First problem found, and now fixed.

I've never had any type of car kit for a mobile phone before, other than a cheap phone holder with a speaker years ago. in the days when I was a field service engineer doing serious miles it wasn't illegal to use a phone in the car, not that I did very often. But I did specify the bluetooth on this car to make sure I could alway legally and safely make or take a call whilst driving.

But, the only thing less than perfect I've found so far with the Scirocco was that the Phone menu disappeared completely.

It was there when I collected the car, as I made a half-hearted attempt to pair it with my iPhone - but later that day I tried again with confidence having read the relevent manual to find... well, to find nothing actually. The menu was gone. none of the phone related buttons worked.

I tried a forum post, but I guess I haven't successfully wormed my way into the right clique as my carefully worded question got only one single response from a Moderator, suggesting I take the car back to the dealer.

Well thanks, I hadn't thought of that...

So, last Saturday I found the will to pop back to Guildford and get my dealer to take a look. He pressed a few random button and then declared he hadn't seen anything like it (I forgive him though, he's a salesman, not a technician) and after 5 minutes in the workshop it came out working.

What was the fix?

Predictably, the fix was to unplug the bluetooth unit under the drivers seat and plug it back in. The 21st century car mechanic's equivalent of the three finger salute.

So now it works, what's it like?

Simple and brilliant. The pairing process takes a minute or two, but is perfectly logical as long as you read the infomation screen and the phone messages properly, and once paired the system has found my phone by the time the engine is running. The Phone info screen on the MFD screen displays useful stuff like the name of the phone connected, the signal strength and battery life, and the main touchscreen can be used for dialling numbers, or looking stuff up on the contacts list.



I should confess that I have yet to actually make or take a call through it yet, so look out for a new post called "Bluetooth looks great but...".

Edit 27/04/11:
I've used the phone through the system a couple of times and I'm happy to report it works exactly as you'd expect it to.