Autoblog

ruggels @ Jan 7th 2007 8:51AM

Voice-activated, hands-free calling - already out, nice to see ford doing this too

Uninterrupted connections - haven't tried this one yet, very cool

Audible text messages - also very cool

Advanced calling features - already out, nice to see ford doing this too

Voice-activated music - nice, commands by genre

Instant voice recognition- already out, nice to see ford doing this too

Ring tone support- already out... though, if this can eclipse current techonolgy and play ring tones from ANY bluetooth phone i'll be very impressed (unlike current bluetooth enabled cars which are hit and miss).

Automatic phonebook transfer - already out... though, if this can eclipse current techonolgy and play ring tones from ANY bluetooth phone i'll be very impressed (unlike current bluetooth enabled cars which are hit and miss).

* All in all a pretty progressive feature set, kinda like the zune, only better (because it does everything current systems do and a bit more :P). I'm glad Ford's getting on the Honda/Nissan bandwagon, now i'd love to see people like VW wise up and offer bluetooth on all their cars, now that the major japanese players and american players are getting in on it.

Per the ring tones and addressbook, the most dissapointing thing about the toyota/honda setup is that you can't send address books from the major business phones right now, ie certain Blackberry and Treo models. Thankfully they have a compatibility chart with instructions per phone, but that left me out in the cold. admittedly, this is a result of work needing to be done on Treo/Blackberry's end not Toyota... But i feel its a little missleading to indicate it'll just work (on toyota and fords end) without a disclaimer.

All in all, very cool, now put it in all your cars as an option (ala nissan).