Which Bluetooth Phones Actually Work?

[pemarsh]

Who here uses their bluetooth phones without any problems--which phone and which carrier are you using??

I guess Verizon is NOT going to fix these problems with the V710, so I am interested in switching to something that works.

[greggebhardt]

I gave it up. You can use any of the advanced features while you are moving so it is useless.

[SW03ES]

I personally think the system works just fine for what you should be doing while driving, voice dialing, dialing from presets and answering calls. If you want to dial you can always dial on the phone. I'm not quite sure what else you'd want it to do.

I have the V710 and we have the Toyota/Lexus bluetooth system in our 2004 Prius (I just installed aftermarket bluetooth in my Lexus). Basically any phone from SonyErricson will work perfectly with the system, the T608 from Sprint (which are availiable in extremely limited supply from Sprint directly by calling and ordering), the T616 from Cingular etc. My fiance drives the Prius and she has a T616 from Cingular. Phone works fine with the system but the service is so poor she's going to join me on my Verizon plan and get a V710.

The problems with the V710 are as follows:

1. The phone will not ring, it only mutes the radio and displays caller id info on the nav screen but does not ring. This is because the phone is designed to operate in "handsfree" Bluetooth mode which the Toyota/Lexus system does not support. The phone expects the Bluetooth system to ring not the phone. The SE phones operate in handset mode which works with the Lexus system (the phone rings). You can tell that on my aftermarket bluetooth system because when the phone and the module are paired it rings through the speaker in the system. This doesn't happen on the Toyota/Lexus system because the speaker is not active until you place a call through the Toyota/Lexus interface.

2. You cannot transfer phonebook information to the vehicle. This is because lovely Verizon has disabled data sending capabilities of the V710 over Bluetooth so that customers have to use Verizon's pay as you use services to transfer data. Dirty.

Verizon is coming out with a firmware upgrade in November which will allow the phone to operate in headset mode (so it'll ring) and re-enable part of the OBEX phonetools system so you can upload phonebooks.

Both of these features are in the phone, Verizon just has them disabled. People are working very hard to try and hack the phone to re-enable these features Verizon underhandedly disabled. There's even like a $3000 reward for whoever can re-enable all Bluetooth functions.

So in short the V710 will work in november, you can bet on it because Lexus, BMW, and Acura have all filed misrepresentation suits against Verizon because the phone won't operate as they promised their customers it would.

If you like the phone but don't want to wait or don't want to do business with Verizon (I don't blame you) you can get the Motorola V600 from Cingular which is very similar to the V710 it just has all these functions unlocked.