rodybmw

Having heard that the Treo 650 works well with the E60 I went into the Cingular Company Store with the intention of buying the Treo. I tried playing with the 650 and was not crazy about the size of the keys and the proximity to each other, the size of the whole unit, and the chrome section surrounding the screen. With all that said I decided that I should get the Treo....and just then I saw the picture of the Sony Ericsson S710a and asked if they had any i could look at. They had one in stock and I liked the look and feel better than the Treo. It was not as wide as the Treo and had much better build quality, as well as the best camera on a cell phone that I have seen. Obviously the camera was not my top concern, but it did not hurt. It also has a slot for a Sony Memory Stick Duo Magic Gate and it came with a 32 MB stick. It's NOT a PDA, but it has most of the functions that I need, so I decided to get it.

I was worried that it would not work with the E60 Bluetooth since I don't remember anyone here having tried a S710a with the E60. I also remembered that some of the other SE phones were not compatible. The rep at the store reassured me that it should work, and if it does not then I could exchange it for the Treo or any other phone.

So I got the phone and..........went to the Bluetooth pairing screen in iDrive, turned on Bluetooth on the S710a and choose "handsfree mode" as the service. The phone and the car saw each other immediately. They both asked for the passkey code, I entered 1234 on both and that was it. It worked!

Here are the things that I have tried and they all work:

1. Initiate call VIA iDrive
2. Initiate call with the car's Voice Command button (example "Dial 555....1212")
3. Initiate call with the car's Voice Command button (example "Call George")
4. Receive or reject call VIA iDrive.
5. Speakerphone
6. Phonebook transfers within 2 to 5 minutes after the pairing.

It was very pleasent how easy it was to do all this without even having to refer to the car's or the phones manual. The Voice Command is amazing....I did not record any voice tags for the names in the phone book, but iDrive recognizes what name I am saying and calls the number. Here's how it goes: I push the voice button on the steering wheel and say "Call George", iDrive then says "Do you want to call George?" and then I say "yes". That simple!

At this point I love the phone and my only concern is that when I have multiple phone numbers for one person (e.g. mobile, work, home, etc.) the phone lists them under one name with little icons next to each number to identify whether it is a mobile number (icon of cell phone) or work number (icon of building), etc.. When all these numbers get transferred to iDrive it just lists the persons name and number, so there is no way to identify whether it is the mobile or work number. It just says "George 555-1111" and on the next line "George 555-2222". No little icons for identifying which one of George's numbers those are. To get around this I started entering each of these numbers as a separate entry in the S710a's phone book and gave them different names like "George Mobile" and "George work", etc. Now iDrive lists them as "George Mobile" and "George Work", etc.. If anyone knows how to differentiate between the numbers when they are all under one name please let me know.

Sorry for the long post......but I am really pleased with the S710a and the car's setup and hope that I will stay that way in the future.

vern

What kind of a deal did they give you?? I might be intrested if its as simple as you say.
vern