[paula6]

I would like to be able to say that I am now the proud owner of a N95. However, after two weeks of checking the web and searching through forums I feel totally demoralised. Whilst the N95 would appear to be absolutely state-of-the-art from a connectivity point of view with UMTS, Wlan and Bluetooth – the opposite would appear to be true. I have an Audi A6 with MMI and Bluetooth Connectivity. Although I can make and receive calls, the phone offers no contact or address book functionality. My old RAZR V3 works fine, even offering a named list of missed callers but with the N95 nothing! Even the tool offered by Nokia to synchronise the address book (810_Contacts_Sync) doesn’t work.

I never switch too early to new technologies because they take time to ripen and I don’t have the time and energy to be an early adopter. However, the N95 has been around over 6 months but doesn’t seem to have progressed at all on this topic. If Nokia wants to survive in this world of travelling professionals they have to start taking this kind of problem seriously.

Everything seems to come down to Nokia being unaware of the fact that apart from the Bluetooth 2.0 standard there are also slightly older standards called 1.1 and 1.2 – which SonyEricsson and Motorola happily support. The web is full of questions and threads regarding this subject. There appears to be a whole community of Audi drivers keen to get their N95’s working, but being disappointed. Nokia would appear to be doing it’s best to ignore this deficit in the N95 and makes no comment. I cannot understand why a mobile phone with such capabilities as the N95 should ignore a world full of slightly older Bluetooth connections. After two weeks of searching and hoping for a solution for me it comes down to change the phone not the car – I’ll sell the N95 and switch back to an out-of-date Motorola!

Regards,

Paul

[ihqu]

Have you been in contact with Audi? They should be able to provide a list of compatible devices with their car phones, not vice versa

Bluetooth specification 2.0 is backward compatible with previous versions

[patc]

Very frustrating!

Strange that you pay £400 to get bluetooth in your A6 (on the current option list) and it doesn't support the latest standard, though. I think that could be worth taking up with Audi - after all, £400 is a heck of lot to pay for a £30 bluetooth adaptor.

[paula6]

Hi,

Audi actually has a list of verified mobile phones which work with the Audi MMI.
http://www.audi.de/etc/medialib/cms4imp/audi2/product/technology/pdf.Par.0004.File.pdf
Unfortunately there is no mention of the N95!

That said, it would not appear to be an Audi problem. There are also reports of the web from BMW and VW owners. The problem would seem to lay with Nokia - but again - they choose to ignore it!

Regards,

Paul

[paula6]

Just to correct my last entry. It is now mentioned at the end of the list. But it wasn't there when I checked it. Audi say exactly what everyone is saying - there is now access to the address and contact data stored in the mobile.

Regards,

Paul

[paula6]

Just as an after thought, I hope people don’t get me wrong. The N95 is a really great device, the sound quality is great, the camera is great and makes very good pictures and mp4 movies. The expandability with the mini-sd card is exactly what I wanted. But because I spend a lot of time in my car, I need a mobile which is safe to use while driving. And the bottom line is this phone is not safe to use on road if you own an Audi, BMW, VW and probably a list as long as your arm.

What really annoys me is that people first reported this problem back in January 2007 and Nokia doesn’t seem to be interested in doing anything about it. I can’t believe that a high-tech device like the N95 can’t be fixed with a simple software patch!

[shuntfield]

I have just ordered a new Audi S3, with a Generation II (bluetooth) phone preparation.

I have been looking into this for a little while, as I have a Nokia N95, I also have a Nokia 8800 Sirocco. Checking other posts out there is some information to be had.

I have been at the dealers (I dont pick the car up for two weeks yet) doing some limited tests.

What I have found is:
The N95 works ok. With the exception of it copying the phonebook from the phone to the car. The other functions such as the call handling, network signal power, network ID etc operate OK.

The 8800 Sirocco, seems to work completely with all the operations working.

The N95 is a Nokia S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 Handset (symbian based)
The 8800 Sirocco is a S40 handset.

The symbian handset doesnt have the Bluetooth Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) and this is what is stopping the phone book being copied across to the car. Reading other posts on this discussion group, it would appear that Nokia are "looking" to add this at a later date (I wouldnt hold my breath on that though) with a Software Update, as far as I can tell no Symbian handset by Nokia has this bluetooth profile.
The next thing is the 810 contacts push software, which appears to have had limited success with the MMI. There are two things that you need to bear in mind before using the 810 push software.

First, your MMI system needs to have the latest version of the software, now this may have to be installed by the Dealer with the diagnostic equipment, or it might (not 100% sure about this SO CHECK!) be updated with the latest mapping disc from your Audi Dealer. Also worth checking that you have the latest software on your N95.

Second, with the 810 contact push/downloader installed in the phone, you need to delete the pairing from BOTH the car and the phone after this ensure that the 810 push is still running and then re pair the phone to the car, it should then download the contacts from the N95 to the car, again other users here have said it takes a while, and sometimes fails.

Hope this helps.

Shunts....

