I'm starting to think I'm going to have to wait until I buy a new car.

Let me back up. I'd like to hear some suggestions from you fine folks for car/phone integration. I know there are still plenty of people here with empegs still in their vehicles, and that's great, but if anyone has shifted towards using their phone more, I'd love to know what you've done.

Personally, I've been using my phone to play podcasts for the past few years. I drive around from place to place all day, often spending an average of 1-3 hours in the car. Podcasts have kept me sane, but using my phone in the car is not pleasant.

I have a 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid Limited. It's absolutely a fantastic vehicle, and I'm so thankful for it. It was inherited - a gift from my father - and replaced a 2000 Honda Odyssey with about 110K miles on it.

The one complaint I have about the vehicle is that even by 2008, the in-car technology was sub-par. I have hands-free bluetooth calling, an AUX-in, and that's it. No A2DP. To make it worse, the hands-free apparently has very bad quality for the people I call. About every fourth person I talk to complains about my audio.

Entertainment-wise, I've had my phone connected with the AUX-in jack, and I have to pick my phone up, unlock it, bring up the podcast app if it's not open, and pause/fast forward when I want to. This is less than desirable when driving.

What I'm looking for is a way to get my phone talking to my car with ease, and some way to control it. I've tried some solutions and I can get into that, but what do you folks do in your own cars?

I suffer. I really like our 2008 Audi A3, but it has no AUX in at all and no A2DP. I could go with a third-party (Denison) solution, but that's expensive and seems kludgy.

Ouch. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have the AUX in. A tape adapter's no good since like most cars I don't have a cassette player anymore, and I can't go back to FM transmitters. I can't stand those things...

http://www.amazon.com/Kensington-LiquidA..._pr_product_top

BT to Aux adapter with remote. This is the *kind* of thing you should look for. This one doesn't seem to be in stock.



You can get an AUX in adapter for recent Audi models - ebay.



$15 to $100 depending on what you want/need for your car/phone combo. Everything gets hidden in-dash so it's all seamless from the outside.

So I slogged through the Dension web site. According to their list of Audi configurations, it seems there's some ambiguity. Do I have a Symphony II stereo or a "Symphony GEN II+"? Probably for former, but it's hard to tell. That gives me five different Dension products to choose from. Ideally, I'd like Bluetooth A2DP, but my car already has Bluetooth for making calls. Do these play nicely together? I have no idea and haven't been able to find anybody posting anything useful on any forums. See, for example this post, where the last entry (from 2010) ambiguously says "Yeah this thing works perfect for A2DP. We are still testing the bluetooth functions because they are very unstable. Contact us if you are interested."

If I'm going to tear apart my dashboard, I really want to do it only once.

EDIT: For the record, the face of the stereo says "Audi Symphony", making it further ambiguous whether I have a Symphony II or Symphony II+.

I custom made an iPhone dock with USB charging, aux-out through the dock, and it even charges my bluetooth headset, all in one plug. I custom-made the mount itself because every other car-mount I've seen is too large and bulky. This one is tiny and unobtrusive.

I made it by taking a portion of the packaging that the iPhone 3G ships in... There is a small plastic tray in the box that holds the phone itself. I cut a portion out of that tray and heated up the sides with a candle and curved them around so that they cradle the sides of the phone. (When I upgraded to an iPhone 4 later, I did a little more work to the cradle to make it fit that phone.)

I attached all of that to a custom-modified Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset Charger plug. The modifications allow aux-out to work on the plug, which is running to the aux-in on the 'peg. Inside the dash, it connects to a 12-volt aftermarket USB charger. Details of this modification (and some problems I had with it after the IOS 5 upgrade, mostly solved now) are in another thread here on the BBS.

With a little help from my housemate, I made a custom metal bracket that mounts it to an existing screw on the instrument panel cowling.

The result:
The phone sits up perfectly straight, just behind the steering wheel. From my driving position, I can see the entire iPhone screen, and the top edge of the phone is just even with the bottom edge of the windshield. I've been using the TomTom GPS software for navigation, and this arrangement is absolutely ideal. I can also listen to Pandora thanks to my being grandfathered in to AT&T's unlimited data plan.

Still prefer listening to the 'peg, though.

