Can You Simplify Bluetooth?

[MGreen66]

Brand new ES 350 - love it. The bluetooth features (I have nav), I think, are way too complicated. I have a blackberry, which has been successfully synced. What I'd really like to do is have the car's speakerphone function just like my bluetooth earpiece with my blackberry. Simple and straightforward -- just push a button and the blackberry's voice recognition prompt comes up and I'm off to the races. I don't understand why I need to essentially duplicate my contact list in the nav system, and then record voice prompts for each entry (my address book has over 600 entries!) so I can use the voice command features. Can anyone help me with this? Again, I'd like the car speakerphone to function simply like a bluetooth headset. Thanks!

[AZ08LexusES]

I assume that your BB has a button that starts the voice prompt, correct? If so, while in your car and connected to BT, hit the button and see what happens. My guess is that the voice prompt will play over the speakers and you can say who you want to call. Let us know if that works.

My initial experience using the voice recognition on phones over BT headphones was not very good. It worked well not using BT. But that was a couple of years ago and BT and voice recognition have improved a great deal since. I just never used it since that originally bad experience. It would call anybody except the person I was trying to call!

[SW03ES]

There isn't any way to accomplish that. The voice recognition on the Blackberry works better than that in the car I agree. You would have to speak the name into the phone and use voice recognition that way.

[MGreen66]

There isn't any way to accomplish that. The voice recognition on the Blackberry works better than that in the car I agree. You would have to speak the name into the phone and use voice recognition that way.

That's what I was afraid of. Problem is that once the BB is synched to the car, the voice prompt on the BB doesn't work at all. So with all of the technology in the Lexus, I may be back to wearing my bluetooth earpiece to voice dial comfortably.

Next time they update the software, my vote would be to include an option that just has the car function like a basic speaker phone -- for people like me who need a simpler solution.

[SW03ES]

Have you tried to work with the voice dial on the car?

[MGreen66]

Have you tried to work with the voice dial on the car?

Yes, in a limited way. I have over 900 contacts in my database and each one has at least 2 phone numbers (i.e. work and cell) -- so the prospect of sitting in the car and "training" 1,800 voice prompts is just crazy. So -- I've created voice keys for a handful of frequently dialed numbers and I've programed speed dial keys on my blackberry for voicemail retrieval (the Lexus phone number fields aren't big enough to hold all of the pauses and numbers for voicemail access). Far from ideal, but it seems to be working for me.

I still think that the next software upgrade should include an option to just use the bluetooth as a basic speakerphone - without the address book and without the complexity. In my case - thanks to the powerful capabilities of the blackberry - a simpler bluetooth interface would be much better.

[SW03ES]

Thats a bummer.

Yeah I agree with you, would be simple to do.