91 Ls400 Car Phone Question

[Billas3]

I have a 1991 LS400 with the car phone in the center console. I want to activate it. I have verizon wireless and I want to activate the phone so it is the same line as my current number. Does anybody know how I can go about doing this? Thanks for any help.

[blake918]

As far as I know you can't activate it since it works only on analog. Many of us (I, Jim, Bill, Falcoitt, and others) have installed aftermarket car phones that work great and are easy to install.

[dfkd]

You're gonna have to buy yourself a replacement. none of the old ones work anymore, in fact i'm not sure if they really still make many new ones.

The only one i could find is the Nokia 6090. it's actually still in production.

I found ONE on ebay and it'll cost ya too...this one is listed at around $325 with shipping.

Ebay 6090

Motorola m900 is another but i think it mounts differently.

I guess the way of today is handsfree bluetooth and voice dailing. Or if you're lucky, bluetooth through the system like the 2005 LS.

[1990LS400]

I have a 1991 LS400 with the car phone in the center console. I want to activate it. I have verizon wireless and I want to activate the phone so it is the same line as my current number. Does anybody know how I can go about doing this? Thanks for any help.

Have you checked with the major carriers? i.e., Verizon, Cingular

There is still a lot of analog service available in the U.S. -- particularly in rural areas. My Nokia (Cingular) is analog as well as GSM and TDMA and I can sometimes tell that it is in analog mode in rural areas -- particularly when it is not in the car kit using the external antenna.

But I agree with Blake and dfkd -- I am much more pleased with my handheld and its car kit than the fixed phone in the console that I used for 10 years in the previous LS.

[falciott]

I have a 1991 LS400 with the car phone in the center console. I want to activate it. I have verizon wireless and I want to activate the phone so it is the same line as my current number. Does anybody know how I can go about doing this? Thanks for any help.

Like Blake says, an aftermarket kit , in my opinion as well would be a better choice. I have a '90 LS, and it took me about 3 hours to install a voice dialing bluetooth system in my car, but that's cause I was being super detailed. Hard to go back once you get used to bluetooth, major convenience and safety feature.

[jbarhorst2]

Although analog service is still supported (not for long), the major carriers will no longer allow you to activate a "new" analog phone on their systems.

Tom

[fiveofakind]

it can still be used to make an emergency 911 call.....i believe

[blake918]

Although analog service is still supported (not for long), the major carriers will no longer allow you to activate a "new" analog phone on their systems.

Tom

I agree. I tried to activate the Lexus phone in my ES300, and every cell carrier I went to looked at me like I was crazy for not only wanting to activate that fossil of a cell phone but also for thinking that they still have single band analog service (analog by itself, instead of the tri and quad band phones that we have today.). LOL Point well taken, so I moved on to an aftermarket solution, and I'm very pleased.

it can still be used to make an emergency 911 call.....i believe

I believe so too.

[1990LS400]

I did a Google search today and found some very interesting information about analog service which seems to be vanishing faster than I thought it would.

Cingular, for example, announced recently that it plans to discontinue both analog and TDMA service no later than 2008 and by the earliest possible date.

Oddly, Cingular still has millions of customers using TDMA phones and they apparently expect all these people to switch to GSM within 1 1/2 years. My wife stopped using her Cingular TDMA/Analog phone only a few months ago and it looks like the tri-mode GSM/TDMA/Analog phones we are currently using are going to become single mode phones soon.

Several groups of rural analog cell phone users have banded together to try to get an extension past 2008 but it is looking like the phone companies are going to win.

Its all about money and the cost of using so much of the spectrum for analog.

On a positive note and as an example, a large chunk of the midwest where we drive had only analog service just three years ago but has decent GSM coverage now. The phone companies (at least Cingular) seem to be trying hard to expand their GSM coverage very quickly.

Still, there are lots of rural areas where you can't get any kind of cellular service.

Based on what I found today, even if you could get analog service, it would be for a very short duration.