Thanks for the input, Bruno, I appreciate it. I'd seen that model but as you say it's out of stock. My most recent attempt at a solution was this device, which Tom apparently also has. But I'm not very thrilled with it. I could live with it, but the call quality is horrendous, and the person I'm talking to cuts in and out constantly. It's awful. Then there's a single button, so I can only control start/stop playback of music and podcasts, or initiate/hang up a phone call. Lastly I seem to be getting...what did you guys always call it...a ground feedback loop? Basically it buzzes with a little bit of static-y sound, because of the power and audio being connected at the same time to the same device.

So I'm still looking, and it's not going well.


Very nice! I like the job you did! That looks like a great solution, and I could see myself getting very fed up with all of this at some point and doing something custom, but I don't trust my ability to pull it off



I'm not entirely clear what you're asking, but when you connect a bluetooth device to your phone you should be able to specify what duties that device will handle (phone/music).

I have a 2005 Audi A4, I can't remember the manufacturer but I managed to find an aux in solution that plugged into the back of the head unit as a second CD source. Now that I have an iPhone I can connect phone through bluetooth and audio via a 3.5mm jack.

My wife has a 2010 Volvo XC60, the iPod connection takes control of the ipod fine if you leave the device plugged in; it restarts play at the point where it was switched off. If you're unplugging your device (as in an iPhone) then you would have to manually get back to wherever you were in your chosen playlist.

Luckily it also has an aux in but then you're not charging the phone...

I don't believe Audi or BMW do an aux in with their newer models, just an iPod connection, so no idea how I'll listen to my iPhone podcasts when I change to a new A4 or 3 series.

I find it shocking that integration is still so poor. It really shouldn't require additional hardware.

In newer cars can't you just leave your phone in your pocket and handle all audio and user input via BT and the car's controls? The latest iPhone/iPod BTW profiles should now support this.

Okay, here's what I think might be the problem with my car. It's got Bluetooth already, but no A2DP. This works great for making phone calls. The car has steering-wheel controls, built-in microphone, etc.

Now, if I got the Dension contraption with its own Bluetooth, I'd want that for the A2DP only. I'd still want calls to be routed through the Bluetooth that's already built into my car. Can a phone be actively communicating with two separate Bluetooth base stations for different profiles?

The fallback position is to buy the non-Bluetooth variant of the Dension box, and that means a mess of routing the audio cable to wherever I want to use the phone. Do I route it to the glovebox, to the bottom of the center stack, or to the top of the dashboard where I might use the phone as a GPS nav system? Uggh. Bluetooth A2DP would clearly be preferable.

I guess what I'd *really* want would be some sort of official Audi Bluetooth dongle that does the right thing, but I fear that no such thing exists. My car is one of the last made before they redid everything for the new MMI business, so I suspect a newer Audi head unit wouldn't be compatible with my car.

Absolutely. That's what I was attempting to say in my last post. You pair with both devices, then in the bluetooth settings on your phone you'll be able to tell select the device and choose what you want to do with it. If your car had both profiles, you could select one or the other.

Really? Very interesting. I've contacted my local car stereo shop to see if they can source the right Dension box for me. If not, it looks like I can order it from some German web sites for EUR 140 or so. (I'd rather buy it locally, if only that if/when it doesn't pan out, it's easier to return it.)

Footnote: Rereading my car stereo's manual, it appears that it supports MP3 CDs. At least I can burn something for road-trips until I get this Dension thing sorted out.

Yes, although, I guess I should caution that this is how it's worked on my last couple phones. Here's a screenshot of the bluetooth settings from my current phone. This is the settings page for that Belkin device I linked to earlier:

Yeah, my Jawbone can do both phone and A2DP, so I'll try running that simultaneously with being in the car for telephony-only Bluetooth. If that actually works, that's the green-light for the Dension.

I haven't tried it with any recent phones, but way back when I had a Palm Treo 650, it did much to my surprise Bluetooth itself up to both my GPS device (Holux GPSlim 236) and also my car phone (Nokia CK-7W) at the same time. Yes, you could navigate and take a call at the same time. When that happened, the TomTom instructions even came out of the Empeg through Bluetooth mixed with the call audio. Pretty rockin' back then.

That sounds fine, as long as control of what's playing remains with the iPhone, I guess I'll have to wait and see, won't be buying a new car till 2013

Further web surfing has turned up a whole lot of unhappy Audi owners. My favorite of the bunch:

In short: in the modern era, the car is an accessory for your phone, not the other way around.

