Samsung Galaxy SIII and CX-5 Bluetooth

[PhoenixINX]

someone else mentioned this 'next gen headunit', sauce?

Review the tech package of the upcoming Mazda6 - Going to include Pandora integration, text messaging, etc.

The Mazda6 appears to share the same headunit from the CX-5, so one could speculate this will become an add-on.

 

[ReManG]

Considering how good the voice recognition currently responds, I may have to wear a bib while driving so I don't get coffee all over myself when listening to the "interpetation" of what the head unit thought the text was.....(hah) If they do not fix those algorithms, the term "entertainment center" comes to mind in a very sardonic manifestation. The head unit is very ergonomic outside, six buttons, two knobs, touchscreen that is part of the frustration with it. If Mazda would just have put some good software in it, then all would be better, unfortunately I do not expect them to offer a "reflash" or whatever kind of update to ours.

Android and Apple haven't even begun to approach audio delivery that way

I had not realized this, the Nokia is my first "smart" phone, and I have not had great expectations for it, but it has done well, and the WP OS seems good enough for me....

Regardless of the next gen head unit being "updated" obviously there is an issue with Bluetooth protocols that needs to be resolved here by Mazda. As Bluetooth is a standard, there should be no excuse this day and age of electronics that ALL Bluetooth phones are not supported. Look at the USB standard 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 etc. I have no issues plugging in a stick and worrying about its compatibility with the port, they are all reverse compatible. I would have hoped that my 2013 head unit would have been reverse compatible with phones prior to 2013, and totally been blindsided by the fact it may not even work with a new phone....

i dont suppose you could video you using these other things? i'd very much like to see this in action
you may have to physically put the phone outside the car to make sure it isn't the phone picking up the voice 'over the air' as it were.

No, but if you find someone with a windows phone, perhaps you could pair it and follow the instructions in my previous post to see if it works for you as well. I am not trying to stir the pot, my obvious lack of experience with other smartphone OS led me to believe that this was possible for others, my bad.

i do agree that the mazda voice control isn't as good as whats built into most phones but its better than the tomtom systems voice control

^^HUGE AGREEMENT WITH YOU ON THIS STROMDRIVER, that *%$@! Tom Tom is a joke..... Why a manufacturer like Mazda that carries all kinds of aftermarket parts for its own vehicles, supports racing, has all the cult following on their driving experience, etc cannot fathom that the same thing that made Android OS, Linix OS, Firefox browser, etc. so popular was the "open source" experience of it. If they would do for their electronics what they do for their driving side and just provide a good base system that USERS could customize themselves with open source apps, hardware add ons (GPS, Cellular AMP, etc), they would be the only car company that would have the custom zoom zoom experience.

Well, I am tall enough already, I will get off the soapbox.....

 

[STE92VE]

it's
i've noticed issues with my BT as well. I have the samsung S2 LTE (aka Skyrocket in the states). the BT syncs on media audio, but it disconnects often on the phone side. i've noticed i have to manually add the phone connection on the bluetooth setting on my phone. EVERYTIME. it's annoying and takes the safety and convenience out of having BT for the phone. heck, i'm better off using my Garmin GPS with the BT. At least that one connnects consistently. Based on my complaining, i guess it's time to talk to the dealer.

After having my CX-5 for less than a week and my Samsung sII skyrocket for less than 30 days, I just swapped it for an iPhone. The skyrocket would not automatically connect to the CX-5 when getting into the car without restarting it and then manually selecting it on the touch screen. What sealed the deal was that my wife's iPhone connected flawlessly.

 

[aperture_shot]

ok, your original post was somewhat misleading then because of lack of clarity on how/what you were doing

i'm still not completely sold on the non phone related voice input/commands going thru the car system (reading texts to you yes, i'll believe that, if you're connected/selected to the audio-bluetooth-for playing music from phone, it shouldn't do anything other than do calls if you are in radio/cd/usb)

i dont suppose you could video you using these other things? i'd very much like to see this in action
you may have to physically put the phone outside the car to make sure it isn't the phone picking up the voice 'over the air' as it were.

