Bluetooth Is The Most Annoying Automotive Feature In Existence

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While I don't know about it being "the most annoying automotive feature in existence," using Bluetooth built into cars does suck pretty bad.

What will happen is, the phone will ring, and I will press some button on the steering wheel to answer it, and suddenly my automobile has turned into a giant rolling telephone. Then you will speak to me, and I will speak to you, and you will respond by saying “WHAT?” so often that you sound like a World War II veteran at an international conference for whispering enthusiasts.
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While it can be shaky for phone calls, I love using it for music. I think that's a great feature.
 
I think the author really should be criticizing the specific bluetooth in his vehicle. Saying that "Bluetooth Is The Most Annoying Automotive Feature In Existence" because his setup sucks would be like someone saying that "computers are the bane of human existence" because they have a crap computer.

Personally, mine works flawlessly.
 
pgdeaner said:
I think the author really should be criticizing the specific bluetooth in his vehicle. Saying that "Bluetooth Is The Most Annoying Automotive Feature In Existence" because his setup sucks would be like someone saying that "computers are the bane of human existence" because they have a crap computer.

Personally, mine works flawlessly.
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x2


the bluetooth function in my ford works great. No issues what-so-ever
 
Personally I don't think it affects me, If I get a call during driving, I ignore it until I have parked my car.

I will receive any calls while I am on the wheel under any circumstances.
 
The funniest moment was when I was calling my Car MFG, to ask to see if someone could help with my car no longer getting Texts. I was driving and talking to the lady and she asked me what I said and I repeated myself and then she asked:


"Are you on a headset or speaker phone? I can't understand you"


To which I replied

Yes, I'm using the microphone in the car right now.






I will also not refute this guys claims and I've recently watched a show with either consumer or JD Power information stating the same thing.
 
I know there's no way to stop manufacturers from putting these kinds of dumb capabilities in cars so they can be sold to gadget addicted people short of like making a bunch of extra laws, but honestly, people really are better off if they're not constantly using their phone (or their phone through their car) to endlessly talk to people. Just shut up and pay attention to the driving thing so you don't hurt or kill someone else. :(
 
Steve said:
While I don't know about it being "the most annoying automotive feature in existence," using Bluetooth built into cars does suck pretty bad.
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Well then you either have one that sucks or you just do not have it in your 69 or so Camaro. :D The Bluetooth system built into my Dodge Avenger works great. I just need to remember to be patient because it takes a few seconds to connect after I start the car.

The most annoying thing about Bluetooth to me is that idiot do not use it. Instead, they would rather text on the stupid phones well driving and hell, who cares about my life. (Sorry does not do jack after you have already injured or killed someone because you were a dumbass having to text and drive.)
 
I have zero issues with it in my Ford.

Maybe I'm not stupid?
 
at least yours works, mine doesnt work well with my phone. i dont use phone while i drive anyways.
 
Microsoft Sync in my Ford 150 works fantastic. In my Dodge Challenger it was awful. Definitely depends on the vehicle.
 
Ditto on the Microsoft SYNC, I have it in my 2012 Ford Fusion Hybrid and it works excellent, I can hear everyone clearly over the speakers and they hear me just was good. Now SYNC reading text messages on the other hand... thats a whole other story :rolleyes:
 
To be fair to the hardware manufacturers, the audio quality in the headset and hands free bluetooth profiles does completely and unnecessarily suck. Bluetooth itself can handle like ~24 times the data rate they decided to use for it.

I use a bluetooth (4.0) headset with skype on my laptop and I have to disable the mic in the headset and use the one in the laptop otherwise it switches from A2DP to HSP and the call quality goes to shit.
 
Have to agree it is annoying when you DON'T want to use it.
But that would be the fault of the user. For instance we have a TomTom GPS with BT that will connect your cell when you get in the car. The problem is is impossible to hear the caller through the device.

BUT, when this feature is integrated into a car audio system for phone, it sounds GREAT. It will mute or pause the music when a incoming call is coming in. Night and day depending on the setup.
 
The issue is not with bluetooth itself. The issue that the author and many drivers have is with the incredibly cheap microphones installed by the car manufacturers combined with poor placement.