Why would somebody who is in the market for an Audi even test drive a $22k Ford?

I would guess it was a Mustang.

Some people own more than one car at a time.

My guess is probably not, as that would be the cheapest Mustang you could buy. If you can afford a luxury car you're going to be wanting the GT, which is somewhere north of $30K for your Mustang. Or at least, I'd think you would.

To be fair, I think Ford has done a fantastic job in this arena. I bought my wife a 2010 Escape earlier in the year and was very impressed with the whole Sync system.

By comparision my Infiniti G37 is lacking, though if I'd not played around with the Ford I'd have never noticed. In practice, what the Infiniti has works fine (especially if you're willing to dedicate an iPod to live in the car), but it's suprising how behind the Ford it is.

On a humerous side note- the Infiniti has a dedicated hard drive and you can rip CDs to it, but I've yet to put a CD in the system yet (and probably never will). I probably would've killed for that option 12 years ago . . .

As for the car being an accessory- well, I wouldn't have bought a car I couldn't use with my iPhone, so I guess I'm in that camp. Actually, my initial requirement (from driving my wife's Escape) was bluetooth streaming, but the cars I looked at (IS250, G25/G37, A4) didn't have it, or at least not without a major upgrade. Having had it in the Ford this suprised me, but I conceeded to having a USB connection on the G37.

Ford has done a great job of doing something very few do, looking farther ahead then just the next quarter. They managed to start doing this before hitting bottom, and so far the benefits have been really nice to see. Most of it seems to be from bringing in a lot of the European Ford managers to the headquarters location and allowing them to influence the worldwide operations.

Sync in a Ford is a very nice system. And it's got some future proofing built in. Beyond being firmware up dateable by the end user, it also has hooks in it that can be used by smartphones. Ford realizes people change phones more often then cars, so it makes more sense to expose hooks for current and future phones to tie to, vs just supporting the models out today.

It's a major factor for my next car. My Mustang was too old to be able to retrofit Sync into it, and my CarPC route was a disaster. I just want solid integration, and it's going to have to come from the manufacturer now with the shrinking aftermarket. Even if the built in voice control is bad, I now also have Siri to fall back to, as long as the car has a good microphone setup.

Outside tech features, Ford has also been doing well on the engine efficiency standpoint. They have their assembly line set up to be able to fit any variety of engine (gas, diesel, hybrid, electric) without major changes. They've also been bumping up specs without impacting pricing much. That 22k "cheapest" Mustang is at the same power level as my 08 GT, and it gets better gas mileage. Not bad for a sports car.

Update: my local stereo guy got the manual to the Dension box in question, and it talks about Bluetooth hands-free calling, but says nothing about A2DP music streaming. Most likely, it's not supported at all.

Now I'm checking out the much pricier FISCON Basic ($400 or thereabouts), which appears to replace my factory Bluetooth. This is perhaps more promising, since the Bluetooth gizmo has the additional benefit of having access to the steering-wheel buttons and the display between the gauges. The web page is surprisingly lacking in technical details. I've asked the rep to send me the installation and user manuals. We'll see.

Further edit: Various forum posts have complained that these Bluetooth replacements, while they speak A2DP, will only give monaural audio for the car. Grrr.

For A2DP, couldn't you just install a Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter for Bluetooth® audio devices and wire it into the in car Aux. Sure, you don't get track skip buttons, track info and all that stuff but with a phone mount it'd probably work pretty alright.

My car has bluetooth support for handsfree calling, but no A2DP. I tried a few other solutions, then hit upon the TuneLink Auto (which comes in iPhone or Android flavors) - http://newpotatotech.com/TUNELINK_AUTO/tunelink_auto.html

It sits in the lighter plug and makes an A2DP connection with the phone, and then outputs the sound (in stereo) out a 3.5mm headphone jack. Additional plusses are the USB port I can use for charging the phone, and the fact that it's also got an FM modulator, so if I'm in a rental car, I can bring it with me and have it work over the crappy FM.

In my car, the aux in is actually in the center console, a couple of inches from a lighter plug, so the thing sits in there unseen and just works its magic. It really is like magic, too. I get in the car and turn it on, and the thing takes just a couple of seconds to reconnect to my phone and tell it to start playing. If I get a call, the phone knows to pause the music and switch over to the handsfree connection directly to the car.

