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Do iOS Contacts work with Prius car navigation systems?

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by Aldaron, Apr 11, 2012.

  1. Aldaron

    Aldaron Padawan

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    According to the manual for my Prius, the contacts from a paired BT device, including an iPhone or iPad, should appear under the "Phonebook" tab in the car's navigation system, with entries containing addresses enabled for selection as destinations. This much works as expected with my (successfully paired) iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1. But none of these entries work as destinations: selecting any of them results in an error stating that the address is "not navigable".

    Is iOS 5.1 capable of sharing "navigable" address information from the address book over Bluetooth? If so, is this a known bug with either iOS 5.1 or the Toyota navigation system pairs with an iPhone?
     
  2. Big Steve

    Big Steve ramblin wreck

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    My car is still two days away, but I think I read here the answer is no, sadly.
     
  3. Logical

    Logical Junior Member

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    i found, and toyota confirmed, that if you use state abbreviations it does not know how to find them, so I have to change all the MO. to Missouri and also populate the country field to USA in the address book on my iPhone. even with that it is real picky about street address, :roll eyes: but some do work.....
     
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  4. Aldaron

    Aldaron Padawan

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    Wow, that's insane. Is there any prospect of this being fixed? It's certainly not what the manual says, nor what Toyota's promotional literature says. They'd better fix both if they don't want legal trouble.
     
  5. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    No is the shortest and most complete answer. I've tried various permutations of the address on the iPhone but all are rejected by
    the 6" Nav system.

    Whatever rule the Toyota system is using is not transparent nor repeatable.
     
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  6. PhysicsGuy

    PhysicsGuy Junior Member

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    Not just iPhone. My Galaxy Nexus (Android 4.0) also has most addresses greyed out. Some (few) are navigable. Later I'll check out which ones and see how the contact info differs and see if I can find the common differences between those that are navigable and those that aren't.
     
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  7. Aldaron

    Aldaron Padawan

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    Thanks. I'd be curious what you find. I have the correct entries (those without addresses) grayed out, but none that I've tired (and I've tried a lot) are "navigable".
     
  8. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    That would indicate the fault lies with how Toyota reads the addresses from the phones.
     
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  9. PhysicsGuy

    PhysicsGuy Junior Member

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    Yeah, no luck here. It turns out that even though some contacts were not greyed out, the address was not readable ("not navigable"). I had thought that since they weren't greyed out I could navigate to them, I had never selected them, but none are possible.

    I tried modifying the contacts in my phone in all different ways and refreshing the phone book, but nothing worked. I wonder if there's some "magic" way to have the address laid out with spaces and commas, etc. to read it. If there is, Toyota is pretty tight lipped about it.
     
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  10. ProximalSuns

    ProximalSuns Senior Member

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    Makes you wonder what phone they used for a model if none work.
     
  11. Rebound

    Rebound Senior Member

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    They tested the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, of course. And with addresses in Japanese, it probably works flawlessly.
     
  12. Aldaron

    Aldaron Padawan

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    It sounds like the question becomes: How do I get Toyota to address this. Clearly they've delivered a faulty product (which they are misrepresenting in their documentation and promotional materials), and need to do something about it.
     
  13. jon_lancaster_toyota

    jon_lancaster_toyota Nate Riesen

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    YES!! It can be done, the abbreviations for things like drive and street are the problem. I'm sorry about the trouble that this creates for some of you with a large number of addresses in the contacts list but you'll I find that USING THE ABBREVIATIONS vs typing the name works.

    I posted a video of just that, take a look here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0Mfv9OnYU
     
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  14. bridgebum

    bridgebum Junior Member

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    I also have an Android phone, and I have been able to figure out how to navigate to (most of) the addresses in the directory. It's a half-assed solution, but it does work.
    First, the street name has to be identical to what the software thinks it should be. That is, if the software has the street stored as "Abbey Cir", then an address of "Abbey Circle" WON'T work! An address containing a zip+4 won't work either - only 5 digit zip codes.
    Select 'My Destination', then 'Phone Book'. Go down to the entry you're looking for, but DON't click on it. Instead click on the icon to the right (a piece of paper with maybe a pen). Choose 'Show Details', and the navigation system will lock in on the address.
    As an ex-programmer, I couldn't imagine releasing a piece of software this shaky. In playing around with it, the system actually locked up, and I had to turn the car off and on to reset things. I can only hope that there's a fix coming in the not-to-distant future.
     
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  15. Aldaron

    Aldaron Padawan

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    Yes, it's astonishing. I recommend contacting Toyota and your dealer, as well as auto blogs and consumer magazines to get them on the case. Depending on your state, you might also want to contact your AG.
     
  16. PhysicsGuy

    PhysicsGuy Junior Member

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    Nope. Tried copying into the phone exactly as the nav system shows the address, didn't work. (I explained this in an earlier post)

    Also doesn't work for me.
     
  17. marc_

    marc_ New Member

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    Just got my new Prius yesterday, watched Nate's video (thanks Nate!!) and just like PhysicsGuy nothing works. Now here's the screwy part, if I go to the phone and add the same contact from my phone book, the addresses all show up perfectly.

    Makes no sense, hopefully the supposed August/September update addresses (no pun intended) this.
     
  18. smurs

    smurs Junior Member

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    OK, after watching Nate's video, I set out to do some serious testing, and my results were interesting. First, I agree with Nate, that the biggest problem for me was the abbreviations. For example, "Dr" needed to be "Drive" and "St" needed to be "Street" (thanks Nate!). I can also confirm that the abbreviated states were not the problem. However, I would say even after changing all of my drive and street abbreviations, I was still having trouble with about 75% of my contacts. Unfortunately, what I had to do to get everything working, was a major pain. Apparently, having contacts sync from iPhone to Mac, and back and forth across different protocols (e.g., Exchange to iCloud) there was a WHOLE BUNCH of garbage in my contact fields. When I exported my address book to Bento to examine them, these weird errors became hugely obvious. I tried everything to get my contacts sparkling clean (including several contact "cleaning" apps), but nothing worked. The ONLY thing that ended up working for me, was drastic -- I had to export the entire contents of my address book to CSV format (I had to use Outlook for Mac to export, as Apple Contacts, OWA, and iPhones wont' do that) and hand clean every single field. First, I deleted all of the unnecessary fields (there are MANY) then I chose a few key ones and moved all of the pertinent info into those. For example, I saved only home and work address, phone, and email fields, and some extra ones like "Birthday" and "Nickname". Once I had my contacts perfect (including spelling out all of my Dr, Ave, St, etc.), I imported them back into Apple Contacts, and made sure to map each field perfectly so info ended up where it should. Then, when I let my computer sync with my iPhone over the air (via iCloud, but I assume it would work for Exchange and Google Mail too) and resynced my phone with my Prius, then every single contact with a viable address was navigable. Woo Hoo!!! I have to say, this is the first time I have ever cleaned out my contacts, and over the years, they have been synced to iPhones, HTCs, windows Mobile phones, macs and PCs. I guess all of that translation between fields had done some damage! :) Wish I had an easy fix...