Finally: MB's own Bluetooth
 

This comes from a Spanish forum: MB is finally coming up with its own Bluetooth device, which connects to the UHI craddle as if it was a phone bed.

the puck!

we should contact AWS and see when we can get a hold of these. sometime next year i imagine though.

Yehaa !
I wonder when steve can have these...

They are supossed to become available in Europe any day now.

A few more details: the device will have a slot for a sim card, and there will be another one with Bluetooth + a corded phone, in case you need privacy.

Where can i read about this.....where can i get it DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT =)

This is the one with BT + mini phone

Aws...
 

I called AWS yesterday to ask when the kit will be available for the W211.
I was told 1Q 2006. Also - you need the UHI kit as well as their bluetooth puck for this to work.

I'm now weighing this (i'm sure cost on the above 2 kits will be at least 1000) vs. buying a parrot CK3100 for 200.00....

Aceman

a simcard inside.. why ?.. is that i u want to use the mini phone alone ?..

Now im getting confused ..

I have UHI and i want it..

Want it

want it

Need it.. im tired of forgetting my phone in the cradle all the time..
/kim

From what I read, both devices can acommodate a sim card. My guess is that some people will want to have the phone capabilities and don't care much about Bluetooth. It will also serve well for those who have twin sim cards (two cards with the same phone number).

I used to forget my phone in the cradle, but it all stopped after I made the commitment to walk back to the car to bring the phone with me every single time. I know, it is easy to do in sunny Madrid...

For the US market - I called AWS as well. They told me the puck will be available for models 2004 and prior. 2005/2006 has what they call the "dongle". Basically something that transmits bluetooth. But for 2005/2006 you should already have the US GSM cell phone kit installed (I think here it is called MHI, UHI = European (talk with Steve).

You use your own cell phone (with sim card inside it), there is no sim card in the "puck". AWS won't be installing it, but the dealers will sell a "retrofit" kit. It should be fairly painless from what I've read (plug in dongle or slap in the puck where the phone should go), but it might be the IPOD kit all over again ($200 at some dealerships, $1200 at others). But we won't know anything until at earliest 01/01/06 and at the latest 03/01/06.

Hope that helps. There seems to be two threads here for the information being provided. 1) european information - i cannot confirm any of this as they sometimes have different equipment, and 2) US information - AWS in the US confirmed what I wrote above.

Spoke to one dealer in the DC area last week - he says the AWS BT puck will be available in January '06, which is consistent with the preceding posts for the U.S.

Ray Catena down here in NJ told me the same thing today, January. Hopefully they wont screw up like the Ipod like said before, they quoted me 300 installed when I purchased the car and calls me last night to tell me it will be like 700 when its all done; lol. Obvoiusly it wasnt installed

fazooley

I like the idea of bluetooth for accessories but I see some limitations. You can't use the compensator/antenna built into the vehicle and if you have metallic film tint your cellular reception is going to suffer.

Are you certain, Tishers? One would think that the BT link would connect the phone via its low-power RF to the MHI PSE - which is connected not only to COMAND, but to the compensator/antenna. As I understand it, the BT link essentially replaces the hard-wired connections (except for the charging connectors) with low-power RF.

when using bt, you eliminate the use of an external antenna compensator. The antenna on the phone is used instead.

I wonder what will the cost be for older cars like mine? I hope it wouldn't be 2X as expensive as the Mikbox. Caution for Verizonwireless bluetooth phone owners. Verizon diable the phonebook transfer function for their bluetooth phone; the OBEX profile is disabled and phonebook download maybe a problem. This is the problem with my Lexus GX470. Therefore I had to buy a Sony T610 phone from Ebay, input my phonebook, and transfer all in one shot. Hopefully this is only an isolated problem for the Lexus and not for the Benz because I would love to have Bluetooth phone for my next Mercedes in a couple years. Also touchscreen NAV is on my wish list too for the Mercedes.

John

Yeah, Verizon sucks with that! They disabled pretty much everything in BT. I wonder if the MB V710 has that ability over BT?

Thanks, Sunil - and thanks, Tishers - darned good reasons not to go the the BT mod.

using an internal antenna is especially a problem with the S,CL and some other models that has a special glass which blocks some RF and produces a poor signal.

fazooley where in nj??? Im in nj.....i dont have the cradle....im guessing i need that installed and i dont have command.....dammit i want BT

I just got my 2006 S500 (W221) yesterday and it has some basic Bluetooth capabilities built-in. Unfortunately, by default it does not support either the headset or handsfree profiles, only OBEX and Serial Port. The "name" of the Bluetooth module as seen by my mobile phone is "UHI28742". Do I still need to buy one of the Bluetooth UHI modules discussed earlier in this thread? The car came with a UHI module for the Nokia 6230i phone.

This is how it appears at the moment, that we will need this puck to plug into the cradle to or however it connects to use the phone dialing, etc portions like every other 25k+ car comes with for free; lol

fazooley

Sunil,

I was reading on some of the (generic) BT sites that some configurations download the phone's SAP; and where they do, the setup is configured to use the car's antenna. Considering the warnings in my owner's manual that use of a cell phone inside the car could damage electronics (I understand this is airbag circuitry), and also considering the IR window glass situation, is it likely MB would set up their BT to use the phone's antenna rather than the external antenna?

True. MB will most likely use the Bluetooth SIM-Access-Profile (SAP) so the handsfree system in the car reads the SIM card info from the phone, and then powers it down to standby mode, while using the car's built-in antenna.

I noticed AWS sells the Nokia 6230 now. That's one of the phones which should work with BT SAP.

Sklaw, You are absolutly correct. As wolfgang said, the benz bluetooth will likely use the SAP profile. I have a bluetooth handset currently using the SAP profile and tested it. It downloads all the contact info from your phone and brings it to the bluetooth handset.