There's an app you can use to configure it, like to set the FM frequency and stuff, but I never use it. The one goofy thing is that they sell a separate Android and iPhone version, but I can't imagine that either version wouldn't work with any old A2DP connection from any device. So, why the 2 packages? Who knows...

Anyway, if you had the lighter plug and aux-in ports in convenient spots, this might be a good solution for any of you in the same boat.

I've got that same Kensington thing on my desk right now, and it's a piece of crap. For starters, horrible ground loop. To be fair, Kensington mailed out a filter which took care of it, but the TuneLink I mentioned up thread has the filtering built in. Still though, the sound quality just wasn't that good, and it would randomly fail to work.

The bigger problem for me is that the Kensington device really wants to do the handsfree and A2DP protocols, and I already have handsfree in the car. The Kensington has no option to not do handsfree, and the iPhone doesn't have any way of saying "yes, I know this paired device supports more than one protocol, but only use A2DP with that device". So, I ended up having it connected to both, and they fought each other. I could have just given up on the handsfree built in to the car, but that would be stupid since the Kensington mic was so terrible, and it's mounted right on the part that sticks into the lighter plug, which in my car is in the center console.

So, I threw it into the corner of my office, and moved on to two or three other similar devices before landing at the TuneLink.

Sounds attractive, except my damn car doesn't have an AUX in. Yes, it has an iPod (not iPhone) input, and it has Bluetooth (but not A2DP), and no aux jack. I could maybe tear out the iPod interface and find a simple AUX jack (which, like the iPod adapter, would pretend to be a CD changer), and *then* have *another* box to convert that aux jack to A2DP.

This seems like a recipe for pain.

Very strange, that device simply never turned up in any searches that I've done. I've been on Amazon several times looking for these types of devices and none of my searches listed that device. Either my search terms are bad (probable), or that New Potato company hasn't listed their product very well on Amazon (possible).

One thing I've always wanted from Amazon is a breadcrumb trail (or whatever you guys might call it). For example, what Newegg does. On that result, if that product doesn't interest me but I want to see others in that category, I can back up to "Bluetooth Cell Phone Accessories." I guess Amazon sells a wider variety of things that would fall into more categories, but I've always wanted to be able to shop this way on their site.

It's like the reverse of a brick and mortar store, where you go in looking for something so you seek out the department, then the aisle, then the shelf, then the item. This way I can start with the item and back out to the shelf.

Anyway, back on topic. Aaron, you mentioned that the Kensington device gave you a bad ground loop. So the Tunelink did not? I would not be using it with FM (I've never had good sound from those devices). Also, is that app necessary? I'm a little wary of a device that works on a standard (bluetooth), but touts itself as only being compatible with one device or another. Why couldn't they have made the same device work with apps on either platform? Because they wanted different colors? What if I don't want it to be a green LED ring? Sorry, I just find that odd.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation. I might order one of those and return it if it doesn't work for me...

Ahh, now I've got new and exciting ideas. I could install a DIY AUX-IN jack (following this guy's example), and then either plug my phone directly into it or spring for that TuneLink contraption, which has the added bonus of being easy to bring with you to the next car. I like it.

No ground loop with the TuneLink. Their site says they have some sort of extra circuitry that either prevents that or combats that or something. I don't know exactly how they do it, but I have absolutely no ground loop with the TuneLink.



It's odd indeed. I would really like to know if the two devices are the same inside save for the LED. I wouldn't be surprised if they're identical firmware even and just packaged with different manuals and boxes in a misguided attempt to make things easier for people.

I have the iPhone model, and I can take the TuneLink out of the box, pair the iPhone and start playing music through it to my aux in without ever even installing the app. I can't imagine the Android model is different. The app allows you to do a little more, like set the frequency and output level for the FM transmitter or set whether other devices can connect while you're connected. The app enables an intriguing mode that sounds fun for road trips where multiple devices can connect at once and queue up songs, and the device will rotate between them. Sounds cool, although I haven't had the chance to ever see if it will work in practice.

I don't have any non-iOS A2DP devices, so I can't tell you from experience whether Android or other devices can connect to the iPhone version, but their website FAQs say yes.

