We (my wife) have a 09 clubman with NAV. I am looking and a MINI for me but am thinking of not getting the factory Nav so I can get an S. With out the nav do the phone contacts come up on the radio screen and do you still have voice dialing (where you can say "dial Suzie Q" from the phones contacts or "dial 867-5309")

 

Yes, the phone contacts come up on the radio. With the voice dialing I do not know how the Nav one works. Non-nav you can do the Dial Suzie Q, but you must let the system learn that voice dial. You have to save the name and say it twice then save the number. Then all you have to do is say Dial Suzie Q. As for dialing a number, all you have to do is say it.

 

Thanks for the info. With the nav you voice dial any contract by just saying the name as it appears in the phones contact list. I only really call a few people (I guess I need more friends) so it will not be the end of the world to have to preset the voice dialing names. I assume with the contacts from the phone on the radio you can scroll through them then press a button to dial it?

 

My MA told me that voice dialing would not work with my iPhone 3G. In fact, it does. I just had to program it the way that "2008 Cooper S" stated above. I think what he meant was that it would not voice dial using the names in my "Contacts" list on my iPhone. In other words, my MINI does not know about any contacts that I do not tell it about through the voice dialing programming. Apparently features vary from phone to phone. I would suggest getting your phone together with a car on the lot and trying things out. Taking a couple of minutes to program the numbers I call the most is worth keeping the $2k or spending it on the S or some other upgrade, IMHO.

 

Yes, that is how it works.

 

Thanks guys now I need to figure which I will use more the S or the Nav.

 

S >> Nav You can always add Nuvi later. Had my S for 4 days & put 500 miles. Amazed with this little turbo's broad torque

 

Hi to my week 41 friends. Glad to see you are enjoying your new MINI enough to think about getting a second.

Not sure what kind of driving you do but a Navi for me was completely unnecessary. I generally know where I am going. While it is a cool "gadget" I would definitely opt for an S over the navi.

 

forget the navi, get an iphone

 

Greetings - For once I might actually have something useful to say. I went thru the exact same dilemma you have - my wife has a (non-S) Clubman with Nav; I recently bought an S hatchback without the Nav. After using them both, when it comes to the phone I much prefer the Non-Nav version. The two are similar, but voice tags (which work great, by the way) are easier to use without the Nav. Without Nav, you just need to push the button, say dial name', the computer prompts for the name, you say the name, the computer confirms, and dials. Sounds long, but works well. With the Nav, you push the button, say dial name, then the (*&^^ computer beeps and you say dial name (again). The computer then hopefully will go to the next step, and ask for the name; if you're lucky, you'll remember to wait for the beep before saying it but if you're like me, it will beep while you are talking and either not understand your response or mis-interpret your response as someone else. Then you have to start over.

OK, so maybe its just me. With the Nav, you are able to dial with the joystick, and (depending on the phone) you may be able to load your contacts and view (and choose them) from the screen - none of which can be done without the nav system. But I still prefer dialing without the nav and without that annoying pause and beep.

 

As tboner4me posted, yes you can still voice dial without the Nav system; you just have to set up voice tags first. It has some additional limitations that the Nav version doesn't (such as a limit of 20 voice tags).

The manual that comes with the car still comes with incorrect instructions for the non-nav voice dial system as far as I know. Schatzy62 did a nice rundown on the commands you can use here