"Tech Tuesdays: Why Can't My Car and My Bluetooth Phone Just Get Along?" Edmunds Daily

Tech Tuesdays: Why Can't My Car and My Bluetooth Phone Just Get Along?

Bluetooth is like any other technology: It's very cool when it works and very frustrating when it doesn't. And the wireless hands-free phone technology can be very frustrating in the way compatibility and functionality vary from vehicle to vehicle.

While we here at Edmunds are in the unique position of driving a different vehicle sometimes on a daily basis, Bluetooth compatibility issues also affect people who drive the same car every day for years -- and even those in the Bluetooth business -- as revealed in a recent Edmunds feature story titled Bluetooth Blues.

The executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the trade association that promotes and oversees the technology, has compatibility issues in his own vehicle, for example. But we also discovered that the Bluetooth SIG is working with automakers to smooth out some of these snags and we point out steps you can take to make sure that your new car and your phone get along.

The Bluetooth SIG is in charge of issuing specifications for the various "profiles" that mobile-phone manufacturers, automakers and other companies incorporate into their products. The two commonly used in automotive applications are the Hands-Free Profile that allows a phone and a car to communicate, and the Phone Book Access Profile that downloads a phone's address book.

It's the latter that the Bluetooth SIG's executive director Mike Foley's 2006 Jeep Commander lacks. So he'll never be able to download the address book from his phone with the Jeep's uconnect hands-free system -- unless, that is, he could bring the vehicle to the dealer to load the new profile, which is something Foley says automakers are working towards.

"I think the first thing would be to enable going to the dealership to, say, change your oil and update your Bluetooth system," Foley said. "And [automakers] are even exploring how they can do it over the air through a mobile phone or a network connection." Ford's Sync system, after all, allows car owners to update the system's software via a download from the Internet. So the same concept potentially could be applied to Bluetooth profiles.

And with the lag time between the rapid pace of consumer electronics and the three-year-minimum product-planning cycles automakers have to deal with -- which means the Bluetooth system in your new 2009 model was designed in 2006 -- such software updates may be the only way to ensure that your new phone and your new car can get along.

In the meantime, if you're shopping for a new car and Bluetooth is an important feature, it's essential that you first make sure that your phone and the car's system are compatible and that you take them both for a test drive to determine whether your phone pairs with the system and if it can download the phone's address book. And you'll want to ensure that the interface is user-friendly and easy to operate.

Otherwise you may find that your new car's Bluetooth hands-free system is far from hassle-free. And is very frustrating to use in the long run.