[90LS400Lexus]

I am curious to hear more about the factory phones in the early gen 1 LS400s. I think that the 91' LS400 I am buying has a factory phone, but I am not sure. If by chance it does not have the phone unit, were the models that came without the phone pre-wired for one? OR, is a model that did not have it originally basically never gonna have it? I have a cell phone, but I hate carrying it with me and I only take it for potential emergency calls anyway. I cannot leave it in the car, because of the temperatures are not good for the battery. If I could get a factory cell and actually get it activated, that would be perfect.

Thanks for any insight!

[1990LS400]

I am curious to hear more about the factory phones in the early gen 1 LS400s. I think that the 91' LS400 I am buying has a factory phone, but I am not sure. If by chance it does not have the phone unit, were the models that came without the phone pre-wired for one? OR, is a model that did not have it originally basically never gonna have it? I have a cell phone, but I hate carrying it with me and I only take it for potential emergency calls anyway. I cannot leave it in the car, because of the temperatures are not good for the battery. If I could get a factory cell and actually get it activated, that would be perfect.

Thanks for any insight!

The FCC is allowing phone companies to discontinue AMPS (analog) service beginning on February 18, 2008. Cingular/ATT has apparently been slowly withdrawning AMPS and TDMA service for sometime.

As I and others have stated in this and other threads, forget about using a Lexus fixed or Portable Plus phone. Yes, all 1990 through 2003 Lexus LS cars were prewired for cell phones.

About the only thing you can do is to buy an aftermarket cell phone kit. Today, a Bluetooth kit is the probably the best way to go, even with its limitations. You can fairly easily tap in the the OEM phone harness for an audio mute connection so your radio will automatically mute when a call is made or received.

jainla installed a Bluetooth kit in his LS430 and even connected it to play the call through his door speaker - do a search and you will find his detailed tutorial.

Blake918 and I installed a now obsolete phone kit in our cars (95 and 00). It might be a little more complicated in your 91 LS since (I think) that there is no easily accessible mute connection under the center console; you would have to find one in the trunk or on the amp or headunit.

If you want to have your phone handy and always charged, consider mounting a charging cradle for it on a bracket or console by the radio.

Doing all this is not all that difficult. There are lots of threads about phones on this and other Lexus forums and I'm sure most members will help you if you PM them.

[blake918]

Blake918 and I installed a now obsolete phone kit in our cars (95 and 00). It might be a little more complicated in your 91 LS since (I think) that there is no easily accessible mute connection under the center console; you would have to find one in the trunk or on the amp or headunit.

Jim, you need to do the Popport conversion, it brings our obsolete cark91s in to the 21st century!! I've thought about switching to bluetooth, but I value never having to charge my phone more than a wireless connection to the car phone, so I'm going to stick with what I have for a while longer. :)

[1990LS400]

Jim, you need to do the Popport conversion, it brings our obsolete cark91s in to the 21st century!! I've thought about switching to bluetooth, but I value never having to charge my phone more than a wireless connection to the car phone, so I'm going to stick with what I have for a while longer. :)

Yes, I may still do the Pop-Port cable/cradle conversion in our cars. I don't like the thought of giving up the CARK's privacy handset since my wife uses it all the time in my LS and we frequently pass it to backseat passengers. (I didn't put a privacy handset in her Camry - no good place for it and she mainly uses the car to get back and forth to work.) It will be interesting so see how much GSM service we will have on our old Nokia phones after AMPS and TDMA go away in a few months. If the service is bad, we will have to change phones to ones that have better GSM and we may do the Pop Port converson then. It would sure beat starting all over with another car kit.

We have been using the CARK-91 kits for over seven years and are on our third set of phones that are compatible with them - not a bad return on investment.

[90LS400Lexus]

Awe, shucks... thats discouraging news. I was so looking forward to using the factory phone.... too bad I was not born 10 years sooner. :)

The FCC is allowing phone companies to discontinue AMPS (analog) service beginning on February 18, 2008. Cingular/ATT has apparently been slowly withdrawning AMPS and TDMA service for sometime.