Got my F700BT installed today. Will post pics, etc tomorrow of the whole install, complete with Xbox 360. The voice control is spot on. However, I believe that the Pioneer iPod cable is completely necessary for good operation of the iPod. Right now, I'm using the regular USB cable for the PC and there is no sound, so I ended up running the audio directly from the headphone jack to the AV1 input on the back to get the audio. The albums are always randomized and nothing is in it's proper order as it is on the iPod itself, so there is issue using a standard iPod cable straight to the USB.

ALSO, a pretty big problem is that when finding POI, once you choose a location, about half the time you get a teeny tiny windows looking box that pops up and says "Out of memory. Cache ....". This leads to either the unit freezing for several minutes or completely restarting. ALSO, there is no longer the logos for POI. No more "M" for McDonalds or Wendy's logos, etc, just all generic fork and knife for food, etc. Kind of a step backward from the D3 in that respect.

Overall, still VERY pleased with the unit. The mapping is dead on even without the speed sense capability. Very smooth motion when driving. Finding poi is SOO much better now, just can freeze 50% of the time when going to place a call to the POI you have located.

The bluetooth is absolutely perfect. NO complaints.

I got my unit at a local shop for $729. Good deal IMO. Saved myself a good $5-600 over the 90BT that I was going to get ($1200 from local dealer at end of month, plus $130 for MSN Direct which I do NOT need) I'm taking the money that I saved and am investing in new amps and speakers for the doors.

As it stands right now, providing that the correct iPod cable fixes the issues with the iPod (99.9% certain that it will), I'll give this unit an 8/10. If the issue with POI gets fixed then it's a 10.

so you are saying that the Navigation Is way better than the D3 it dont make you go the LONNNGGG way ?

Come on mike you were suppose to get the Sirius installed too!

Some further thought on this unit. Right now, i'm quite peeved at it. 6/10. The interface is very buggy still. While listening to my iPod on the way home, found a very obscure POI VERY quickly, and hit the dial button to call it, the guy at the stereo shop had problems hearing me, but still workable. After I hung up after finding that they do not currently have the new iPod cable, I tried to bring up the map to test navigating home from work. The map refused to come up or anything regarding the gps. Very very frustrating. Also before I left work, while looking up another POI, it just flat out rebooted for NO REASON. THIS IS BS. The iPod songs are all mixed up no matter what. I can only hope that the official cable will change this though right now, I'm not hopeful. The voice control is flawless though.

Some other gripes:

No custom wallpaper, only splash screen.

Can not change the color of the interface. Seriously, why the F thought that black and grey would be a great color combo to try and view the screen when its bright out (not even direct sunlight). The screen is very dim compared to my Kenwood.

I could go on. The F series, mine atleast, is not really winning me over with its bugs.

Could this be a problem with the 700? I heard there is a software problem with it, ive never seen the 700 but friends at shops have used the 90bt and 900bt with great success. However their tests would not have been as extensive as u owning the unit.

Seems the 90bt review was pretty good to, the stickied one.

Yeah, I was told before by a local shop that the 700s were delayed til early July due to a software bug and that the 900s would be here this week. Well, the 700 showed up and the 900s are not scheduled for another two weeks or so. This SHOULD be fixable via firmware. It better be. I just can't believe that they would not test this thing properly seems odd.

Also, while using the PC ipod cable, I have to unplug and replug the connection to the USB everytime I power up the unit or else the unit won't see the iPod. And everytime I do this, the unit has to sit there and take 5 minutes to scan the whole iPod before I can control it.

Dang, that sounds like crap. I hope they fix this, because I was seriously considering getting a 700bt

Yeah sounds like the 700 might be buggy. Only good comment was the voice control is flawless which is nice to hear.

Good report mikeinnj! I'm starting to get that sinking feeling in my stomach about these units.Hopefully this isn't the case for all of them.That sounds too buggy to have been released IMO.

I mean, as fas as FINDING the POIs go, its awesome. You can just start typing, it searches all categories and sorts t hem by distance and everything. The resolution of the screen is incredible at a true 800x480. Movies look incredible and detailed. There is just a couple of really fatal flaws right now. Hopefully I can still return this thing if the 900s prove to be less problematic.

Here's a couple pics that I could manage before it got too dark. The first pic shows the message that appears for about 5 minutes straight right after bootup. Bootup also takes a good 40 seconds or so. The other one is the error message that happens everytime more than one POI comes up in a search.

Not Fun Times. I'm going to try and return this thing to the shop and use the money towards the 90BT.

Wow, so sorry your having these kind of problems. I'm going to forward this to my guy at Pioneer to see what they can do.

I see the delay on the ipod screen. When it goes away I get a msg about the voice commands for the iPhone so I think its maybe indexing all the music each time or something like that. Its a bit annoying.

I am not seeing the POI errors.

This is on the 90bt

Wow, so sorry your having these kind of problems. I'm going to forward this to my guy at Pioneer to see what they can do.

Thanks!

Also, to rdkl, with the 90BT, do you get company logos for the POI like McDonalds etc, or are they just the standard knife and fork, etc? Thanks.

Not sure. I'll go out and look in a bit.

I don't think I am seeing any corporate Icons.

Additionally it doesnt seem possible to activate the msn direct stuff. Oh well.

Going through it online it never is able to finish and calling MSN Direct was a waste of 30 minutes..

Thanks for the response! Looks like Pioneer took another step back in removing the cool little corporate icons. That really sucks about the MSN Direct though. Both of them are doing it too?? Looks like we're gonna need a "Problems and Troubleshooting" subforum for the F-Series now.

That first pic is because the ipod is trying to index each and every thing you have on your ipod for voice activation...thats why it takes so long. If you let it go through that process once, then go into the menu and turn off "VR catalog," it won't do that anymore. I guess thats for people that add songs to their ipod every day it needs to index them for voice activation. As for the second pic, I have no idea...

Here's a couple pics that I could manage before it got too dark. The first pic shows the message that appears for about 5 minutes straight right after bootup. Bootup also takes a good 40 seconds or so. The other one is the error message that happens everytime more than one POI comes up in a search.

 

 

Not Fun Times. I'm going to try and return this thing to the shop and use the money towards the 90BT.

Thanks! One of my biggest gripes was how freakin long it took to get the thing to load up the iPod. Now I'm MUCH more happy to own this unit. Now all I have to do is try to exchange it for another one that does NOT have navigation problems.

Hey Mike,

You mentioned that movies looked awesome on your 700. Are you able to play DivX? It doesn't say on the Pioneer site that the 700 supports DivX, so I'm assuming you're playing movies through your ipod?

I'm really disappointed with how long it sounds like it takes for the F-Series to boot up. For something with an embedded OS and flash memory, it should load instantly.

Hey Mike,

You mentioned that movies looked awesome on your 700. Are you able to play DivX? It doesn't say on the Pioneer site that the 700 supports DivX, so I'm assuming you're playing movies through your ipod?

No that was through the USB stick. I think they were mostly WMV/MP4.

Also, I agree about the bootup time. I'm really starting to miss by D3. The thing booted quickly, looked great, and no REAL bugs. Some quirks, yes, but no OS issues.

The slow boot may be an issue for us. These things may end up coming out. We'll give it a few days and see if we can get used to it but its a real pain to wait for it if you are going to use the nav.

Does your phone pair immediately, or does the unit have to fully boot?

The phone pairs about 30 seconds or so after bootup is complete.