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Rx 350 Navigation Gen 5, Wait For Gen 6


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I just bought a new RX 350 with Navigation and am very disappointed in the interactions. I read on the forms the ‘hack’ around some of the issues;

http://www.cartv.com/content/research/chan...us/MODEL_VCH/LS

This needs to be done every time the truck is started.

Incase it is of interest to future buyers of the RX 350, or if Lexus reads posts, here are the VERY disappointing aspects of the car navigation system / blue tooth system.

-=-=-=-

The system has an over active safety features, that fails to deliver on safety, in many circumstances. The first (and fixed if you do the ‘hack’ above every time you start the car) is the lack of control of the Navigation System while driving. The Blue Tooth (BT) Phone is also crippled.

I believe that the BT crippling is actually going to cause me more safety issues than if it was not. If you place a call on the BT Voice system (This can be done by pressing voice button, saying ‘Dial By’ then ‘name’ or ‘number’). Once you wait through the annoyingly long voice instructions that you can not short cut out of (like you can on the ES 350), the phone is Dialed. If you are calling any of the following;

1) Voice Mail

2) Business with an Auto-attended that requires you to pick a language or department.

3) Conference Bridge

Then you must dig around, find your physical phone, unlock it, and use it’s key pad to send the DTMF tones. The BT system (for your convenience and safety) disables the large convenient, easy to see, easy to reach, touch screen key pad. You MUST use your physical phone, dig it out, and use the small key pad.

Next is the RDS service. The screen can display the Station, Artist, and Title of the current song, in big bold, easy to read type, filling the full screen, by pressing the ‘message’ button on the screen, but not while driving. If the car is moving, you MUST watch a 5 charter wide box scroll the information by. Thus removing the capability to glance at a screen and realize ‘who sang that song’ and requiring you to take your eyes off of the road for 15 -30 seconds to watch a small field scroll by.

You can enter over a thousand numbers into the BT phone Book, but can not access them when driving, unless you put a voice recording on a sub set.

The CD player can read MP3 disks, that you can organize into folders, and the screen provides a method of navigating through the folder, listing the songs in large easy to read text, that permit you to move to the exact file/song you want, but not while driving. While driving you must once again pay attention to a small one line area, that will display the track’s name once the track starts. So if it is an audio book, instead of a glance at a menu of tracks and hitting the correct one, you must click, read (take eyes off road), click, read, click, read, click, read……

There are also many annoying features, such as the one with the BT phone. You MUST LISTEN TO THE FULL instruction on how to use the phone, every time you make a call. Unlike the ES 350, that if you know how to make the call you can hit the next button, if you do not listen to the full audio instructions of how to take the phone off hook, and press the off hook key early, the system aborts you out, and you have the pleasure of going through, and listening to all the instructions again.

Is it all THAT BAD, yes, it is, but, if I lower my expectations from a ‘Navigation System’ and a ‘BT Integrated Phone’ and realize what I have is ‘GPS go there, pick it before you move, system’ and a ‘BT Speaker, that uses my phone as a control, not the integrated system’, than it is not that bad.

It is a 3 year lease, and next time I will try the phone system, while doing the test drive, not parked in the lot, as it is almost misleading.

Another way to look at this, is if you do not plan to DRIVE your RX 350, it has one of the BEST integrated navigation, phone and audio system, BUT unfortunately, I plan on driving it and not sitting it while not moving., and the system was not designed for actual driving.

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  • 2 months later...

I believe that the BT crippling is actually going to cause me more safety issues than if it was not. If you place a call on the BT Voice system (This can be done by pressing voice button, saying ‘Dial By’ then ‘name’ or ‘number’). Once you wait through the annoyingly long voice instructions that you can not short cut out of (like you can on the ES 350), the phone is Dialed. If you are calling any of the following;

1) Voice Mail

2) Business with an Auto-attended that requires you to pick a language or department.

3) Conference Bridge

Then you must dig around, find your physical phone, unlock it, and use it’s key pad to send the DTMF tones. The BT system (for your convenience and safety) disables the large convenient, easy to see, easy to reach, touch screen key pad. You MUST use your physical phone, dig it out, and use the small key pad.

I just got my RX 350, looking through the Navigation book there's a setting option to turn off Voice Recognition Guidance. I haven't tried it but it I'm understanding it correctly, this would turn off what you refer to as the "annoyingly long voice instructions".

I don't think you have to dig out your physical phone to send a tone (ref your comment about voicemail etc..). Again, I haven't tried it yet but on page 117 of the Navigation Owner's Manual is says after making a call you send a tone by:

You: push the talk switch

System: say numbers, pound, or star

You: "1234"

System: "1234" push the talk switch

You: push the talk switch

System: Send? say yes or no:

You: Yes

System: sending

Does seem too long to get the tone entered in time but maybe it's faster if you turn off the voice recognition guidance and you memorize the sequence.

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