[paula6]

That’s interesting what you are saying about the PBAP capability in the N95. But I won’t be holding my breath for a fix of the N95. I went a head and ditched the mobile yesterday. But if there was a way of linking an N95 to my Audi I’d switch back tomorrow – it’s quite a stunning device.

With regards to the 810 contacts application from Nokia. I went though the procedure of de–coupling from both sides and all that, but from what I understand the Audi has to establish the connection while the contacts application is running. There would appear to be two different Bluetooth MMI versions available, one which can search for Bluetooth devices and the other which cannot. I have the latter “FSE” version which can’t search for devices. I can’t therefore establish a new connection.

The idea that Audi might be able to update the MMI system had crossed my mind, but there are no such reports on the web which I have come across. Thanks for the helpful suggestions anyway. It would be nice to hear some kind of response from Nokia. I think it’s a rather arrogant approach to simply stick their head in the ground and pretend the world revolves around them. Like I said at the beginning these problems where first reported in January 2007!

Anyone else out there feeling disappointed?

Paul

[patc]

You have to wonder why on earth they removed PBAP - they must have known that a lot of car systems use it.

Sounds like a retrograde step to me.

[shuntfield]

This thread:

/discussions/board/message?board.id=accessories&;message.id=3553&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Whilst pretty big has some extra detail from what I have found here.

Have a look through and see if you can pick up some extra snippits of info.

As far as I know the 810 application is set to run from starting the phone, and should be running in the background all the time.

Will give it a go with my S3 (which should have the latest everything seeing as it was built on July 24th!)

As for the PBAP - I dont think that there are any Symbian handsets which contain that profile.

Shunts...

[shuntfield]

Oh for an edit function!!

Seeing as that link is not working in the last post try this one: http://tinyurl.com/3bcr7q

Shunts...

[paula6]

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

You are right with the 820 contacts, it has to run all the time in the background. But from what I have read, it wont sycronise if you reestablish a new connection from the N95 rather than the MMI. It has to be the other way round, that is the Audi MMI has to find the mobile.

Cheers

Paul

[shuntfield]

Hi Paul

Do you mean re-pair? I'd set it so that its authorised, ie connects when they are in range of one another.

Shunts...

[paula6]

Yes, I do mean re-pair. Once you have pair up the two devices, I would also set them to re-establish a connection once they are in range. But for the 810 (not as I said above 820) contacts application to work properly, the initial communication has to be done from the MMI side. I read this in one of the German forums. Why that is I don’t know?

Cheers

[paula6]

Hi Shuntfield,

I just got around to checking the link you posted above "Bluetooth Problem with Audi MMI - Nokia E61". It was that link which prompted me to start a new thread among others. That one opened back in July 2006 and dried up in June 2007. There are also loads of German threads all over the web, with people stuck with the same problem. I haven’t taken a look at the piAccess yet. The reports didn’t seem to enthusiastic.

It just stunned me that Nokia could ignore this for so long.

Paul

[shuntfield]

Yes Paul I agree with you on that how can it take so long! Certainly is pretty bad.

Suppose you can get away with selling something that is works "to a fashion"

Shunts...

[paula6]

I had my hopes set on the piAccess https://www.piaccess.com/trac/wiki/Products/Link application supplied by Pragmaticomm Limited. It supposedly solves the address book synchronisation problem for Symbian S60 based devices. Alas it won't install on an N95. Their list of supported devices doesn’t list it but could help with these mobiles: Nokia N70, Nokia N90, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 3230, Nokia 6670, Nokia 7610, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6260.

Paul

Message Edited by noxit on 27-Aug-2007 10:06 AM

[shuntfield]

I think its the "3rd Edition Feature Pack 1" bit that the piaccess program doesnt like.

All the others are an earlier edition.

Shunts...

[paula6]

I have come up with a kind of work-around which requires two mobiles  (which I have, please check the beginning of this thread).

I connect my Motorola RAZR V3 with the Audi MMI and then switch to the MMI-Address Book. There you can select to import all or individual entries from the mobile device. The MMI then downloads the phone entries into the MMI address book. Switching back to the N95, you can make calls using the named entries from the MMI address book and incoming calls are also recognised not just as numbers but as valid entries from the address book.

The drawbacks are you need two phones to do it and you have to manually expand the address book or regularly delete it in the MMI and then reload it. It’s by no means a solution, but for me my address book doesn’t change that often so it’s a work-around I can live with. Alas you still can see the calls you have missed or made previously directly on the mobile. At least using the phone in the car becomes usable again.

It would be nice to hear if other people have found this useful or are still suffering from the Nokia “deaf-ear” syndrome?

Paul

[mccbleue]

Nokia, like every other mobile manufacturer, is only able to offer support for its own products, and only Nokia accessories are able to be exhaustively by Nokia for compatability with its phones.

Even in cases where a car manufacturer has developed its car kit in partnership with Nokia, unless the car manufacturer maintains the business relationship with Nokia in order to update the kit when new phones are introduced, unfortunately it becomes the sole responsibility of the car manufacturer supplying and installing the kit.

Message Edited by mccbleue on 30-Aug-200710:34 AM