Sony Ericsson in your Car.

[Jeff]

Hi everyone,

Jeff here, just to get the ball rolling on some discussion for what you’re doing with your cellphone while in the car.

I tend to turn my car into a mobile office, with a longer commute to work then my other colleagues on in the Forum; I’m often on the phone in the car for any meetings or conference calls. Since my passenger seat is already stacked with books, papers and phones, I tend to make my hands-free driving experience as wireless as possible.

I’m using the HCB 150 and I can honestly say it’s the best in-car solution I’ve used. Not only in-car, but out of the vehicle as well! I usually keep it on the visor, but if I forget the clip at home, it’ll just sit on the dashboard, or the center console.

Sure, the voice prompts may be a little robotic and cheesy sounding, and yes, the speaker could ALWAYS be better , but the device is small enough to toss into whatever bag I have and still be found easily under the piles of papers, pens and anything else hiding in my bag.

So, how do you talk in your car? Are you living in a country, state or province with laws requiring you to use a headset? What about texting, is that a no-good in your area?

Let us know!

[#2]

Has anyone had sucess with bluetooth voice dialing? I have just upgraded from a se c902 to the experia x10, i had been using an ioplay to connect to my phone using voicedial via bluetooth. I understood from the specifications on the three site this would be possible with the x10. Not only can i not get the bluetooth voicedialling to work, but the standalone voicedialler wont work for me either. I have phoned SE who were unable to help and emailed se and ioplay. I have read something about compatibility of microphones, but dont know where to start to purchase the adaptor.  Even a reference to the relevant page in the manual would be helpful as all the pages i have looked at have been so brief as to be useless.

[Jeff]

Hi Homelands,

I can help you out with the phone side of things. What's happening with the voice dialer application when you are using it directly? Are you getting a error message, is the program freezing? Try to "test" the applicaiton by being overly slow, loud and clear when you are speaking a command, just to confirm it is recognizing something.

Get back to me and we'll go from there.

[#4]

Hi! I'm using HCB-150 in my car with my Aino, and indeed its a great in car bluetooth.. However a few notes that I have on this item

1. This car bluetooth speaker should be shown to the phone as "Car Bluetooth". Instead it is currently known to the phone as "Bluetooth Headset", which 'clashes' with my real bluetooth headset (HBH-DS980), and I couldn't usefully apply different phone profile based on the connected devices (e.g. DS980 for Headset profile, and HCB-150 for Car profile)

2. The phonebook for HCB-150 is always sorted by First Name. This is quite unfriendly to non-English users. For my case, most of my friends' names have 3 parts, e.g. Phua Chu Kang, Phua is the last name (surname) while Chu Kang is the first name

In my phone's contact list, I just entered this name as it is. But internally, the phone stores it as Kang, Phua Chu. So when I'm using the phonebook on HCB-150, instead of getting this contact under P, it is now under K

My workaround is to always put a suffix comma after the name, e.g. when registering this name, I entere Phua Chu Kang, (<< with the comma)

I hope SE hears us and could have a firmware update on this!

[Jeff]

Hi Saukoon,

Thanks for the feedback, I understand the issue with the way names are stored. Let me get back to you about your first question though, I'll have to dig up my Aino™ tomorrow morning and take a look, I feel like there is a better way to do this!

You'll hear from me soon!

[#6]

Hi! Jeff,

have you got any updates on this matter? Thanks!

[#7]

Thanks for your help

When i try the voice dialling not connected to the car it tells me its listening, but comes up with seemingly random numbers.

I know where the microphone is located and have been careful not to block  a number of family members have also tried in case my voice is a difficult one to recognise.

regards

Homelands

[#8]

Hi Homelands,

I'm also having problems with voice dailling on the X10.

I haven't as yet tried it in the car but standalone testing has had no success, regardless of how slow you talk.

SE, if it doesn't work why include it?

[#9]

Hi! Jeff

you'll hear from me soon!

It has been near to 1 month since my last post. I dont think 30 days is considered 'soon'

[#10]

I have an Experia x10 and according to the Sony Ericsson web site the only thing that is acceptable for the car bluetooth is the HCB 105 not the HCB 150. Anyway the 105 only has a car charger, this is pretty useless especially when the instruction states 10 hours to charge. Is there a house charger for this unit?

NEXT, the voice dailing does not work, when I say "call home"  I get everything but what I want. If I get lucky the correct name comes up, I still have to press OK. If this is correct, then the car bluetooth will be useless. The reason for handfree devices means that, click one button to activate, the call the number which connects automatically.

I find this is a huge oversight by the manufacture. I am hoping for a solution for the voice call and the car visor bluetooth. If there is no solution, I have not choice but to return this to the vendor and go for... hmmmmm an iphone.

Thanks

Mike