I am delighted to be able to report my mobile and the car are now reconciled. The last three days have been an absolute hell of long snitty silences on the road. I don't know what sparked this awful long-running marital, but every journey has been a miserable stretch of yawning quietude.
Let me explain. The new car is wired up for Bluetooth, and it works. The last three words are the critical ones. Once you've paired a mobile with the car, you can program in your contacts or just say a number to have the mobile call that number. This is not new, but it's new to my Pajero - and the voice recognition is competent to the point where it never misses. It's sad, I know, but I still get delighted when technology actually, you know, works.
So when you hop into the car and press the little button, a rather fetching female voice says, 'Link system ready. Alex's mobile is connected.' You might say 'Sarah' and then she'll pipe up, 'Dialling Sarah' and you're away.
I have got used to this very quickly indeed - I've never had a competent hands free system - I've tried, and junked, Bluetooth devices before, including the little ear-mounted microwave ovens. So you can imagine when, the other day, the car started ignoring the phone I was worried, vexed and quite quickly in a state bordering distraught.
I tried re-pairing the phone, but they simply refused to try and put things behind them. I tried restarting everything I could find to restart. And eventually yesterday I made one last desperate attempt after spinning my tale of silent woe during a chat with young Jonathan Castle and found an obscure setting in the phone that had somehow been toggled off. I still have occasional iterative feedback loop fail sessions with the Android interface which result in me threshing around in menus and options so many people of my acquaintance have now got used to receiving random calls from me or messages that offer the chance to smite the bungalow with a bratwurst or some such gobbledygook.
So they're talking again and all is well with the world. The relief is not inconsiderable.
Let me explain. The new car is wired up for Bluetooth, and it works. The last three words are the critical ones. Once you've paired a mobile with the car, you can program in your contacts or just say a number to have the mobile call that number. This is not new, but it's new to my Pajero - and the voice recognition is competent to the point where it never misses. It's sad, I know, but I still get delighted when technology actually, you know, works.
So when you hop into the car and press the little button, a rather fetching female voice says, 'Link system ready. Alex's mobile is connected.' You might say 'Sarah' and then she'll pipe up, 'Dialling Sarah' and you're away.
I have got used to this very quickly indeed - I've never had a competent hands free system - I've tried, and junked, Bluetooth devices before, including the little ear-mounted microwave ovens. So you can imagine when, the other day, the car started ignoring the phone I was worried, vexed and quite quickly in a state bordering distraught.
I tried re-pairing the phone, but they simply refused to try and put things behind them. I tried restarting everything I could find to restart. And eventually yesterday I made one last desperate attempt after spinning my tale of silent woe during a chat with young Jonathan Castle and found an obscure setting in the phone that had somehow been toggled off. I still have occasional iterative feedback loop fail sessions with the Android interface which result in me threshing around in menus and options so many people of my acquaintance have now got used to receiving random calls from me or messages that offer the chance to smite the bungalow with a bratwurst or some such gobbledygook.
So they're talking again and all is well with the world. The relief is not inconsiderable.
2 comments:
Delighted to have been some sort of assistance, however inadvertently!
Young??? Hmmm there's a new one :-)
Hands free is wonderful when it works - my Parrot falls off its perch regularly though - it does the random dialing thing and also the display nearly always lies and tells me someone completely different is calling leading to some embarrassing conversations! Would be interested in knowing what make lets you talk to it....
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