Long Islander

I noticed that when I paired my wife's Motorola to my Jaguar, the phone was no longer paired to the E350 anymore. I had to delete the MB system from the Bluetooth devices list on her phone, and then re-pair the phone with the MB as if for the first time. Is this normal?

LaicepsYdobon

Yes, it is normal since a bluetooth device can only be paired with one other device at any given time. Meaning that when you paired her phone with your Jag the phone "unpaired" itself with the Merc. When she is ready to use the phone back in her car again you do not need to delete and re-pair the phone with the headunit; you can just open up the Bluetooth devices list on her phone, select the MB headunit and select "Connect". This will "unpair" the Jag from her phone and repair with the Merc without the need to re-authorize the phone. The same thing goes with the Jag; she can just select the Jag's headunit from the list of bluetooth devices she'd paired with on her phone and reconnect disconnecting her from the Merc's headunit and attaching to the Jag's without the need to reauthorize.

What I'm trying to get at is that her phone can have a relationship with both cars but can only be connected to one at any given time and that you only need to authorize a phone once per headunit when you are setting up the relationship for the first time.

Diesel Benz

Difficult to follow what actually happened but (as above), you can have the phone paired with multiple hands free units but you can only have one active connection at a time.

I have my phone paired with four cars and the phone connects automatically to the one I start driving (assuming others are not running near by and the phone has not connected to a near by car before I start driving the car in question, which should be a normal case).

Are you actually talking about the phone loosing pairing or the phone loosing active connection?

Long Islander

It loses pairing. That is, after connecting to the Jaguar, I can't then go into the menu on the phone and select "Connect to MB System." I tried that a couple of times, and it gives me a readout that it is unable to connect to MB System. So had to delete MB System from her phone, and go through the whole pairing sequence all over again. Sounds like her phone needs to just stay paired to the MB and forget about pairing to the Jaguar.

chokaay

If OP meant that if it's normal for a phone with bluetooth to be ACTIVELY CONNECTED to only 1 vehicle at a time, then yes, that is NORMAL.

If OP meant that if it's normal for a phone with bluetooth to be PAIRED to only 1 vehicle at a time, then no, that is NOT NORMAL.

I currently have 2 cell phones paired to 2 x MB E350's, 3 x Bluetooth Headsets, and 1 x Bluetooth Link-To-Cell Cordless Phone System. My cell phone (as well as vehicles, headsets, etc) all remember my cell phones, so I only have to pair them once with each device. When I get within range of one of the devices (car, cordless phone, bluetooth headset, etc), then that ONE DEVICE ACTIVELY CONNECTS to my phone (and all other devices are prevented from actively connecting to my phone unless I go into the phone's menu and manually disconnect from the actively connected device... or turn off the car... or turn off the headset... or disconnect from my cordless phone... you get the idea).


Therefore, in replying to the OP, you typically do NOT need to re-pair your bluetooth phone every time when switching vehicles. Some vehicles (like some Lexus') may require to you manually connect to your bluetooth device by pressing a button on the vehicle's menu... but you SHOULD NOT NEED TO RE-PAIR THE BLUETOOTH DEVICE every time you switch vehicles once it is already paired to both vehicles.


NOTE: If your cell phone is operating on Android 2.0 (or maybe even 2.1), I do know that due to an incomplete bluetooth stack, bluetooth operation in these phones may be affected in crazy ways (frequent dropped calls, phone dropping bluetooth connections every few minutes, inability to sync phone with car correctly, phones needing frequent re-pairing with vehicles, etc). To remedy this problem, you may need to update your phone to Android 2.2 or higher (if available for your phone). Other than that, there really is no solution to this glitch in Android 2.0 (and maybe 2.1) other than to switch phones...

Diesel Benz

Like everybody is saying, this should not happen, unless the explanation above for Android is valid for your phone. An ordinary Motorola phone would not do it (I've not used any really but I'm sure about that).

Long Islander

Thanks everyone. I'll experiment some more this weekend.

IndiumGreyE63

My Palm Pre Plus pairs up between 2 cars, no problem. No need to reset or anything. Jump in my Accord - no prob. Jump in my MB - no prob.

LaicepsYdobon

At this point we are at the mercy of the Bluetooth implementation for each phone. Indium's Palm Pre can seamlesly connect between his two cars but my Blackberry Bold needs to be manually coaxed into connecting to the car I'm planning to sit in. Oggie, if you are still having a hard time with the sharing of the phone between the two cars your best bet would be to upgrade your wife's phone. I had to do that with my wife's phone. She used to have a Samsung flip-phone that was giving her issues with her MB headunit. I ended up getting her an iPhone and all is good.

MB211

Make sure the setting on bluetooth for hackberry is set as "YES" for "TRUSTED" (default is "PROMPT")

lkchris

I've got Mercedes iPhone 3g cradles in two Mercedes but only one phone. I had to separately pair them, but the phone remembers both with no problem.

LaicepsYdobon

Yep that worked like a charm; thanks for the tip !

Dema

My phone keeps pairing to all my cars and headset. Never loses settings. You can try to give different pairing codes, althought phone should recognize devices by id.

Long Islander

Okay, so the postscript to this story is that there was something wrong with the Motorola phone's Bluetooth feature. With a lot of phone calls to Tracfones and talking to people who didn't know what a Bluetooth handsfree car kit was, I finally got someone who told me to do a master reset on the phone. That worked for a week, but then the phone wouldn't pair with any car at all. So, I bought a new LG phone, which works just fine.