It should be standard for bluetooth installs to use multiple mics places around the driver combined with noise cancellation (basically all modern smartphones have this feature) for clean audio. I've seen a lot of car manufactures place a single tiny cheapo mic near the rear view mirror pointed straight downwards at the dashboard.

With this kind of mic setup even being connected over a wired landline would not help a bit.

TLDR: Bluetooth is fine. Focus on the mic quality and placement.
 
My car has extremely clear call audio and the mics pic up very well, and my wife's new Mazda CX5's Bluetooth audio is a significant step up from the quality direct from her phone (Moto X 2013).
 
BT just sucks in general. Sure there are some devices that work ok.. and maybe even good with it, but I have never been impressed with it one bit.
 
We have a 2014 Toyota and the entire console audio/bluetooth/GPS system sucks pretty bad (the GPS is the worst part by far though).

On the bluetooth side of things, the phone call audio quality is actually quite good (and so is the A2DP audio for music playback).

That said, the rest of the UI and the entire control of it is horrendous. The care tries to pull all the contacts from my phone and keeps it in it's own contact list for display on the screen -- and tries to use it's own software for voice dialing, etc. If it would just let the bloody phone do it and get out of the way, everything would be fine.

Similarly, the car tries to take over control of audio playback and handle all the controls and button press signal and stop/start/etc -- the end result is that every time I get in the car with bluetooth enabled on my phone, the stupid car tells it to start playing back from whatever song was playing the last time and always used Goggle Music to do it. First off, I don't use Google Music (at all) and secondly I don't want it to start playing music unless I tell it to. It also is apparently sending discrete commands to the phone via some interface (rather than just the standard button presses and then letting the phone decide how to handle them). I have other bluetooth audio devices (speakers, headsets, A2DP passthrough controller, etc) that have buttons on them and they all work fine for play/pause/stop and for trigger launching the current default audio app -- but not through whatever mechanism Toyota uses, it want to do things it's way, regardless of how the phone is setup. I finally just froze Google Music to keep it from autolaunching it.

Additionally, the multi-pairing capability of the car generally sucks -- it says it can support multiple devices, but don't believe it. If I pair my phone to the car, my wife's phone often won't work anymore until I re-pair it, and then mine often quits working again -- or at least partly quits, which is almost worse (i.e. it will still play music from mine, but routes to hers for phone, or vice versa).

In the few cases where I have gotten both paired and sort of working, then if both my wife and I are in the car at the same time, EVERYTHING goes to hell in a handbasket. By having designed it to pull the entire contact list from the phone and then having the car act on it, they seem to have completely forgotten that their may be more than one person using the car. So, if we press the call button on the steering wheel I've seen it try to activate BOTH phones simultaneously, fail, and then give a crazy error message on the car's screen. Or, it will actually connect to one, get the call list from hers, then when we try to make a call, I've seen it try dialing BOTH phones at once (and then crash) or possibly use my phone to dial after using her contact list.

If the car makers would just setup their systems as dumb BT audio devices and pass button presses etc through unimpeded and let the phone handle everything, things would work so much better.....
 
Bluetooth communication on my aftermarket stereo works fine. Although, Pandora is slow and buggy, so I don't use it anymore.
 
Musulsa said:
The issue is not with bluetooth itself. The issue that the author and many drivers have is with the incredibly cheap microphones installed by the car manufacturers combined with poor placement.

It should be standard for bluetooth installs to use multiple mics places around the driver combined with noise cancellation (basically all modern smartphones have this feature) for clean audio. I've seen a lot of car manufactures place a single tiny cheapo mic near the rear view mirror pointed straight downwards at the dashboard.

With this kind of mic setup even being connected over a wired landline would not help a bit.

TLDR: Bluetooth is fine. Focus on the mic quality and placement.
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I had a Sony MEX BT-2500 that worked fantastic except that some idiot at Sony thought it was great idea to put the microphone behind the faceplate. When I figured that out a couple years later, I rewired the microphone to hang outside just in front of the faceplate and is was so much better!

