Hi - I just picked up a 2010 E550. When I tried to pair my Android phone (new Nokia 6.1), the car saw my phone and displayed "Nokia 6.1" in the update menu, but the phone searched and never saw the car. So it never showed any pairing codes.
Is there a step I missed for making the car "visible" to the phone?

 

Finally got it. Took several tries using the external authorization option, and had to turn bluetooth on/off a few times on both the car and the phone.
Persistence is the key, I guess.

 

Good work, I'm glad you got this figured out.

BTW, Commander Keen -- what a game!

 

I know there's a difference between having the car pair with the phone, and having the phone pair with the car. In my experience, if you have the car searching for the phone, you cannot have the phone searching for the car at the same time. Do one or the other, don't do both. (You can put the phone into a pairing mode, but not having it trying to connect to the car. Same with the car to the phone. Think of it as a "listening" mode.) Sorry if you already know this and it's redundant.

 

Does your phone pair automatically when you start the car or do you have to do the external pairing every time?

Does the Bluetooth audio work? 2010 and 2011 models did not have this yet but there is an update in programming that I had done for both 2011 E350 and my current ride 2010 E550 under warranty to make Bluetooth audio also to work. The update also improves how the navigation works.

 

Now that it's paired, it connects for phone calls automatically each time I start the car. But it doesn't stream audio. Tell me more about the programming update -- do you have any idea how much it costs? (obviously far out of factory warranty)

 

Sorry if this is old news, but check out post 8 on this thread:
https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...w-e-class.html

Make sure both BT and BT Audio are enabled.

 

In times prior 2011 MB sold a "box" that connected to the car and BT audio worked thru this "box". I don't think this box is available anymore but I think there are other "boxes" on the market that you might want to consider instead of software update, but software update does something else too than just enables BT audio. I had this update done first for my 2011 E350 and then for my current 2010 E550.

Together with enabling the BT audio the update improves the BASS outout a lot. Makes a huge improvement and just for this reason the update would be very good to have.

It also improves the navigation for searching stopover while driving.

I have no idea how much the update would cost as mine was done under warranty for both cars but I would not think it is too much north of $200.

I have attached two pictures. The first one shows what was done the first time to make the BT audio to work. This was fine for the BT audio but it caused an issue where the radio and all alarm sounds went mute randomly. No sound at all and it took months before I got this fixed because of the random nature of the problem the dealer was not able to reproduce it but finally I was able to get the car to a MB dealer service in another town to show when it was mute. The fix was finally done at my local dealer (Pic 2) and the fix was they had to revert the SDAR software back one revision. Since then no problems at all and BT has worked with many different phone makes and models for phone calls and streaming.

In the first picture you can also see the fix for the passenger seat. Both my cars had the problem that when I folded the rear seat backs down the front seats move forward but I was not able to move the passenger seat back again to sit on it. The driver seat you could but passenger seat was practically useless as it went forward and up in an angle position you could not sit on it. The fix is coding change to match the driver seat function. This problem you naturally can have only if your car is equipped with folding rear seat.

 

Thanks Arrie, great explanation!