Has anyone had the Audi Bluetooth installed by the dealer?

 

There's factory Bluetooth, which after 2 years experience is great, and there is 3rd-Party Bluetooth which works, but in no way could be called integrated the way the factory version is. Factory Bluetooth requires the 'deluxe' steering wheel with the scrolling rollers for volume and phone book selection as well as voice-operated dialing. I think it also requires the 'deluxe' stereo for the in-dash display. If you don't have those - fugeddaboudit. In that case, third party is your only option. Be sure to get non-dealer pricing for 3rd party install as well, as dealers have been known to add a couple hundred in padding over what a reputable independent charges.

 

also, the audi bluetooth doesn't work with all phones as I found out before rolling out of the dealership. The wifes phone worked perfectly.

 

An alternative to an integrated Bluetooth setup that I've been using is the Motorola MotoRokr T505, reviewed here (and lots of other sites):

http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/cell-p...ecoustics-cnet

It's about the size of a garage door opener and clips to the sunvisor like one. It can be used as a stand-alone speakerphone, or it can route thru an FM station. The cool thing about that is that it can also play the music stored on the SD card in my Blackberry through FM. Not quite as high quality as playing a CD or a hard-wired iPod, but still amazingly versatile, and it works just as well in a rental car.

With the Blackberry, voice dialing finds the right person most of the time, and it announces incoming calls by number (so it is not accessing the BB phonebook for incoming, unfortunately).

Best part is that it was under $100 shipped.

 

Dealer will install bluetooth? I had no idea. '07 A3 with NAV, no tech package. Anyone had this installed, what did it run you?

RE 3rd party. I heard Parrot has an option that integrates with the steering wheel, no?

RE Motorola option, i guess you would have to turn radio to a particular station when a call came in to use the FM transmitter?

 

Yup.

I set the presets in "FM2" to the best FM stations in my area that the MotoRokr uses. (The Motorola device has a method to give those frequencies preference in its signal routing.) It also always uses its last used FM station.

In practice, it works pretty well since the device powers up and connects to the phone very quickly, so by the time the call needs to be answered, the device is on, connected, routed to FM and I've switched to that frequency.

Alternatively, you can just use the built-in speaker and turn down/off the stereo during a call.