Hands free phone operation

[bmcadie]

Hi, I have just joined and this is my first post. I hope this question isn't considered too technical for this forum. Apologies if it is.

I want to buy a new mobile phone and matching cradle to make use of the telephone pre-wiring in my newly acquired CLK200.

I thought about getting a phone that has built-in voice activated dialling, but I'm not sure whether I can activate the voice dialling remotely when the phone is closed up in the cradle and whether the voice commands will function.

It it doesn't work at all then I'll have to put up with it, but I suppose it gives me a much bigger list of non-voice activated phones to choose from !

If anyone has any experience of trying or using this, I appreciate hearing from you.

 

[jberks]

You don't say what year your car is, I assume you've already confirmed that it can take the UHI cradle?
As far as voice dialing is concerned, no I don't think that works with the system. Certainly I've never found a way of using it with mine.
It may be worth considering whether to buy a cradle at all. As you probably know, they are £131 each and only work with the one phone. Also, they are gradually being phased out in favour of the bluetooth solution which is now standard on the new C class so your choice is going to be increasingly limited. NOt sure Mb would admit they're phasing it out, but I suspect they are.
Its a bit more money but you may be favourite buying a bluetooth cradle instead. That way, you could still utilise your voice dial from the phone itself, but take advantage of the bluetooth for everything else. You can also change phones at will without having to pay the MB cradle tax again.
If you want full functionality though you'll need to get a SAP2 compatible phone.

 

[st13phil]

Comprehensive answer from jberks to which I can add little other than to say that the Bluetooth implementation on the new C-Class is very basic especially in the area of addressbook handling. All you get without taking the telephone pre-wiring option and paying the MB cradle tax (I like that expression!) is an ability to accept vCards from your phone which are then stored in the car's memory. And it doesn't even permit the transfer of multiple vCards. If you have a Nokia phone (which according to market share figures is about 40% of the world's handsets) then you have to transfer each contact one-by-one, and if you change the contact details in your phone after you sent a vCard to the car you have to repeat the process. All this is pretty pathetic when compared with the Bluetooth offering in the current MINI and in BMW's which supports PBAP (Phone Book Access Profile) giving dynamic addressbook synchronisation with the phone.

I can sort of see where MB are coming from because they offer the elegant solution of a SAP2 Bluetooth cradle which in conjunction with telephone pre-wiring means that you eliminate in-car wireless radiation. I'm not sure whether the SAP2 cradle includes the PBAP profile though, so even that may be limited to accessing contacts stored on your phone's SIM card rather than in the phone memory.

FWIW the MINI also supports voice dialling with its Bluetooth phone package and the voice recognition is a function of the car, not the phone, so you don't even need a handset that supports voice dialling.