ISTR that they'll throw you out of the app store if you mention that your app is also available for Android. Maybe they throw you out of the "Iphone compatible" programme if you mention that your hardware is also compatible with Android?

Peter

I second the Ford Sync system. It's a microsoft system, so I wish I could hate it, but it actually works quite well. It's slow to react to some button presses, and there are some features stupidly disabled while driving while other (more complicated) features are accessible, but despite those quirks, it works very well.

My only major complaint is that if you leave the radio in "bluetooth audio" mode, then it will start your iPhone playing automatically when you start the vehicle. You need to change to USB or Aux-In so it doesn't start your iphone playing. But it's pretty cool to be driving down the road and listening to streaming audio like pandora or public radio tuner apps over the cellular data connection. The USB port works as a charger for your devices, and also to play mp3 files off of a USB flash drive. It also has integrated Sirrus/XM, which is meh.

I miss the empeg, and I've considered installing it in my truck, but the sync + iphone is "good enough". But since it has a line-in, it would be very easy to connect the empeg, and I'll probably still do that some day.

Ford Focus is as good as any Japanese "hot hatch", and there is a reason why the F-150 is the #1 selling vehicle in the world. Having said that, I drove a new Explorer recently as a rental car and it's complete shit. So I think it really depends on the particular Ford.

The problem is that you can second and third it all you like, but unless I buy a new car AND that car is a Ford (or Mercury, I believe), AND you go for a model or trim level that has Sync, I have no way of obtaining it

For now, I think I'm going to give the Tunelink a try. I emailed to ask them about Android/iPhone model compatibility, and they responded saying that the Android App/Phones will work perfectly fine with the iPhone version, which is great because I wanted a blue LED instead of the green one Still, the puzzling thing is this line from their email: "In fact we recommend this unit to folks whom have an Android and and iPhone/iPod in the family." This seems to imply that the Android version is not as compatible with iPhones as the iPhone version is for Android devices. I find this curious...

I don't think he was suggesting Sync for you- just following the thread about Ford and how they've done better in this area than most.

Most of my experience was with the simpler first gen system in a friends car and some rentals. Experience there was flawless.

Amusingly, I managed to really freak out the newer second gen system in the 2012 Focus to the point it crashed. On the way back to the airport, I stopped for gas. Getting back in, I hit the voice command, said USB, and the system went bezerk. It said USB 2 or 3 times, the in dash screen cycled to radio but with no audio. Pressed the button, said USB again, and this time it tried to flip, went back to radio again, and stopped responding to any buttons.

Friend of mine in the car looked up how to reset the system to bring it back, and the information all pointed to pulling a fuse, or just waiting a day or two for the automatic scheduled reboot to kick in. So yes, there is still enough Microsoft fingerprints in there to hate

Hopefully some future updates solidify things a bit more by the time I buy a car again.

No Ctrl+Alt+Del on that system?

Yikes, this is the response I got from the Tunelink peeps when I asked about compatibility of the Android device with iPhones:

"Only the blue Apple version will work with both Apple and Android phones. Because of changes made with the release of iOS 5, the Apple version will not play on the Android version."

I guess I'll get the iPhone version, then. I wonder what the issue is...

As far as I'm concerned, we have a winner!

I ordered the iPhone version of the Tunelink, and so far it seems like an excellent product that fit the bill perfectly for what I need! Well done, sir!

I couldn't tell from the product photos what the size if the device would be, but was very pleased to find out that it's actually very modest. The part that sticks out of the lighter socket is about the size of a...cherry tomato? That's the best I can do right now I was also thrilled to see that it came with a 3.5mm stereo cable. I was actually having trouble finding a cable short enough for the distance between the Tunelink and my AUX in, which is only about seven inches, and the included cable was the perfect length! I still might try to find some right-angle adapters to make things look a little neater, but I love how this thing is set up. It looks a lot cleaner than what I was using before.

I'll need some more testing with the phone charging capabilities, but I have high hopes for that. It's billed as a 2.1A adapter, so it should even be capable of charging my tablet, let alone my phone.

As for ground loop, I'll also have to see how well it does after longer use, but it seems to not be an issue. At first I noticed a slight effect when people on a podcast spoke, like the sound of a snare drum rattling, if you know what I mean, but that went away pretty quickly.

