Hands Free

[Dave P]

I am very annoyed that after purchsing a new 3 series 18 months ago and paying over £600 for bluetooth connectivity and was forced to purchase an old Nokia 6210 as it offred full compatibility.

I have now had to change phone to a Blackberry 8120 which I was led to belief would be compatible following a software upgrade. However I am horrified to find out that BMW require £195 for this privalage. plus £65 for the cradle (which I have no problem with)

Does anyone know of a way around this?

[b-y]

This answer works in the US (I don't know whether the same TCUs are used worldwide).

Compromise on "full compatibility" and choose the phone you want. For example, most Nokia BT phones synch perfectly with BMW BT systems from 2005 to the present day but generally do not transfer their phone books. So what??? Pick the 5 or 10 most used contacts and add them into the separate voice phonebook in the TCU. Also, texting probably won't work, but you should not be texting while you drive.

This is not theoretical speculation. I have synched 3 different Nokia phones with several different BMWs, and all work for standard call handling (incoming and outgoing), voice dialing, etc. None were on the BMW approved list. Also, skip the cradle--who needs it?

[erdoran]

I'd love to find a decent Verizon smartphone that will synch. I don't care about phonebook, I can live without that. My treo 650 kept rebooting after hanging up calls, so I switched to the Razr V3, which I can't stand. Someone had recommended I do a reset, but by then the Treo ended up with a cracked screen (no idea how) and I'm not going to waste time & $$ fixing it in case it doesn't work again. I don't want a Blackberry. Any one with experience? This is for an '08 Z4si, which has different phone compatibilities than a lot of the other BMWs because I think their Bluetooth implementation is older.

[Mech_Man]

Treo 775p Now Working !!! (Didn't fully, before).

Got a new 775p three weeks ago, and paired it with my 08/2008 335i (e92 with bluetooth, no iDrive, no iPod), and it could make and receive calls through the car, but the car didn't transfer the phone book. (The car had done this function with my previous phone, a Moto Razr 3m).

Then I found out that there was a free software update for the Treo 775p,
The phone I'd purchased 7/1/08 had software version 1.07, and an upgrade to 1.08 was available at:
http://www.palm.com/us/support/downl...llwindows.html

As it warned:
1) Do a Before full sync.
2) It will take about 45 minutes to update (over the USB sync cord from my PC), which will include at least 3 different hard-resets, so you can't just go off and leave it.
3) Do an After restore sync

It didn't warn:
A) It would 'forget' the Trusted Devises list.

BUT, when I re-bonded with the 335i, this time the phone book transfer function now worked!

They must have improved the bluetooth compatibility as a part of the software upgrade.