Usage of phone book on F900BT?

[Boby]

Dear all,

compared to the other issues here, mine seems to be a minor one - though, I'm really annoyed by it daily...

Besides the common problems with the 2.0x firmware of the F900BT (which hopefully will be solved by the 3.0x firmware update), I have a big problem with the phone book ("contacts") of the unit.

 

Because the way it is implemented, it really SUCKS!

 

Every modern cell phone of the past years allows you to save contacts with more than one number (e.g. mobile, home, work,.... = one person in the phone book, but different numbers).

 

Even my three year old Pioneer DEH-7900UB paired with a CD-BT200 bluetooth module was able to manage this in the right manner (browsing the phone book by names, then hit the "enter key" - and you were able to select from a list containing the different numbers of this person).

 

So, why the heck this brand-new, hopefully further developed unit F900BT (and same for 500 and 700) isn't able to handle this in the same manner? I know...there are a lot of other, major issues Pioneer has to solve first - but a useful phone book is for me very important - and it is not acceptable for me to install some SQL tools and to hack into the device, just to work around this "problem".

 

To rename everything on my cell phone isn't possible for me, because it's the phone of my company - and all the contacts get synchronized with Microsoft Exchange Server as well...that would end up in a complete mess and doubled entries, of course.

 

What is you impression of the phone book and how it's implemented? Or am I the minority being pissed by the way the phone book works? Thank's for your thoughts!

[Boby]

Am I really the only one person in the world who is unhappy with the phone book implementation???

Hard to believe...

[dianebrat]

Am I really the only one person in the world who is unhappy with the phone book implementation???

Hard to believe...

I just don't see why this is such a big deal for you, it pulled my contacts from my iphone just fine, yes, there is one entry that has multiple numbers in my phone, vs an entry for "Andrea Home" and "Andrea Work" on the AVIC, but in my mind, that's a LOT easier to work with, and requires far less futzing and menus that take my attention off the road.

[Boby]

Well...big deal...not really, it's just annoying, but I could re-arange that, that's true.

I just mentioned, that Pioneer did it better in the past.

 

What bothers me much more is the sorting of the entries in the phone book. Currently they are sorted the way "1) first name 2) last name". I use the unit with the cell phone of my company carrying over 250 contacts of who I mostly only know the LAST name. To think of "what's the first name of the customer" just to find him on my unit, is really mean - and also distracts me from driving.

[dianebrat]

What bothers me much more is the sorting of the entries in the phone book. Currently they are sorted the way "1) first name 2) last name". I use the unit with the cell phone of my company carrying over 250 contacts of who I mostly only know the LAST name. To think of "what's the first name of the customer" just to find him on my unit, is really mean - and also distracts me from driving.

Without knowing what phone you use, and iphones are a bit flaky, I can only offer this:

On the iPhone it pulls over the list in the format that the phone uses for display, so you if you have the phone display as first name, last name, they come into the AVIC that way, if you have the iphone set to display last name, first name, then that's what the AVIC gets.

 

So clearly it's my choice depending on how I sort my phone, as to how the AVIC displays.

[Boby]

Oh well,

thanks for the hint. I'll try this tomorrow. My phone is a Nokia N71 & the display order in the contacts on the phone was "last_name first_name", tomorrow morning I'll try different settings, maybe it will solve my problem. Even if I would have to use it as workaround (change setting, transmit phone book & restore previous setting) would be fine with me - I'm transferring my phonebook maybe once a month, so no big deal.

 

What I've figured out in the meantime: Microsoft Outlook (which is in general the source of my contacts - I synchronize my cell phone via EAS [GPRS/UMTS-based access to Microsoft Exchange Server]) itself knows a few different "names" fields, means: Outlook has own fields for first name, last name, name and "save as name" (don't know if the terms are correct, because I don't have an English version available). And to make it funny, the fields don't really have to have the same content. Means: If you have in the first name "Phil" and in the last name "Collins", the writing of the field name can be overwritten by whatever you want - and if you change afterwards the "save as" name field, it could contain different values also. That's not the sense of course, but over the years (PDA, different cell phones,...) my contacts got a kind of puzzled - and the fields weren't consistent.

 

In my contacts there are different orders within the "name" and "save as name" already. In the past two hours I took care of a correct filling of my contacts within Outlook, maybe this will help too.

 

Thanks,

Boby

[bloodninja]

My contacts list works wonderfully. Then again, I'm not a noob.

[Esilar]

My SE W960i can handle the contats by "last name, first name" or "first name last name". Transferred to the avic it's always "last name, first name" and that is the opposite i was using... i had to reorder all my contacts. I agree to Boby that this application could be much better. And it's not only the sorting of names, it's also the contact pictures (ok, that's just "nice to have") and the missing function in a navigation system (!) to set contacts adress as a route destination.

[Boby]

Okay, I found some time and did a few tests. The results looks strange - maybe one of you can help me out with some explanations...

 

Configuration:

- AVIC: F900BT EW, runs currently on the AVIC_WEO firmware (3.01)

- Cell phone: Nokia E71

- Contacts on PC side: MS Outlook 2003

 

First, I created a new contact DIRECTLY on my cell phone with the following values:

First name: TestFN

Last name: TestLN

Office number: 0815

Mobile number: 4711

 

Then I cleaned the memory of the AVIC & transferred the phone book from my cell phone to the AVIC.

Result: Very fine! I got two entries in the AVIC contact list:

1) TestLN TestFN office

2) TestLN TestFN mobile

 

Then I created a new contact in MS OUTLOOK with the following values:

First name: TestFN2

Last name: TestLN2

Other number: 12345

 

Afterwards, I synchronized my Nokia with Outlook - and everything was received correctly on the phone (means: correct value in the right fields, e.g. "TestFN2" is really in the field "first name").

 

Then, I transferred my phone book again to the AVIC (of course after I cleaned the memory first).

The result was like I experienced before. I got one new entry:

1) TestFN TestLN

 

I would have blamed now everything on MS Outlook, but when I checked my first testcase, I found a bad surprise: The entries got doubled now - now I have the following entries:

1) TestLN TestVN mobile (would be okay)

2) TestNN TestVN (changed from "office" to nothing!)

3) TestFN TestLN mobile (this one is new - and wrong ordered now)

4) TestFN TestLN office (this one is new - and wrong ordered now)

 

I'm now a mixture of clueless and pissed, because I spent so much time until now...crazy.

 

Though, I have to admit that Pioneer obvisiouly changed something on that application. Because the additional "office", "mobile", "private",... is new in V3.01 - until 2.07 there were no hint, what kind of number this could be (if you have stored more than one numbers at one contact).

[Boby]

Well,

to have a useable phonebook the next time, I applied the following workaround:

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=25308&p=179199

 

Not that what I wanted to do (nor I expected to have to do, when I bought this expensive unit) - but good enough for the next months while waiting for Pioneer releasing a firmware without all these flaws. It's a pity that people from all over the world have to come up with such workarounds to make this unit usable. But I'm grateful for the support here - and now I'm happy so far with my unit.

 

Thanks for all the support here!