Seimens S56 BlueTooth Phone

The Bluetooth connection works fine; call quality has been excellent whether the phone is in my left pants pocket or in the center console (getting charged from the power outlet there).

I have not tried to sync the Prius phonebook with the phone. I have heard that the Prius phonebook only allows one phone number per entry. As many of my phone numbers have multiple numbers (synced from my computer address book), I decided not even to try.

 

I too have had success with my siemens s56. hooked it up at the dealers with I picked up my car. the next day I was able to send my complete address book from the phone to the Prius with one send command in the phone. The only problem I have is that the phone sometimes does not know it is no longer in the car and I get a bluetooth error when a call comes in, but I just oked the error message and the phone answers the call normally.

Great Car and almost as good phone.....

Roger
red BC

 

I got my S56 hooked up OK but was not able to send the address book although it did transfer numbers from the phonebook which I think is on the SIM chip. I wish I could have written down exactly what worked but it took a lot of semingly random button pressing. One question though. Should the Bluetooth be disabled when the phone is not in the car or is it OK to just leave it on? I would think it would shorten battery life if left on. Do you guys have any input on this? It does hook up from anywhere in the front of the car but not from the rear seat.

 

BlueTooth polling does use a little power, but not much. I suppose you should worry about it if you're going to be away from you charger for a long enough time that the battery might get cycled. From what I hear, these gadget batteries last longer if you can avoid fully cycling them down til the device stops working.

Snarfing is a BlueTooth security issue to potentially worry about. There was a recent article by Jeremy Wagstaff in the Wall Street Journal about it and I can't send it because of copyright etc... But Joe's blog has a pretty good review:

http://www.bookofjoe.com/bookofjoe/2004/04...ooth_may_p.html

Basically, someone could steal or manipulate the data on your phone and possibly even hijack it to make calls. The risk is extremely small to date, but it's an added reason to disable BlueTooth when you don't need it.

Cheers,

--Jared

 

Thanks, Jared. I've had enough experience with the phone now to see that Bluetooth enabled on the phone doesn't cause any significant battery drain. I'm aware of Bluesnarfing - I'm in the technical security business - and agree that it's a possible compromise of the phone. It's possible, I suppose, that the bad guys knowing that the Prius has the Bluetooth connection could target our cars. I would like to hear more from anyone who has the technical knowledge to comment wisely.

 

Hi.

I just got the Siemens S56 last week. Hooked it up fine (and my wife's phone, also).

I uploaded my phone book, no problem.

Everything works fine except for one thing. And I really, really would like someone's help on this if possible.

You know how the LCD screen is disabled while you're moving, so you can't use the LCD to dial? Others on the 'net have told me, that when they dial their cell phone, that it then gets on the car's audio (as if it was dialed from the LCD screen). However, mine does not do that.

Do your S56 phones do that?

I would appreciate your comments. Maybe there's something wrong with the car's setup or something.

Thank you very much!

 

I have the s56 and it works great, but no you can't dial and have it go to the car audio. If you pick a call up with the phone, it goes to the phone audio as well. i like that better. if you have people in the car you can still have a prvt. conversation. Dialing directly out would be nice, but i think it's better to keep your eyes on the road.

 

I was considering the S56. Can someone tell me if you can do this (i.e., dial with the phone and have the car pickup) with other Bluetooth phones? I'm deciding between the Siemens S56 and Sony Ericsson T616. Which is better with the Prius?

 

The T616 will automatically transfer the call to the car's audio system when you dial from the phone itself. That's how I manage to make calls to numbers not in the 18 speed dials I've set up. The phone itself (as another member thankfully explained for me) does allow you to transfer the audio back to the phone if the conversation needs to be private.

To give you even more possibilities, you can program the T616 with various handsfree options including the ability to prompt you with 'answer incoming call in handset? Yes/No', or something like that.

 

I still haven't got my bluetooth phone yet, but I have a question Can you hear the S56 ring through the car speakers or just the phone?

 

Hey I finally figured out how to dial from the S56 itself, then have it picked up on the car's Bluetooth hands-free. I just sort of stumbled across this.

Make a call from the Siemens S56 phone itself, dialing as usual.

When the call connects, at the bottom right of the display it says "Menu". Press the corresponding menu key. One option is "Call to Speak". Press that. Voila! The call is routed via the car's Bluetooth connection into the speakers, etc. Then if you press the Menu button again, that option now says "Call to Mobile".

Go figure.... it may seem obvious now, but not when I was looking for it!

 

Yep. I have the S56 through Cingular here in the DC area. I changed cell phone providers just to get it (really PO'd my wife :roll: ) It works great. Quality is fabulous.

 

Just chiming in here... I have a S56 too and it is perhaps the best phone I've ever used. I've got it synced to my desktop, and it's great.

My only problem with the bluetooth connection is more with the Prius. It just doesn't understand the concept of an addressbook, as opposed to a phonebook. The S56 is just too strong of an organizer I suppose. And I'm not about to change my desktop for my car. So the phonebook is essentially useless to me.

Maybe a prius firmware update...

 

Yeah, my way around that is I have 2 addressbooks in outlook. One is only for my car. There are only a few dozen people I call regulary, so my "car" address book is a much smaller subset of my main book and has single entries like:

Office
Home
Sue - home
Sue - Cellular
etc...

It means I have to make sure to keep both up to date, but the numbers don't change that often. And when they, it is very nice to be able to sync my laptop and my phone by Infrared (bluetooth doesn't work well from laptop to phone) and then sync my car and my phone with bluetooth.

I have noticed that the phone has an addressbook and a phonebook. I've been using the addressbook. I wonder if using the phonebook would make any difference in how it syncs. I'm guessing the limitations is with the Prius phonebook.

 

It is. The S56, when it sends it's contacts, sends them in the vCard format. The format does allow for a contact to have more than one phone number. The Prius receives contacts in vCard format fine, but drops all numbers but the first phone number.

I've thought about writing a little app for the S56 that would create vCards on the fly and send them via BT to other devices. Then I found out that the J2ME JVM on the S56 doesn't have access to the BT hardware, so that's not going to happen.

BTW -- if you need it, there are sites that have a "S56 file mover" program that will allow you to take files and move them to the MyData folder. It's great if your cellular provider (Cingular) has put some games (Mobile Tennis) on your phone that suck up a bit of space but aren't very good. If you move them to MyData, you can copy them to your desktop and save some space on the phone.