5 basic MZD Connect questions

[Xcel64]

My CX-5 is about two months old and I don't spend much time on the road, hence limited MZD Connect usage so far. I'm on version 59.00.504, paired with an iPhone 6 running iOS11.2.5.

Shortly after pairing phone realized several contacts were missing, removed connection and deleted Mazda profile from iPhone, re-paired via BT and still same issue. Then realized MZD Connect max is 1,000 contacts and I've way more than that on my phone. Not a problem at all, as I don't need all 1000 contacts in the CX-5, I'd say probably 25-50 enough for me. Questions:

a) Besides automatically downloading contacts -which yielded prior results- there's an entry to manually add contacts. However, I'm getting stuck there at the "Select a contact to import from the mobile device". For the life of me haven't found a way to select it (eg selected the contact on my phone and no jive, looked on contact options to see if there was an option to share via BT but didn't find one, etc). CX-5 contact list is empty -as I had just deleted the prior connection to start from scratch- hence nothing to select there. I know there are some instructions on the MZD Connect site, but there's no clarity on how to "select SELECTED CONTACT IMPORT" under their Manually import contacts instructions. Has anyone been able to crack this one?

b) Is there a way to manually enter a contact? Or is the only way to import from a paired phone? Can't a contact be created via the touchscreen?

c) Even when I had the 1,000 contacts imported, seems Voice Recognition only able to dial if pronounced as named on contact list. Didn't find a way to dial to contacts in favorites if they were named different (eg "Wife mobile" on Favorites, rather than "Wife" and then selecting "Home, Office, mobile" on next command). Can VR only dial to contact names? Or favorite names as well?

d) On the subject of VR, understand there's a way to train the system to improve recognition accuracy (instructions state press pick up button, say "Voice training" after the beep, and then read out loud the system prompts. However, this must be specific to some models or audio types, as haven't found a way for my CX-5 to even recognize the command "Voice Training". In case it helps, CX-5 is a 2017 Touring with Preferred Package (hence Bose audio)

e) Is there a way to default to a given screen in the Touch screen? I believe it defaults to the last used one, but I would actually would like to make either the "Display off" or "Display off + clock" available on settings to be persistent. Think right now only stays that way until a different screen is selected via any of the commander buttons -eg I'd expect music screen to display for a few seconds after if I selected the music button and then to go back to my choice of screen off, but it's staying in music -or navigation for that matter- until I select "Screen off" again from settings.

Would appreciate pointers for additional documentation on contacts and VR besides Mazda Connect website (eg User guide on PDF, etc)

Thanks!

 

[gumbytron]

@Xcel64, here it is 4 years later and Mazda has not fixed this issue. I purchased an ND 3 months ago and am convinced there isn't a single person at Mazda that owns an iPhone. Don't they test this stuff? What's more surprising though, is when I Googled the message that comes up, "select a contact to import from the mobile device", this is the only thread... the only one! There were other threads I found by searching other ways, but no one has seemed to figure out how to import specific contacts with an iPhone, and most of the replies have been to just import the entire address book. I'm like you and have over 2000 contacts, and I'm not interested in paring it down so my car can handle it.

I found a solution! And I really like my solution because it actually makes more sense for me for what I need with respect to contacts in my car. In fact, I wish I did this on my old BMW.

I have always kept my contacts and calendar in the cloud with my Gmail account, and then on the iPhone I check the box for this account to use mail, contacts, and calendar so it is always in sync. This way I can have one source of information between all computers and devices - if I make a change to a contact on my computer, my phone gets the update immediately and vice versa. I also have a secondary Gmail account that I use for mail only. What I ended up doing is copying just the contact info I want in my car to that secondary account, then temporarily switched my phone settings from the primary to the secondary account for syncing contacts. The phone immediately updated (56 contacts total vs. 2000+), so I did a one time sync with the car to download those contacts (make sure to check the box in Mazda Connect to not auto-download contacts). Once downloaded, I switched my phone back to using the primary account again and everything was back to normal.

The great thing about this setup is I can now control precisely how much info I included with each contact. For example, several contacts had multiple phone numbers, home, mobile, work, main office, addresses, family members, etc. but I could simplify to just a single phone that I would typically use. That way, instead of saying "Call John Doe Mobile", I can just say "Call John", assuming there was only one John in the contact list, and John only had one phone number. This is exactly what I needed. I also am not exposing more sensitive contact information than needed when I bring the car in for service.

As far as updating an entry or adding another contact, I haven't tested yet, but my assumption is it should be as easy as updating the secondary Gmail account, doing the contact swap with the iPhone, and re-sync. If it does something goofy like duplicating contacts instead of overwriting, then I'll just unpair and re-pair the device to force a wipe of the car's contact database. A few extra steps but not that difficult.

Hope this helps you, or whoever else might be struggling with this issue.