Very Short-sighted of MB with the cell phone

[Wildbill]

With the cell phones going obsolete faster than the computer these days, MB is very short-sighted with embedding their proprietary chip needed to communicate with the head unit/command in the phone. This makes MB phones which can quickly get obsolete and out of style very expensive to buy. I believe that a lot of MB owners did not buy or are not buing the phone because the phone would be outdated in few months (or is already outdated. Who still thinks that the Motorola V60 is state of the art? That was so 2002.) Another problem with MB's system is that, MB also locks you in with a service provider. You must chose either Verizon or AT&T at the time when you purchase the MB cell phone. If you do decide that you want to change a provider later, you can now keep you cell phone number, but you'll need to buy a new but obsolete phone from MB. Instead MB should have embedded the chip in a removable unit in the car such as in the cell phone holder in the arm rest compartment which can be easily removed and installed by the owner. And the chip should have been designed to work with any phone from the same brand (such as with all Motorola phones or all Nokia phones). This will allow us to at least upgrade our phones within each brand and to change service provider freely (at least with GSM phones). I believe more people would purchase the MB integrated phone system if they had done this, simply change the location of the chip. If anyone in MB had any business sense, they should have gone one step further. MB should have made different chips, each to work with a different brand of phones such as Motorola, Nokia, Samsung. And price each of these chip/adapter unit at around $500. The price is not highway-robbery-high such that most MB owners if they want to change to a different brand of phone can still swallow it and pony up the $500 to buy another removable cell phone holder for another brand of cell phone. Even though they priced it lower, a lot more MB owners would buy the chip/adapter throughout the life of their car such that the revenue would be several times of what they are getting now. Embedding the chip in a removable unit in the car, rather than in the phone would allow the integrate phone system to adapt so much better to the rapidly changing technology of the cell phones. I am surprised that the MB has not yet updated their integrated phone system in the last 5 years or so and still peddling the Motorola V60 phones. I love being able to integrate the cell phone with my clk command and use the phone hands free in the car, but I am stuck with my plastic Motorola Timeport phone and I cannot make myself pay almost $2000 to upgrade to a less obsolete Motorola V60. I read someone is making an adpater software for non-MB phones to work with MB cars? Is the system perfected?

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[scorchie]

A very insightful and well written post!

However, this has been discussed at length and maybe you should search the forums for some of the answers (and corrections) to what you've written.

Try searching on "phone" or "UHI" or "nokia".

-s-

p.s. the requirement to use a proprietary Motorola phone has to do with the PSE (phone controller) mounted in the car. It has nothing to do with the COMAND, as many of us use off-the-shelf non-proprietary phones with our regular COMANDs.

[Wildbill]

I have not been reading MBWorld posts for almost 2 years. I agree that I am out of touch. The topic probably has been discussed. I will do the search and catch up.

But you mentioned something very exciting. You are telling me that if you have command, the command can interface a non-MB phone. So, If I can get the right cable to connect let say my Motorola T720 to the car, I can use the command to control it? If this is true, where can I get these cables? Are they difficult to install?


Thanks

[SpeedLimits?]

has anyone ever looked into the bluetooth kit available for bmw. this is what benz needs. i will post up a link if i find it.

[SpeedLimits?]

http://bluetoothcar.typepad.com/main/

this has a lot of bluetooth info

here is the bmw bluetooth owners guide.
http://bluetoothcar.typepad.com/main...lBluetooth.pdf

[scorchie]

Rather than repeat a lot of information here... why don't you both do some searching on the forums for the phone information. I think a lot of your questions may be answered. If at that point they are not, come join the existing discussions. There's really a lot of information there!

Just to give you incentive... here's a picture of my W208 2001 CLK55 center armrest with a Sony Ericsson phone installed (fully integrated to COMAND and instrument cluster):



-s-

[Wildbill]

Scorchie,

I read your posts on the UHI and MBenzNL. I stand corrected. It is only MBUSA which is short-sighted. So, MB did develop the UHI which pretty much is what I thought MB Should have done. So, they are not as dumb as I thought.

So, I have 2 last questions:

1. I have a 2001 CLK. You recommend that the antenna be changed to multiband, a process which can be "expensive." This sounds complicated and scares me a little. It looks like you integrated the Nokia into your ?2001 CLK55. Did you change the antenna on you CLK and would the reception be very bad if the antenna is not changed (Can I get away not changing the antenna)?

2. I only like flip phones. So, Off all the available UHI kits avaiblable, I like the Motorola V600, which is the next phone I want to get. I am willing to tolerate some bugs with this phone as long as it works smoothly most of the time. Is this what is expected with the Motorola V600, just some bugs but works smoothly most of the time?

Thanks for all the valuable information.