Conclusion: well, I'll need some more time, but this thing looks like the solution! I love it! I can't wait to use it in my daily routine, and I think it'll do great!


Now I have one last product I'm looking for, and I'd like to see if the brilliant empeg forum members might know of something: a small bluetooth remote.

From what I've seen, unless it's a TV/home theater remote, nobody makes very small remote controls. I know it would be a pretty narrow market, but I'd still think there'd be something! I'm just looking for something that can pause and skip tracks! I've looked at the Jabra Street thing, and it's nice, but I don't want it to perform any of its headset/music duties. I'd JUST want the remote, and I don't know if it can do that. Does anyone know if the AVRCP profile can be independent of the music/phone profiles in phones that are able to separate them?

You can also wire and toss the whole thing in behind your console somewhere. Down low or in behind the factory stereo. Since it's BT, you might as well hide it.



I can tell you right now that one doesn't exist. I've been looking for the better part of a year for numerous reasons.



I think it would be an enormous market myself. There are other applications beyond the car if the remote is designed well.




Yes. The early specs actually support only a basic set of transport controls - strictly remote control, nothing else.

That's a shame! I'd really love to be able to control playback without having to use my phone. It takes too much time and I want physical buttons so I don't have to take my eyes off the road.

I'm wondering if the Jabra BT3030's has the remote control profile separated, or if my phone is capable of that. I'd be willing to buy one if I could specify that I only want it to have remote control ability...

I'm assuming you're using your iPhone version with your Android phone? Did you notice any connection issues? I've read about some people reporting connection problems between the Google Nexus and this device, so maybe other Android phones experience this too?

I am using the iPhone version with my Galaxy Nexus. Now you're worrying me I did have an issue with connectivity yesterday, and had to reboot my phone to connect it. After that, though, it seemed to work fine!

Hey, if it works...

Edit: don't worry, it seems I've misread. The reported problems were with the Nexus One, not the Galaxy Nexus. Sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.

Heh, don't worry! I knew my initial impressions might not hold over the long term, so I'm going to come back with my impressions after a week or two. I do a ton of driving during the week, and I look forward to seeing how the Tunelink fares. I already have some minor concerns, but I'll talk about them after I've looked into whether I can fix them.


I've now contacted Jabra and asked folks on GDGT in an effort to see if the BT3030 can be used for ONLY its AVRCP profile, but I don't have high hopes.

Matt, I suppose it's too late now, but I had completely forgotten about a product that may have worked well for you. We've brought it up in at least one other thread a long time ago, the Parrot BT hands-free/music kit.

Their MKi9000 is a box you wire into your car's stereo system in behind the dash. This can be accomplished in a few different ways, including through aux connectors, splicing, adapters, etc. Depending on the model of car/head unit you have. Then it also comes with an included remote you can mount to your steering wheel or dash. There's also a mic you can mount in various places in the car.

The hidden unit does all the BT stuff with your phone, including A2DP and AVRCP. The remote talks to that unit using proprietary RF as far as I know.

The net result is integration of your BT phone with your factory audio system. It also allows voice dialing because the unit can load the contacts from your phone using another BT profile. You can also answer and hand up on calls in addition to the regular music/audio controls from the remote.

If you have steering wheel controls, you can also add another adapter to patch those into the Parrot unit.

Thanks, Bruno. That looks like a pretty great device. Maybe something for the next round. I could give my wife the Tunelink and upgrade I'm a little concerned with the installation costs (since I don't want to do it myself).

Opto-isolators, probably.

I may be picking up one of those Parrot MKi9000 units myself. We'll see. Still don't have the car I'd want to install it in, but that might change in the next few days.

Matt, I thought I'd run another product by you again, but let me get something straight before I do.

On your phone/OS, can you specify which external BT device will be used for AVRCP and A2DP even when you have two devices that support both, or one device that supports both and the other only A2DP?

I have a small A2DP/AVRCP device that was pretty cheap ($13) that you might be able to use as a remote if you can set it up for only its remote use. It's about the size of an iPod shuffle and has the same type of buttons on it. Play/Pause and then 4 directions for track changing and volume.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/bluetooth-2-0-a2dp-avrcp-stereo-music-receiver-and-handsfree-black-8422

If you're actively listening to music through it, the battery only lasts for around 2 hours. I don't have any clue how long it would go just using it as a remote.

