compatible with particular file formats. Sounds like someone has a good work around by putting it into a file format that the reciever will accept (USB drive, etc). Seems like Toyota needs to pick up the pace with US device compatiblity coverage. Paring your phone with the car is less likely to fail since there is only a couple of BT standards for all devices...where as for transferring specific types of data (contacts for example) there are many OS's for the phones with respective file formatting that generates many more variables/combinations that Toyota simply keep up with (apparently).