i heard a lot of people say that the navigation will allow blue tooth technology, i really dont know that much about blue tooth, and i was wondering if anyone new exactly what can i do when the nav comes, so far i have heard you can plug in your phone, my question is how??? and you can also access your e-mail, also, how would i do that? am i wrong, or am i right? also, if the phone can connect, people also stated that you can use the steering wheel to acces numbers, this is very cool if true, but is it?

 

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless networking technology, often used for what are called 'personal area networks'.

Bluetooth enabled devices communicate with each other without wires. For example I have a bluetooth headset for my mobile phone (the phone is a SonyEricsson T68m and the headset is the new HBH-30 if I remember the model).

Where a conventional headset or handsfree device requires a cable from the headset to the phone itself, much as your walkman/discman/iPod has headphones on a wire, a *bluetooth* device communicates wirelessly.

The range is usually just a few meters max, so it's not a local area networking technology (examples of that would be the 802.11b wireless LAN stuff that you can find in most Starbucks these days).

You can think of it as similar to the IR port on some laptop computers - it's designed for box-to-box communication for somewhat limited purposes.

So just like you can IR-sync your Palm Pilot to your laptop, or you can sync using the serial cable, similarly you can Bluetooth-sync your T68 phone's phonebook with your Macintosh (take THAT evil wintel users!) using the free iSync app with a store-bought Bluetooth adapter for the mac($49ish at http://store.apple.com/)

What does all this mean for the W211 or other cars? I suspect that at the very least the vehicle's microphone and speakers will act like a wireless headset for a Bluetooth-enabled phone. At best, electronics manufacturers will code up an interface between the car and other features of the phone like the phonebook, SMS messaging (vastly popular outside the US on GSM networks) and others.

Right now there are no standard protocols for phone-function-control, which is why to use all the cool steering-wheel features for the phone in the W211 you need to buy their (overpriced by 10x) phone - they had to code up the car to talk to an interface specific to the V.60 phone from Motorola. In Europe, the cars are tied to Nokia handsets. (Sony)Ericsson phones are homeless :-)

How's that? :-)

 

Thanks for the great explanation. It made the whole *Bluetooth* thing understandable.

Thanks again....it was simple and clear.

Ed

 

I too have a bluetooth phone and headset (T68i, and HBH-30).

But the chances that Mercedes will allow integration of, say, my phone with their car are very slim. First,. they do not understand modern IT technologies well (I have yet to meet a Mercedes person who understands MP3, for instance... I am stuck listening to CDs and cassettes).

Second, why would they? Right now they charge something absurd like $3000 (Canadian) for a pretty useless (non tri-band GSM) phone. All the GSM and speaker/mike stuff are already built into the car, so that must represent a profit margin of several thousand percent. Why would they allow me to use my own phone ($350) and hence not buy theirs?

BTW, on another issue: in the UK they are about to ban cell phone use, but any use of headphones (bluetooth or wired) will also be banned: "hands free" will mean "must not use a handset, must be truly hands free, i.e. built into the car". Do other countries do the same? I bought the headset to be allowed to use my cell phone in areas where handheld use is not allowed... if everyone does it the UK way, that will have been easted money.

Michael

 

Mwillems,

I read an article this weekend in the Southwest Airlines inflight magazine that talked about telematics in vehicles and had a paragraph on Bluetooth and DiamlerChrysler. Basically, the gist of the article was that telematics in cars have not been popular because of cost, and redundant features. For example, with TeleAid on the MB, you have a cell connection built into the car, but it can't be used for regular calls so you end up paying for a phone, or using your own phone...makes no sense.

The article talked about MB going to Bluetooth for standardization with the hope that telematics would be more adopted by buyers. It seems like MB does not view the phone option as a "profit center" and wants to embrace more standard technologies to get people to buy into the experience of telematics.

Of course if they still wanted it to be a profit center, they could easily put some hooks into the system, where only an MB bluetooth phone could work. I would not be surprised to see this either, and it is the reason that I am still craving more info on the whole bluetooth support with the Navi.

 

Sadly, what was said above is most likely going to be the case. Instead of allowing all bluetooth phones to work with the NAV system...MB is going to offer their own Bluetooth phone for purchase. The offering of the MB bluetooth phone is a fact...and because of that, I would assume that means aftermarket phones won't work.

 

Hey JPoshea3,

Thanks for the Apple plug!

By the way, if you know a way to get my iPod to connect directly (not through iRock or the like) to the car's audio system, I would be grateful to you for sharing it!

 

I'm in the same iPod boat. Took my cassette adapter with me to a test drive and had to be *really* delicate trying to force that blasted door closed.

I might have to suck it up and order the nav to get a line-in for the thing. If the changer or the main player read MP3 CDs I'd at least be a bit closer to my goal (lots of music without 50 CDs floating around), but that looks like a no-go.

Still waiting for inspiration or a solution to hit me.