Bluetooth

With a Bluetooth Prius, and a bluetooth phone, you can use your car's speaker and microphone as a HUGE speakerphone- handsfree, cords free. It is great when the two of us want to talk to someone (and it seems we are always in the car)!

You also can use the hang up switch on the steering wheel to turn off the call instead of reaching for a phone. Less distraction.

 

If you have Bluetooth in the Prius, you also have the Nav system and the locations listed in the DVD. So if you are looking at the Nav listing of Points of Interest such as Restaurants, get Info on one, the phone number of that location will be shown and you can begin dialing it from the Nav display (if you have your Bluetooth phone in the car and ready).

And if you have cellphone service with Verizon Wireless, you get to form a close personal relationship with them and teach them what Bluetooth is. (They are still learning.)

 

:lol: Yep! Because at the moment they think Bluetooth = handsfree only. :lol:

 

from what i understand you must have a bluetooth cell phone, of which connects to the cars display. `you must register it before it works. The car acts like a large speakerphone. sounds cool

 

Depends on the phone. The speakerphone on my V710 is meager, while both of us can talk using the Prius- ie. louder and can pick up our voices better.

 

And when I bought my phone, they had great deals on Amazon , so I got a link from Priuschat, so they get a % when I bought from Amazon (I also switched providers at the same time). Support Priuschat!

 

The biggest advantage of Bluetooth is having a hands free car kit that you don't have to plug your phone into. You are right that if your cell has a good speaker phone, you can still make "hands free" calls provided you don't have to dig around for your phone while driving. Having direct access to the NAV POI numbers is a plus but they will still be displayed and you can manually (or possibly voice) dial them on your cell. Road noise can be a problem and may be more so with your cell speaker phone. My wife, if she is not driving, often manually disconnects the hands free connection so she can talk directly into the phone.

 

Fred,

I'm going to say the sound quality is great. It's clear, the volume is readily adjustable, and I don't have to futz around with positioning (and re-positioning) the phone to my ear.

The phone number for a POI will appear regardless of whether or not you have a BT phone. However, you won't be able to do a lot with it other than type the number into your cell phone and hit "send". With a BT phone, all you have to do is press the little icon next to the phone number that appears on the MFD.....very convenient.

 

The bluetooth feature is great, probably the main reason we got the #6 package (BC). I always missed the "car phone" I had installed in the 90's and how easy it was to make calls while driving. The handsfree kits today are too much work, and you have to remember to put them in every time you drive. With the Prius, you never have to take the phone out of your pocket.

Plus, you get a friendly reminder as you're pulling out of the driveway if you've forgotten your phone! That alone makes it worth it! :wink:

 

Forgetting about the Prius entirely (God forbid!), another nice feature of these phones is the ability to sync contact lists, calendars, etc. that reside on your computer to your phone.......without using any kind of a cable. Sort of like that line in an old commercial, "Shaves without a cord!"

 

Only 20-odd hours of Nokia 6230 Bluetooth phone use, but it's been mostly good and very little not good.

Good: phonecall through audio system sounds fine; works even if stereo is off at the time; in my car, my mom's name appears on the 1-Touch button while moving (conflicts with other reports); initial pairing was pain-free when Toyota's instructions were followed; pictures from phone moved easily to home computer without pairing.

Not good: I left a message for myself at work and find the transmit sound quality 'tinny'; no notice given when I left the 6230 home during a trip to the store, and only got a re-pair message after parking later; transfer of MP3 TO the phone required pairing to work properly, and manual-less Bluetooth software took until late to figure out best way to do that; Bluetooth transmit of 8MB MP3 failed at 6MB, so I will probably need to load memory card through computer's card reader, which requires I pull the phone battery to get to the card.

Did get a horizontal case at Cingular so it is flush with my belt. Extra charger that forwards calls to land-line was only $25 so I went for it.

Found out you can buy a Cingular phone through Amazon (big rebate) and THEN port your Verizon number to them, but DON'T do it even 5 minutes before your contract expires or Verizon will demand the full $175 early termination fee. Lucky for me, it ended up I was wrong about the contract expiring tomorrow (started today thinking they'd need more than a few days to do it), but as with the anti-Bluetooth greed that drove me away from Verizon, their instant "You MUST pay the fee" talk kicked in the moment I said that I believed the contract ended 5/14. Later, after much screwing around trying to undo the number port, someone at Verizon looked at the now-deleted account information, and told me it actually expired 5/10 and I was clear to go. Would have saved me grief if less "Pay" talk had been replaced with "Let me verify that" talk.

Anyway, Bluetooth may need tuning and learning to live with, but looks good so far...