Now, I'm using the Uconnect system by Mopar in my Wrangler and it worked perfectly with my Sony Xperia Z1 in 2013 but with each new OS update, something breaks. First, it stopped ready SMS, next it only connected half the time and then it stopped showing song titles. Now that it's on Lollipop, I got the read SMS feature back, it connects 80% of the time (though music playback more like 60% of the time) and still doesn't show song titles. Also, it use to play music as soon as I pressed the BT button but now 80% of the time BT is connected properly, I have to press the BT button and manually press play on my phone!

This same Z1 had no issues with the BT-2500 except that they audio quality with the Z1 launch software sucked and was fixed with a later update.

TLDR: Bluetooth is fine. Focus on the mic quality and placement. Blame phone manufacturers screwing with BT software or whatever.
 
I'm pretty sure the author is venting their frustration on the wrong technology.
Bluetooth is not the problem for most of the problems people experience. It's the quality of and placement of the microphone and/or speaker system used, and the "soundproofness" of the interior of your car.
My vehicle has noise canceling technology that works with the microphone to create a pretty clear connection, based on feedback from folks on the other end. Not all vehicles incorporate noise cancellation tech. Also, not all cars are created equal in terms of reducing road noise at highway speeds. The louder the background noise in the car the more difficult it will be to have a clear connection.
 
Hazard said:
I had a Sony MEX BT-2500 that worked fantastic except that some idiot at Sony thought it was great idea to put the microphone behind the faceplate. When I figured that out a couple years later, I rewired the microphone to hang outside just in front of the faceplate and is was so much better!

Now, I'm using the Uconnect system by Mopar in my Wrangler and it worked perfectly with my Sony Xperia Z1 in 2013 but with each new OS update, something breaks. First, it stopped ready SMS, next it only connected half the time and then it stopped showing song titles. Now that it's on Lollipop, I got the read SMS feature back, it connects 80% of the time (though music playback more like 60% of the time) and still doesn't show song titles. Also, it use to play music as soon as I pressed the BT button but now 80% of the time BT is connected properly, I have to press the BT button and manually press play on my phone!

This same Z1 had no issues with the BT-2500 except that they audio quality with the Z1 launch software sucked and was fixed with a later update.

TLDR: Bluetooth is fine. Focus on the mic quality and placement. Blame phone manufacturers screwing with BT software or whatever.
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No edit so pic here.

HwNGRwA.jpg
 
I agree with Phatal -- BT itself is not the problem. When implemented properly and decent microphones and speakers are used, then everything generally works quite nicely.

Unfortunately, many of the car manufacturers either don't have a clue where to place a microphone (or use crappy ones), don't use decent noise cancellation technology, or (in the case of my Toyota) try to take over all the functions from the phone (and do a terrible job of it) rather than just acting as a standard audio device (which is how they should behave).
 
I guess it is all a matter of perspective. One of my most favorite features.
 
pretty sure the annoying seat belt warning chime shit is the most annoying feature in existence.
 
mdburkey said:
If the car makers would just setup their systems as dumb BT audio devices and pass button presses etc through unimpeded and let the phone handle everything, things would work so much better.....
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I would like it if the system was more modular in that you could replace the BT/computer with devices designed to fit in the space allocated. This way one could spend as much or as little as they like on the device. Currently the problem is that it has become a check box feature which is rarely reviewed. So poor mic locations, poorly written software etc are the norm. Multiple device pairing is a problem as well. I have yet to find one which handles it well. Then again most bluetooth pairing is annoying at best, when one is trying to use multiple devices.
 
Ieyasu said:
pretty sure the annoying seat belt warning chime shit is the most annoying feature in existence.
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Yeah, somehow I keep getting passengers who don't know what seat belts are. I thought that was a problem solved 20 years ago.
 
Need an awesome bluetooth setup and have an aux input? Read on...

The bluetooth in my car kinda sucks, as it was designed to only really work for phone calls, and uses a really low quality single-channel bluetooth audio stream that carries no bass.

Luckily though, on the Fiat 500 they were smart and put a USB plug and a stereo input right in the glove box. Cheap and genius!!!