its not so much a matter of what the phone os is capable of supporting(they call can handle myriad voice commands) but what the mazda system does (i used to have a winmo phone and i liked the reading texts over bluetooth ability, android doesn't normally support that natively but thats neither here nor there, i can dictate texts to the phone though using built in functions)

unlike a BT headset, when you use the call button its doing the work in the head unit and just porting the audio thru the bluetooth connection with the phone (which is why when you adjust the volume on the headunit it doesn't change the volume on the phone), where with a bluetooth headset its just acting as a conduit to the phone sending everything for the phone to discern what to do with, ie adjusting volume on a headset actually changes the handsets volume levels (as seen on the screen)

otherwise the mazda doesn't support any sort of interaction thru the phone other than their established commands (notcool)

i do agree that the mazda voice control isn't as good as whats built into most phones but its better than the tomtom systems voice control

I can confirm that the windows phone 7.5 does work with the unit and can reply to text messages using your voice as well as read text messages out loud. The system thinks that you are in phone convo mode and the time duration counter appears. The option to reply only happens if your phone is not on vibrate and your volume is more than 1 on your phone.

As I said, this is only for replying to a text message sent to you.. now starting a text message using your voice you cannot press the bluetooth button on the steering wheel as the system only recognizes a few options. But if you hold the windows button on your phone, this will initiate phone conversation mode and then you can start giving out voice commands to your phone (send text, search internet, etc.) From what I noticed, the car mic seems to pick up the voice not the phone.

 

[stromdriver]

I can confirm that the windows phone 7.5 does work with the unit and can reply to text messages using your voice as well as read text messages out loud. The system thinks that you are in phone convo mode and the time duration counter appears. The option to reply only happens if your phone is not on vibrate and your volume is more than 1 on your phone.

As I said, this is only for replying to a text message sent to you.. now starting a text message using your voice you cannot press the bluetooth button on the steering wheel as the system only recognizes a few options. But if you hold the windows button on your phone, this will initiate phone conversation mode and then you can start giving out voice commands to your phone (send text, search internet, etc.) From what I noticed, the car mic seems to pick up the voice not the phone.

curious

 

[ikerg]

I had the same issue with random contacts to be synced with 2013 cx5
I have installed the bluetooth phonebook application from android marketplace and all my sync problems have been solved
All my phonebook has been synced automatically
http://www.android-rsap.com/bluetooth-phonebook.html
I have 4.1.2 jelly bean gt-i9300 (international version) sgs3

 

[manaox2]

I'm not on stock (ROM'd currently), but could you possibly set up your phone to use the S-Voice word command to tell it to take the command directly? For example, say your passphrase to start the voice command app on the phone, it will hear you speak directly and output its audio and result through the bluetooth connection. Worth a shot. All those nice features on the S4 are expected to come via software update to the S3 as well BTW.

 

[ikerg]

I think it cant be possible. Mazda cx-5 bluetooth uses its own recognition system and then passes the command to the phone.

 

[Atomic]

Hey all. I have an S3. It works (does all the basics) but every time I get in my CX-5, it tries to download my call history. This takes 10 minutes, fails, and then I have access. My phone book is there, but I don't even see where or why you'd need call history.

I've found the voice recognition to be fair. To call my wife, I need to say "Call, Wife First Name, Wife Last Name, Home (or cell)" since that's how my contacts are set up. If I just say "Call Wife First Name" I get gibberish answers.

Bluetooth audio works, but I find the Mazda player frustrating. If I have a playlist or folder I want to play off my phone, I start it on my phone and then I can control it with the CX-5, it seems smoother that way.

I don't have the Nav in my CX-5. I bought a CD slot phone holder and I use my S3 for navigation and that's working out extremely well.

 

[manaox2]

I think it cant be possible. Mazda cx-5 bluetooth uses its own recognition system and then passes the command to the phone.

Why not just use the keyword to tell the phone to take a command directly is what I meant (S-Voice has that feature I believe which is on stock S3 and Note 2 phones). It would still play the audio through bluetooth and you wouldn't have to deal with the "ready, then beep" delay and honestly kind of poor voice recognition. I probably wouldn't use it for calling, but sending texts and other features seem like they would be a lot easier.

Nav is painful on the CX-5 from all reviews.

