HTC Desire and phonebook transfer
 

Hi,

Anyone had any success in transferring the phonebook to the ULF from an Android phone like the HTC Desire ? Calls work fine but no phonebook for me :(

cheers,
Seedar.

My G1 did this for some reason b4 but i am not sure how it fixed it self. But i did try to import all my contacts to a SIM or a Mem card so if the vehicle does try to load it through the phones sim it could, but was never able to do it on the G1.

I am trying right now(Droid) and I am not having any success. The red light is on next to the
tel switch. I had a dead battery awhile back and it hasnt worked well since.
I have yet to get them to pair. The instructions aren't very good in my book and I dont have a cradle built in phone, just my pocket droid.
I have the person with the mouth button on my stereo and I dont have nav on the X5 4.8is

Is the ULF firmware upgradable ?

your not syncing while the car is on right? i believe the manual tells you to pair while you have your key in position 1, i think that is the position right b4 you start the car.

No. Nobody has a ROM for it, nor access to the flash.

Pairing works fine, so does calling/answering etc, the only function failing is phone book upload to the car.

However, I must note that yesterday out of the blue it worked but today again just reports empty phone book !

rgds,
Seedar

try to send all the contacts manually to the car's BT - if successful it will upload all the contacts once, but any changes you will make additionally will not be shown obviously until you update the contacts again

I now see that there are fixes in Android v2.2 just released for car bluetooth compatibility so here's hoping !

rgds,
Seedar.

did 2.2 fix anything for bmw compatibility? please report

This one is driving me insane as well.

My Desire pairs with both a 1st and 5th gen ulf module, but will not auto populate the address book.

I've just purchased the latest, ULF module (13th gen) to see if that fixes it,

You can transfer the numbers one at time during the pairing process, and they are permanently stored once transferred, however that's not ideal, I have over 100 numbers to transfer and it takes time. (you can not however bulk transfer the contacts using any of the current android apps eg: "Bluetooth file transfer")

Saving the numbers to my sim seems not to have helped, (had to use "Contacts2sim" to do that, and there is a down side to doing this; every contact now appears twice in my people list)

Seeing as you can transfer contacts individually, I'm guessing given the motivation, an android app to transfer the contacts 1 at a time would work.

(The method to do this is: follow the BMW instructions for the bluetooth manual transfer, which I recall as being "set the module into pairing mode, and then manually transfer contacts, on the desire this is done: Settings, People, select and hold the contact you want to transfer, Send contact as Vcard, Select bluetooth from the drop down list, press send; rinse and repeat the Desire portion for each contact. )

I may write this app if the 13th gen module fails, but I'll have to be motivated enough to learn to write android apps, (I am a Sysadmin was once a programmer) and it could take me a while.

Your most reliable bet would be find an established android programmer/bmw driver and ask them nicely to code an app that replicates the single contact transfer that android can do, or wait for 2.2 and pray.

It's not ideal, but you can use outlook to bulk send all your contacts to files.

Select all your contacts, right click, chooe Send As Business card, wait for aaaaaaages as it builds the pile of vcfs into an email.

Copy/paste them to the phone then try "Bluetooth file transfer" to send them all.

I've not tried to save them as individual Vcards, I've attempted to save them as one .vcf file from the phone, but that fails to transfer due to unsupported protocals.

Saving them as multipule files could work. but I've so far assumed that the unsupported protocals were in "Bluetooth file transfer" and not the way the Vcard data was stored.

Worth a shot at any rate, but I'll wait till after I get my new ULF, anyone else willing to give it a shot?

Well the 13th gen module soved my address book issues.

All my contacts have transfered correctly, now I just need to find out how relialble the connection between the phone and my car is.

All looks good so far.

Any updates Mallee? How reliable is the HTC Desire connection with the ULF?

I am considering getting this phone, I have a 9th generation ULF.

I can't speak for the 9th gen ULF module.

however, it seems pretty reliable on the 13th gen, the phonebook transfers, the connection during calls has been good.

I have had 1 or 2 occasions where the phone has failed to pair immediately but it sorts its self out pretty quickly. (the issue may have had more to do with the signal not getting though a very heavy motor bike jacket than the ULF. as I recall the phone connected when removed from the jacket.)

I see you're in Melbourne, if you're near the CBD I'd be happy to meet you somewhere so you could test your ULF with my phone?

Thanks Mallee, I might take you up on your offer.

From reading your posts, it seems that the main issue is the contacts transfer which is solved by transferring each contact one at a time?

That is the issue I had with the 1st and 4th gen modules yes.