Unfortunately I couldn't say! I'm guessing that wouldn't work, but it's a great idea. Heck, for $13 I might give it a try!

I emailed Jabra to see if I could do the same thing with their BT3030, which is essentially the same kind of device. They didn't officially provide that kind of support, but anecdotally she had someone in the office with an Android phone check out the bluetooth settings, and it appeared to only show phone and music profiles. It wouldn't show a separate AVRCP profile.

I don't know if my phone or any phone will separate that profile from the others or not. At this point I'm guessing it wouldn't, given the complete lack of devices that do remote control only. I'd imagine Google or Apple wouldn't bother supporting them if there were.

I think that's a little exaggerated; they don't like you mentioning android compatibility *in your app's description on the apple app store*, but outside that you're fine.

My suspicion is the compatibility issue could be related to extended metadata transfer which is an extension; why they couldn't manage to make that compatible with android is a bit baffling though.

Was it here that I read someone saying that there were reports of the Galaxy Nexus not charging on some car chargers? I thought I read that here but I couldn't find it in a search.

Anyway, it looks like this is true. If I'm driving around and realize my phone's battery is low, when I plug it into the Tunelink, the charge indicator doesn't come on. It's hard to say if it's actually not charging or if it just isn't indicating it. I'll have to drive around like that for a while and see if it's the latter.

I mentioned this to Tunelink support, and they were familiar with the issue. Their app even has a place in the settings menu where you change the charge mode to "Android," which is weird. He also suggested that I plug in the phone before the Tunelink has power. I've found that I have to do both in order for it to charge. Very strange...

I have a generic car USB charging adapter, and it charges my phone just fine, albeit if the GPS is on, the charger can't keep up with the power draw. This remains the case even if I have the screen off.

The question is whether this an issue that there's simply not enough power available over the USB charging port, or if it's something more complicated, like the phone might be asking for more power but the USB adapter isn't smart enough to provide it.

I think that's a different issue than the one I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Galaxy Nexus simply not realizing it's plugged in at all, so it won't charge. Apparently this has been happening with some car chargers. I've been fine with most of the ones I've used, but when I connected the Tunelink I got zilch.

What's the amperage on your charger, Dan? Could it just be a little weak? Still, I recall that with my Nexus One, I was able to drain the power while charging when using the GPS. It also got super hot. Perhaps dedicated GPS units still have their place?

Dan's seeing the issue I saw reported in many reviews. Essentially the phone's power draw is higher then what the chargers can provide, due to the LTE, CDMA/GSM and GPS chips all being active.

Generation one chips for new cellular data standards are typically very power hungry. In the past, this was hidden because they went into dedicated data only devices like the USB adaptors for laptops. Now they are being crammed into smartphones, before a second or third generation can come along with power optimizations.

I have no idea what the amperage is since this thing is literally nothing more than white slab of plastic with a USB connector inside. I got it at a local electronics shop for cheap.

For what it's worth, I've seen similar behavior with a number of other car chargers.

Still, the USB charging standard seems to allow for increasing the voltage:
The core question is whether (a) anybody makes a car charger adapter that does this properly and (b) whether my phone would take advantage of this or not.

What mode does your phone show when connected to the charger? AC or USB?

As with so many things, there are multiple levels of 'standards' involved with USB charging.

At the core the problem is that the basic USB 'standard' was built around a 500ma max current per USB device. That is only 2.5 watts. Not enough for many devices and the reason for so many work arounds and extensions to the standard.

Some of the details were recently discussed in this iPhone related thread

Some USB chargers implement the Apple specification signaling and available current levels. See the other thread for details. Essentially Apple style dumb USB chargers come in three versions;
500ma max (older iPods and such)
1000ma (iPhone 5 watt USB charger)
2000ma (iPad 10 watt USB charger)
Apple devices will properly charge from chargers that can supply the required milliamperes or more. The device will simply consume what it needs, as the charger will never force more current that the device is willing to consume. So an iPhone will happliy draw about 1000ma from an iPad charger.

Correspondingly an iPad will limit its power draw from an iPhone charger to 1000ma as it can tell that the charger is limited to that capacity. It will simply charge more slowly than if it was connected to a proper iPad spec charger.