 

[ikerg]

I do agreee...but Mazda has considered most important the calling function (even using the worst voice interface ever- worse than my first bluetooth parrot ck3100) than the loose of compatibility. Take into account that not all the phones are activated its "assistant" by the same command. Take a look to my post titled "just a dream" in order to look for a more sphisticated general view of using the phone

 

[syrbruce52]

I shared the problem with my Mazda CX-5's inability to load the phone book from my Samsung Galaxy S3. I was told by the Mazda Bluetooth hotline (1-800-430-0153) that the issue was loading information from the Google-based phone book (oh, and Outlook based phone books too). There is an app available in the Playstore for $1.95 that solves the problem: Bluetooth Phonebook. I downloaded the app and my phone book loaded into the Mazda. The speed with which the representative provided the information let me know that Mazda is aware of the flaw. I told the representative that this was something Mazda should fix as I suspected that it was an issue with the Mazda software. But I'm sure that this solution should work for others and it's fairly cheap.

 

[ikerg]

Mazda's Bluetooth profiles are very Old.
My old Mki9200 by Parrot synced very well with my Galaxy S3 with the same stock firmware version on the S3 while the CX5 didn't.
I think it is a hardware problem.
I thought that Mazda solved it on the 2014 series... because the Blutooth Module I think is different than the 2013's...but obviously they didn't

 

[STE92VE]

Samsung released a recent firmware update and this has resolved some issues.

 

[ikerg]

Which firmware version do you mean?

 

[STE92VE]

Which firmware version do you mean?

Not sure, not my phone. Another family member's. But it did fix pairing issues with the CX-5 so possibly other issues as well.

 

[duncaninnes]

OK - I have Galaxy SIII and a CX-5. Trouble is, I've only had the CX-5 for a week, so playing/testing time hasn't been great so far.

I can say that they appear to sync just fine with each other. Wife has a Nexus 4. We've paired both phones at the same time; one for audio, one for phone & messages. Audio works well (albeit with a small delay between skipping forward and the new track starting). Phone calls and text messaging also work seamlessly through the SIII (I've not tested phone calls & messaging with the Nexus 4 yet). Contact list and call history came through perfectly well from the SIII although I've still to check that the call history is actually calls made rather than texts sent (that's something that affected our phones when we had the old Volvo C30, but that may be car related rather than phone related).

Haven't had chance to play with the voice commands yet - other than to try to speak to it and for it not to understand me. No great shakes there though as I've not even come close to looking at any instructions for voice commands or setting it up.

Still slightly bothered by the whole Android vs iPhone thing with car audio systems. Either car systems should recognise Android phones connected via USB properly, or Android phones should become adept at pretending to be iPhones so that audio can be managed in the same way.

HTH

Duncan

 

[atitus]

Audio works well (albeit with a small delay between skipping forward and the new track starting).

This is because bluetooth streams the actual processed audio, not the 'contents' of the file. For the same reason, the volume button, equalizer, etc on the phone affect the audio quality. There is a buffer for the audio stream which causes the delay. They could shorten the buffer to reduce the delay but that could introduce skips or degrade audio quality if the bluetooth signal strength suffers.

Still slightly bothered by the whole Android vs iPhone thing with car audio systems. Either car systems should recognise Android phones connected via USB properly...

This is Google's fault! Go onto the android bug tracking web site and complain. The more complaints, the better chance we have they will fix this. The same thing happened to me. When I got my HTC phone with Andriod 4.0 it worked perfectly with USB because it supported mass storage mode for USB. When I upgraded to Android 4.1 it immediately stopped working because Google removed mass storage mode support from Android. This was a real dumb decision on Google's part, considering the wealth of devices which support USB mass storage mode.

 

[dbright007]

Galaxy S2 T-mobile and 2014 CX5 Touring.
Phone would not stay paired - turn car off - pair gone. Also had the phonebook only partially load.
I did the Firmware upgrade thru Kies this last night, and downloaded 'bluetooth phonebook' from app store.
Firmware bumped me up to Jelly Bean.
Tested this morning. Phone autoconnected and re-paired automatically after shutting off car twice.
Reuploaded phonebook - all there now.

 

[raden]

I have had a Samsung Galaxy S3 since December 2012. I have had it paired with my CX-5 since then and have not experienced any issues. I have used the S Voice and the Google Now app while driving and have not experienced any issues. My only complaint is are the phone notifications that come through the headunit. The only way I have been able to turn it off is to turn off the sound.