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Silver is the most popular exterior car color in North
America. Blue ranks fourth. In terms of car technology,
though, the Bluetooth wireless option for hands-free
cellular calls currently ranks a lot lower than
fourth, but you may find it useful in your next car.
Hands-free calling lets you keep your eyes on the road.
In Europe, which has laws (similar to those in some
U.S. cities) restricting drivers from using cell phones,
having a Bluetooth connection between car and cell phone
is already popular. And with Europe's population density
making cellular coverage nearly flawless, more opportunities
exist there for telematics (in-car communications and
computing) using Bluetooth.
About a dozen Bluetooth phones supporting the Hands
Free Protocol (HFP) are available from Nokia, Siemens,
and Sony Ericsson, if you use GSM service from AT&T,
Cingular, or T-Mobile. Since GSM is already standard
in Europe, the cost of making Bluetooth phones for North
America is small. But good luck using the CDMA (Sprint
and Verizon) or TDMA (AT&T) networks; Bluetooth is very
limited with those services, since there are virtually
no Bluetooth phones available here. And sticking a Bluetooth
SD card into your phone would not create an HFP link.
Why would you want in-car Bluetooth, especially when
it might be a $300 option on a new car, or a $750 retrofit
on your current car? For starters, the alternative costs
more: You might pay as much as $1,000 for what amounts
to a year-old handset—modified to work with one
car model—that you can control with steering-wheel
buttons or voice commands and that displays information
on the instrument panel. But a Bluetooth phone would
work with any Bluetooth car.
I recently drove two cars equipped with Bluetooth:
an Acura TL with built-in Bluetooth and a Jeep Grand
Cherokee with a $300 add-on called UConnect. There are
also Bluetooth-equipped BMWs, Lexuses, Lincolns, and
Toyotas.
Acura's version of Bluetooth, called HandsFreeLink,
is about as good as such products get right now. It's
included in the base price ($34,650) of a comfortable
and incredibly fast five-passenger sedan (270 horsepower
accelerating 3,500 pounds), with an amazing DVD-Audio
system and one of the best navigation systems available.
In a car like the Acura TL, Bluetooth is icing on the
cake. You set up HandsFreeLink by pairing the phone
with the car. Then you can control the phone from the
dashboard whenever it's in or near the car. Press the
Talk button on the steering wheel and say a name or
number and your cell phone dials the number from the
car's phone book. Dialing and caller information as
well as signal and battery strength appear on the instrument
panel. When you use the car's Alpine-based navigation
system, you can auto-dial phone numbers associated with
points of interest, such as hotels and restaurants.
The only downside is that the car's phone book can't
sync with the one in your phone.
Chrysler is the first North American car manufacturer
to offer Bluetooth. UConnect on the Grand Cherokee is
useful but less polished, since it takes the form of
a small button pad mounted near the radio/ navigation
system. It connects to the car by a thin wire that disappears
into the audio system faceplate. A talk button activates
voice recognition for dialing, ending calls, adjusting
the volume, and muting.
The Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge/Chrysler minivans integrate
the controls more fully, without the in-dash button
pad. Either way, the UConnect components are familiar
PC parts: an Intel X-Scale CPU, a Broadcom Bluetooth
chipset, IBM ViaVoice software, and the QNX operating
system.
Bluetooth neither helps nor hurts the accuracy of voice
recognition, which is also used to control the audio
and navigation systems. Ask the Acura "Miles to destination?"
and it sometimes replies, "What station?" This is nothing
that a tenfold leap in CPU power won't cure. As for
emergency assistance services such as OnStar and Mercedes-Benz's
TeleAid, they require an integrated cell phone. OnStar,
which has offered optional cellular calling, should
be more desirable this year, now that it finally offers
digital service while retaining analog service that
works better out in the boondocks.
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