Connect an iPad to a powered USB hub or non-Apple style charger and it will limit itself to 500ma power draw. That is actually less power than the iPad needs when the display is active so an iPad in that situation will augment the 2.5 watts from the charger with some power from its own battery. The iPad will simply run down more slowly, and will display a Not Charging notice beside the battery icon.

Note that USB charging from computers and other 'smart' devices is done differently than from 'dumb' chargers. The signaling for allowable current levels is done via USB message protocol when charging from smart power sources.

Non-Apple style dumb USB chargers implement one of the non-Apple 'standards' of which there are several. Going from memory (and typing on an iPad);
500ma with D+ and D- pins open
500ma with D+ and D- pins shorted
500ma with D+ and D- pins resistor linked to indicate 500ma current available
1800ma 'China new standard' (there may be confusion here with a similar 1500ma China spec charger)

There are USB chargers that can supply other maximum current levels but they may not have the necessary D+ and D- pin signals to allow a given device to know the extra power is there.

And of course there will be cheaply made chargers that lie about their current capacities and/or just confuse the device that is trying to charge itself.

Motorola (among others) had/has their own proprietary flavours of USB charging specs, some of which conflict with the other 'standards'. This is why a USB charger from Nokia may not charge a Motorola phone or vice-versa, for example.

The recent European micro-USB charging standard is an attempt to fix the problem. I have not looked at how that specification handles USB charger current capacities in excess of 500ma.

I don't know if Android manufacturers have coordinated their specs for high power USB charging (greater than 500ma) or what those specs may be. Just haven't looked.

It is unclear to me whether there is any mobile/car charger (or even a charger spec) that can actually supply all the power required to fully satisfy an active LTE high end smart phone when all features are singing and dancing and at the same time charge the battery.

It just says "charging" without additional useful details. Other owners seem to indicate on various forums that they see an indicated difference, so I need to do some experiments.

EDIT: if you go to Settings -> Battery, it tells you "USB" or "AC" charging. From this, I can see that the three different chargers I've got at home report "AC". (Well, one of them *sometimes* reports AC and sometimes reports USB.) I'll later try out the car chargers.

Meanwhile, if you do a suitable Google search, several vendors advertise "high power" car chargers. I might need to give one of these a try, but then there's the question of whether I'm getting the Apple (non-)standard or what.

There are some battery widgets that show the charging state. You'll have to short D+/D- either with a cable or on the charger to get AC charging which is 1A. I've found that old Palm Pixi wall chargers provide AC charging, and they are cheap. The Griffin 2A car charger I bought needed the pins shorted.

I use one of these Hight-tech docking stations on the dash of my 1994 Jeep Wrangler. If for some reason it falls out of the "dock" or even out the door when I'm driving doorless, no worries. I have a nearly indestructible "dumb phone". I pipe the audio through the built-in phone speaker, avoiding the need for A2DP or even an AUX-in. No ground loops or interference from multiple bluetooth stacks.

Occasionally, I even hear a note or two over the road noise of a rusted-out 90's jeep built on 70's technology driven over unpaved roads. On the plus side, the roads are so terrible, I rarely drive more than 15mph, which keeps the noise minimal and the tunes-a-playin!

Follow up: I ended up buying this HTC-branded car charger (currently $3 via Amazon). It properly charges my Galaxy Nexus in "AC" mode, not "USB" mode, without my needing to resort to any sort of surgery on the device. Amazon reviews on these sort of gadgets are often quite difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. I ultimately figured that if the charger was branded from a non-Apple phone vendor, it would be more likely to follow the "standard" high-power spec rather than Apple's "non-standard" spec.

I've been using that in my car for a year, and I am quite happy with it. Its reputation is well deserved, I believe.

I have voice calls feed into my car stereo system successfully (Alpine X100), and the Parrot voice recognition commands are surprisingly good. My main phone is a Windows Phone, but I've successfully used the Parrot unit with Android and several old Nokia Symbian-based phones.

The moment I can buy a Windows phone with sufficiently large storage (probably 32 will be acceptable, compared to the 16 I have now), I'll finally dismiss my constantly crashing iPod 100Gb, which I've been keeping in my glove box basically as as a HDD for MP3s, and get rid of that last part of Apple-world from my personal music playing experience. Using Zune / Microsoft Music only in my car has been virtually impossible so far, but the Parrot unit is even helping to do that, which I can't wait for.