This post is actually not to report a problem but rather to mention the very good experience I just had pairing my new iPhone up to my Mini (week 43 build).

The iPhone (which I just activated) is really a subject for another thread and is very cool itself. However the whole point of getting an iPhone was to get a phone paired up with my Mini and so far it has worked flawlessly. The pairing went smoothly, the contacts were imported into the Mini automatically (and correctly), and the voice dial integration is fully functional. The voice dialing BTW is one of the coolest I've seen. You can actually say a number like "9995554456" and the mini will dial it in for you, then you just say "call" and it will connect. Or you can just say a name in your phonebook (mind you this is without any training or configuration on the phone) and the nav will jump to that contact and allow you to call them. So basically I can dial someone on my phone without having to take my hands off the wheel just using voice dial from beginning to end, and for those who have not had a chance to try it the R56's voice recognition is IMO very good even at freeway speeds/noise levels.

I'll report back any bugs I see after a few days of use, but so far the integration has exceeded my expectations.

BTW, I'm not sure how much of this functionality is there without the nav module (I'm sure the bluetooth still works the same way). If someone with just the bluetooth prep and the iPhone has had a different experience feel free to chime in.

 

That's the same way my Razr works. When I was picking a new phone for the Mini, MiniUSA indicated they would be releasing a phone cradle for the iPhone this year. Hopefully they are correct.

 

I purchased an iPhone a month ahead of my MCS arriving, for just the same reason (integration with Bluetooth and Voice Activated features) and had the same "worked great out of the box" experience with my Week 45 build MINI. In reading some of MINI's literature (see other threads in this forum for links) I've seen that having the iPhone go from operation on the Edge network to attempting to pick up a HiFi network can lead to dropped calls, but this hasn't happened to me as of yet.

My one gripe is that the iPhone does chew through its battery fairly quickly. Life will be better once a cradle is released and I can keep 'er plugged in while motoring.

~Neal

 

Hello,

Where is your iPhone while you are using the voice dial and talking?

Thanks.

 

My iPhone is usually sitting on the passenger seat (or in the driver door if there is a passenger in the car).

Here's an update:

As far as making calls, audio quality, and stability of connection goes it has been 100% so far. The only feature which in real life does not work too well is the voice dial by contact. I don't hold this against Mini too much as it is trying to do realtime voice recognition of an arbritrary contact from my phonebook (without any training or predefined voice tags). For simple names it would work well (like Jack, John, etc.). For names with more unsual pronounciations/structures it will not work so well and is a bit more hit and miss.

What does work very well is the dial by number. Also having the phonebook on my nav screen makes it very convenient to dail a contact even if the voice dial for that contact cannot be done reliably.

BTW here is a hint. There are two separate volume controls at play during a call. The Mini appears to have an independent volume control for the bluetooth connection which can be adjusted via the stereo volume control when in a call. Then the iPhone itself also has a bluetooth specific volume control which can also only be adjusted during a bluetooth call. So first it is best to crank the bluetooth volume on the iPhone almost all the way up. Then proceed to fine tune with the Mini volume control. With the default iPhone bluetooth volume setting even maxing out the Mini's bluetooth volume will not be nearly loud enough.