Following the vast amounts of information related to retrofitting Mercedes vehicles to support Bluetooth phones, I recently installed all the necessary items for a working V60 Bluetooth adapter. A fellow named Keith Valentine (ebay seller name cellguy85) sold me all I needed at a good price and went overboard explaining to me all issues related to choice of system and installation – highly recommended.

My carrier is Verizon and I was due for a new phone, so after extensive research I chose the Motorola W755 at a cost of $19.99 with a two year contract. Here I discuss my experience, which for a couple of days was exhilarating, but just a few minutes ago turned a little bit south.

Before pairing the W755 with the puck, I loaded my most used contacts to the phone using Motorola Phone Tools 5.0. I keep several phone numbers per contact. After pairing, the first 100 phone numbers (by alphabetical order of contact name) where loaded to the COMAND automatically. Each contact's name was truncated to 11 characters (Is this the case with all phones?). Multiple phone numbers for the same contact showed up as separate (identically named) entries in the COMAND phone book. I discovered that the order is consistent, so I can differentiate between home, mobile, office, etc. by the order in which it is listed.

Any speed dial that I set on the phone is transferred as such to the COMAND irrespective of whether it makes it to the phone book or not. For example, if the 135th phone number is assigned to speed dial 37, then pressing 3 followed by a 7 long press in the COMAND numeric keypad will dial that number. I suspect that the COMAND just tells the phone to “connect to speed dial 37”.

Some of my phone book entries that use calling cards included the “W” character as part of the phone number. When this letter is encountered, the phone waits until I press send to continue with the remaining digits. When I called these numbers via the COMAND, I found no way to do the “Send”. In my phone contacts I edited the numbers by replacing a single “W” with six “P” characters. I figured that would be enough for the initial number dialed to be answered before proceeding with the 10-digit calling card number. However, when I went to test these edits in the car, my excitement about how well the phone works with the car started going south. I will describe the details later in this message – perhaps someone can help me figure it out.

The phone allows me to take privacy calls. During Bluetooth connected calls, the right soft key of the phone brings up a menu that includes two Bluetooth related entries: 1) Audio to Phone, and 2) Disconnect Bluetooth. These both work as you would expect. If you choose “Audio to Phone”, the pairing of the phone with the puck is not broken, and the right soft key menu entry changes to “Audio to Device”, which again does what you would expect.

The quality of how you hear and how you are heard is impressive. Most people I spoke to could not tell I was in a car or speakerphone. Overall, my initial impression with the phone was very very good. I prefer simple phones that give me the functionality to communicate effectively by phone, and this one does it all wonderfully. It also does some of the other entry level stuff like 1.3 megapixel photos, etc.

Problems when using this phone paired to the V60 puck.

As I mentioned earlier, I edited some of my phonebook entries because the COMAND does not support the “W” character in a phone number. I also deleted some “not so important” contacts to make room for others that unfortunately start with letters at the end of the alphabet. In addition, I changed the names of others (prefix some with # and others with Z_) to decrease their priority and allow other phone numbers to move in to the first 100. Lastly, I added some new entries that start with names early in the alphabet. I did this using Motorola Phone Tools 5.0. The edits where accurately reflected in my phone. However, when I paired the phone to the V60 puck, this made no difference in the phone book that was imported to the COMAND. The contacts that I had deleted were still there, and none of the changes I made showed up in the imported phone book!!! I suspect that the phone uses new memory for the changed and new contacts, and simply marks the old entries as “deleted” without yanking them from memory. The phone book upload process apparently disregards these entries marked as “deleted”. This is just my theory because the puck has no memory of its own, or so I believe.

Were it not for the above mentioned problem, which is actually a pretty substantial problem, the W755 would be a perfect phone for those of us that are not into PDA/blackberry type of phones. It is practically a brand new release with very nice features.

Does anyone know how to get around this problem? Is there a way to really delete contacts from the phone or even really wipe out the entire list of contacts from the phone (it would be very easy to simply reload a backed up copy after doing this)? Any ideas?

 

The phone book is supposed to download anew each time the phone pairs. however, I have also found similar problems to yours when I was using Bluetooth. I also found strange an annoying conflicts if I had entries programmed into my voice control unit (which does have separate memory), and sometimes, in my address book in COMAND.

As a suggestion, manually break the pairing using the blue button on the puck; then, manually re-pair. That should force a new phone book download.

 

After several days trying to figure out this phone (MOTO W755 - Verizon), and trying several others at the Verizon store, I figured out how to keep the phone book synched between the handset and the puck (v60). I think what applies to this phone may well apply to many others. Here is the deal:

The puck has its own memory where it keeps copies of the phonebook entries downloaded from the phones it is paired with. This saved list becomes available at the COMAND or at the instrument cluster soon (about 5 seconds) after a connection is established. At this point the phonebooks in the puck and in the handset are not necesarily the same. If the user does nothing, the phonebook stored in the puck will not change regardless of what changes are made to the phonebook in the handset. Re-pairing handset and puck will not change this.

Here is what needs to be done to get the phonebook in the puck updated: After a connection is established, press the blue led button in the puck for 1/2 a second as indicated in the puck's user manual. Nothing will appear to happen. When you turn off the car, walk out and either leave the phone in the car or don't walk away too far from the car. Do not break the bluetooth connection via the hanset either. You want to make sure that the only way the bluetooth connection is broken is because the puck decided it was time to do so. After some time having the car turned off, the puck will disconnect the bluetooth. By the time this happens, the phonebook in the puck will be updated. The next time you connect, you will see the updated phonebook in your car. The trick has to do with patience. I takes quite a bit of time for the puck to break the bluetooth connection after the car is turned off (seems like 30 minutes to one hour). Weird. But is has worked every time. I tried many other phones at the Verizon store but was never able to get phonebook sync because I never went through the process I just described. It seems that many of the phones that are reportedly having phonebook problems may be able to work using this procedure.

If someone understands the puck, bluetooth, and phones well enough to figure out the underlying reason, and to suggest a way to make things happen without this lengthy and weird process, please let me know and I will try it out.

Hope this information can bring peace to some who had given up on having their phonebook downloaded to the puck.