The work-around was.

1. Put the car in pairing mode.
2. Transfer individual contacts as vcards via bluetooth.

It gets tiring fast, and there is no confirmation that the contact actually transferred.

On the plus side it did remember the contacts between car trips, which I was concerned about.

Would be fine if you only wanted ten contacts or so in your car.

please keep us updated how do desire and e53 bt behave

The HTC Desire is working perfectly with my 9th generation bluetooth ULF.

Transfers all contacts without any problems and call quality is good.

Great phone!

Nice to hear :)

Mack7, did you transfer them one by one or they transfer automatically as soon as you connect the phone to the car?

Android update
 

Hi All, well Android v2.2 did not help and it also still has the problem of dropping bluetooth whenever the phone connects to a new wireless hotspot ! This problem can be avoided by turning off wireless when on the move.

Wil try the manual transfer of phone numbers as 10 numbers would be much better than none.

How easy is it to find a 13th gen ULF ? Have to check which one I have too.

thanks,
Seedar.

I am still running 2.1 on my HTC desire (Orange UK) in my E46 (330 ci) and never had any problems synchronizing my address-book with he car. I get the occasional connection drop if, when I attempt to call someone, I hang up before they answer the phone or it goes to answerphone. Apart from that it works OK. Some people on an android forum though seem to have problems synchronizing their contacts, most of these people have trouble with contacts that have pictures. Mine are all OK, even the ones with a picture. Just a though. Are your contacts google contacts, phone contacs or sim contacts? I only have phone contacts.

on a different note, How Do I Find Out Which Generation My Ulf Module Is? I want to check which generation my bluetooth ulf module is, how can I find out? Many thanks in advance!

Do you know your P/N? There have been P/N lists posted here and on bimmerboard with the Gen. #.

I just tried connecting the HTC Desire S with a 2004 X5 E53

I had several random disconnects
the phonebook did not load
no sms on the screen

and the main problem: in the car's phonebook, under the name of my current phone on the navi screen is loaded the phonebook of a nokia 6233 which was connected only once to my car in 2007 for testing purposes!!!!!!!!!!!

how can i delete the old contacts from my car?

hi again, did you manage to find the source of your success?

I do not know what the source of my success is. But I have a very strong suspicion the source of your failure is this nokia phone. Delete all phones from your car's memory. To do that you need to read the manual. In my car I needed to keep the bluetooth button pressed before I turn the key to position 1 and keep it pressed for 10 seconds. But it should say in your manual.

thank you for your reply - I have indeed deleted the paired phones from my car's BT.

in fact I did for 3-4 times since that nokia was last connected to my car. And 3-4 other phones have been since paired.

I have had even a flat battery since then, so I even changed the battery on my car (however it did not influence the BT I think)

anyway, the phone pairings have been deleted with the 10 sec press...is there any other way to clear bluetooth info stored in my module?

by the way, the desire s I have runs version 2.3.3 of software

ok, I have managed to get read of the "old" numbers from the bmw BT.

now when i go into the phonebook the car displays "please wait" message for about a minute and then the "phonebook empty" message.

the phonebook is not huge - 200 contacts with average of 2 numbers per contact and about 20 contacts have a lot of info - date of birth, couple of emails, notes in text format, addresses, photos. etc.

I've heard it take 3 hours to transfer over the contacts.

but in my case the "phonebook empty" message appears.

and most of my journeys are shorter than 3 hour (as every other's person).

or do you mean just the first time it takes 3 hours? still other phones do it very quick, why is android soooo different?

It's not the phone. It's probably the 9600 baud data rate. I dunno.

what I meant is the same amount of contacts can be transferred to the same car by other phones in couple of seconds (so I presume at the same baud rate)

I totally agree, and several hours is enough to transfer megabytes of data, however, it is still true that some owners who have problems with their contacts have suddenly found them to have transferred after a long run out in the car.

EDIT: you could try sending a contact via BT to the car by using Share visible contacts from the Contacts.

thank you. does the latter option mean that only those contacts that I share manually will be visible each time? so no synchronisation of new contacts then (with time I might add new contacts to the phone)

the reason I am saying this is I have done a similar procedure with a Ericsson T39m long time ago, and in that case the phonebook was never updated after initial sending of the contacts

My htc desire worked fine only problem is that it has copied both the contacts on the sim and contacts on the phone so in the phonebook on the nav screen i have 2 of the same contacts.

anyway to delete them? without deleting everything and starting again?

My phonebook copied across in only 2-3 minutes i have around 200 contacts.