So to explain. We have a bluetooth device (Cell2Jack) in the house so my wife can use the old house phone instead of the cell, easier for her.

So now when, on occasion, I get in the car to go somewhere the car steals the call from her phone. Sometimes if I am quick enough I can get the car to "see" my phone first, but not always.
I have tried to have the "cell2jack" connection as the first in line on her phones bluetooth list, but doesn't work.

So thought some of you smart guys/gals out there might have an answer.

Thanks

 

Both my W166 and now Cayenne do the same thing. Haven’t dug into settings to figure it out.

 

What's the priority of blue tooth devices on the benz? Your wife's first should be second. Yours should be first. You can even add a third non used cell phone to be second and wife's third .. forces the car to look for higher priority phones before connecting to hers, thereby hijacking the cell2phone

You may have already tried this

 

There's pretty much no good solution to this. The Bluetooth standard doesn't have any means of prioritizing connections. This was not accounted for in the standard. Given that BT is a so-called personal area network technology, it automatically connects to any paired device that comes within range. Any type of prioritization is left to the OS running on the device. Android and iOS have their rules for how to prioritize connections. iOS supposedly prioritizes them in the order they appear in the BT list, basically the last paired device takes priority, however it's not always straight forward. I believe handsfree devices take priority over other audio devices, so the moment the car comes within range it automatically transfers an active call.

As far as MBUX/COMAND is concerned, supposedly the phone connected as Phone 1 takes priority. So if Phone 2 is connected at the moment and Phone 1 connects, then Phone 1 replaces Phone 2 in the foreground, but Phone 2 remains connected in the background and may not transfer an active call back to another audio device within range such as your Cell2Jack. The bad news is, the only option is to not pair your wife's phone with the car, but obviously that's not a real solution. BT assumes that all your paired devices are your personal devices, so a shared car doesn't really fit what BT was designed for. When this happens your wife's only choice is to pick up her mobile phone and manually route the audio back to the Cell2Jack device.

Probably doesn't make you feel better, but this happens to everybody who shares a car with somebody else and each one has their phone paired to the car. If the car is within range of either or both phones the it automatically connects and it's up to the car's Infotainment system how to prioritize each phone.

 

Just to add, that doesn't really guarantee anything because you can't control which phone comes in range first. So if Phone 2 is within range first then it will connect to Phone 2. Once Phone 1 comes in range it will connect to Phone 1, and Phone 1 will replace Phone 2 in the foreground, but at that point Phone 2 had already connected and transferred the call. OP seems to already have tried that. I don't know what he meant by being quick enough to make the car see his phone first, though. Should make sure that BT is turned on on his phone before the car is started.

 

Couldn't you just Unpair the Cell2Jack connection?

 

Wow, thanks for in-depth response. I did try the priority path, but in the end it failed. I managed to avoid yesterday, when I just went out started the care and backed out right away. ??? Who knows math lucky.

Thanks again!

 

Unfortunately no, the wife's phone is in use with the Cell2Jack, then when I leave he phone tries to connect to the car... c'est la vie