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Car Bluetooth Fails Me

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It had to happen, I just ran into the first real glitch in my car’s Bluetooth feature – no support for +. All dialing is via voice recognition, you say “dial” to dial, “pair” to pair a phone, “phonebook” to access the phonebook, “one” for 1, and so on. Managing phones and phonebook entries works this way too, in fact there is no way to interact with the system other than via voice recognition. Obviously, all digits are recognized. Non-numeric characters are recognized too, but just “star” for *, and “pound” for #. So why do I need to use +? I have a GSM phone and + is used by GSM to specify a country code, +44 for England, +1 for USA, +61 for Australia, and so on. I just needed to call a Macromedia UK employee and couldn’t, “plus” is not recognized! This is a significant oversight, especially considering that most of the Bluetooth enabled phones available in the US are GSM phones. This does not preclude International dialing, but it takes make doing so a pain (there is a workaround, dial on the phone and transfer the call, but that’s not ideal). I just discussed this with engineers at Acura who at first did not believe me that I actually needed the +, and finally agreed to “look into this one”. Oh well, that’s the price you pay for playing with the cutting edge.

4 responses to “Car Bluetooth Fails Me”

  1. Matt Liotta Avatar
    Matt Liotta

    This is becoming an everyday thing for you. It wasn’t Bluetooth that failed you; it was a poor user interface. Again, let’s not blame the technology for an implementation’s fault.

  2. seancorfield Avatar
    seancorfield

    So instead of dialing +44 for the UK, can’t you just dial 011 44 (from the US)?

  3. dwebwarm Avatar
    dwebwarm

    Why don’t you try instead of using +44 just use 0044? It works all over the world ;)!

  4. Ben Forta Avatar
    Ben Forta

    Matt, if you are going to nit pick, at least do it carefully. I did not say "Bluetooth fails me", I said "Car Bluetooth fails me", making it quite clear that it is my car’s implementation. And that is just the title, the comments make it quite clear that I am talking about implementation.
    Sear, nope, 011 will not work.
    dwebwarm, 00 does not work, gives a generic "can’t connect" message. In the US 00 is usually the International operator.

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