I installed a Homespot Bluetooth 4.0 receiver (actually I ordered four different receivers, this was the best hands down in sound quality and "just works" functionality in that it instantly turns on and off with USB power and starts playing music): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00G57CWZ8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And also a ground loop isolator:
http://www.amazon.com/PAC-SNI-1-3-5-3-5-mm-Isolator/dp/B001EAQTRI/ref=pd_bxgy_422_img_y

Using a Nexus 7 LTE with free 200mb/month TMobile sim card:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Asus-Nexus-...507?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item487e626753

Running Car Home Ultra (using a color-matched Fiat 500 logo wallpaper, with the clear background option on Car Home Ultra, with equalizer effect, track name, and location services turned on):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=spinninghead.carhome

And it is hands-down the most badass system I have used to date, making itself a great GPS with WAZE or Google maps, it connects to my "smart" Radar detector, and is a kickass media player. Beats any Garmin GPS or factory car infotainment system.

I also installed DX Battery saver using the "slumber" profile, so that when its not charging (car turned off), it automatically switches to an extreme power saving profile when the screen is off, turning off wifi, cellular, going into lower power processor state, closing apps, etc so that while the car is sitting overnight the battery only drops a few percentage points which is easily topped off by the wireless charger on the next drive to 100%.

I mounted it with a wireless magnetic mount with double-sticky tape that was made less sticky on the outside surface by pressing a t-shirt on it several times so its tacky and not crazy industrial strong like it is on the backside, and really any wireless charger will work. The magnetic one I use isn't for sale anymore it looks like, but this one would be fine with the sticky tape to make it tacky and you could still put a couple rare earth neodymium magnets behind it:
http://www.amazon.com/RAVPower-Wire...0399&sr=8-5&keywords=Nexus+7+wireless+charger

That way if I ever need a tablet on the go, I have one fully charged that I can just pull right off and take in the store while shopping or waiting for my coffee or whatever (have my favorite anime on there too to watch when bored outside the car), or just take off when I'm having my vehicle serviced at the dealer.

And the car still knows to mute the auxiliary input and switch to the phone automatically on incoming calls.

17356370923_7898d188e7_z.jpg

(Sorry had to blue out where it shows your current location, heh)
 
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Also forgot, put one of those microfiber glass cleaner on a stick in your glovebox, and works not only to ensure your windshield never gets foggy, but works as a great fast 1-2-3 stroke wipe to get fingerprints off your tablet: http://www.amazon.com/Stoner-95161-...sim_263_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PKKWWRCEA0ADWS3QEW3

Done and done, son! Best bluetooth setup EVAR! Although I suppose a non-masterrace version would be to just use your cellphone with said software/mount, but I wanted to have dual-screens so I can display two things simultaneously.
 
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The BT in my 2012 mazda3 is just fine for phone calls, tyvm, and music sounds kickass.

The BT in my 2013 Sonata is even better for music (probably because of better audio system) and much better for phone calls, thanks to low cabin noise.

I love in-car BT, it's one of my most used features.. why is there hate?
 
Damn lack of edit, I think I meant DU Battery, not DX, I forget. But I wanted to add that Bluetooth can also do this for you:

Bluetooth OBDII engine noise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9HWHjUcyc

That's the next thing I want to invest in, although I'll have to check if the Nexus can receive a Bluetooth feed from an OBDII while still wirelessly transmitting that audio to another bluetooth receiver in order to play through the car's sound system. If so, would be hilarious to see the look on people's faces driving with me, as its supposed to do the engine firing up noise and match RPMs and everything with the engine sound of your choice (hopefully taking into account throttle position). Apparently it can do blow-off valve noises when coming off throttle and shifting which would be appropriate for my little turbo, heheheh! :D
 
I recently purchased a new Ford with Microsoft SYNC in it. I have yet to find any problems. It pairs with my phone and works perfect for all of the integration features.

Previous to that, I had an aftermarket Kenwood receiver and it never worked very well. I'd loose connection to the phone, audio would cut out and nobody could understand what I was staying when I talk to them.

It's come a long way, and judging by this thread, Microsoft seems to have done it right with SYNC. And Ford seems to have a really good implementation.
 
pgdeaner said:
I think the author really should be criticizing the specific bluetooth in his vehicle. Saying that "Bluetooth Is The Most Annoying Automotive Feature In Existence" because his setup sucks would be like someone saying that "computers are the bane of human existence" because they have a crap computer.

Personally, mine works flawlessly.
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^This.

The Bluetooth in my Mazda 3 works great.
 
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