TaylorO

Greetings - In April of 2018 I bought a used 2013, and as soon as my phone, an old Nokia, synced up, the bluetooth would tell me when I had a text and from whom, give me the option to read it to me (cool), and let me reply via voice (again, cool). Well, at the end of summer my old phone was dying, so I bought a new Motorola...
Synced up the bluetooth and Sucky... Now it says there's a text, but I have to use the joystick to click on read, and if I want to reply, I have to use the joystick to choose from several, mostly worthless, replies.

I looked in the book and the menu and couldn't find anything to do.

Any help to get it back to the more user friendly and safer mode would be greatly appreciate.

TaylorO

tus

I've been looking into this problem but just never got around to actually sitting down and trying to fix it. What you stated about how the Nokia worked v.s. the Motorola does provide an interesting clue.

In the SUV that was replaced by my '13 450h I had a Parrot Bluetooth system. When I connected my previous and current Motorola phones, I believe the voice features of the phone where being handled by the phone connection, but the SMS was actually being done by the "dumb" Bluetooth media connection, with the Android software on the phone actually providing the SMS voice functionality through the connected speaker and mic and not the ones on the phone. In the RX it appears that the phone connection is being used for both the voice and SMS, essentially disabling the Android software on the phone.

My assumption at the time was that the Parrot system had no SMS functionality built in so the phone would fall back to the media connection. In my 87 Corvette and 91 Miata, that I have been keeping as original as possible and have the vintage stereo systems, I use either a hands free headset or speaker/mic and am able to listen to and speak SMS messages.

I had been looking a a way to turn off the SMS feature on the Lexus which hopefully would cause the phone to fall back to the media connection, but with what you said about your old Nokia, it appears that the setting to force it to connect one way or the other may be on the phone. The working theory here would be that your Nokia could not send SMS information via Bluetooth but could connect an external speaker and mic.

Will have to think about this, but the path to a solution may be contacting Motorola to see if there is a way to have the phone not send SMS data to the car and force the software on the phone to service the SMS messages.

Of course this is all my theory on how things work, so if someone knows more please correct me. Although I do work IT for a cellular service provider, and have done some programming setting up Bluetooth connections for transferring data, I am by no means an expert on how the handsets communicate with other Bluetooth devices.

TaylorO

TUS - Thank you for the reply. I don't know what the SMS is. I don't know if my old Nokia had a voice feature.
It sounds like you're saying, with my old Nokia, the voice activation/activity for listening/responding to texts was a function of the phone playing through the car - and the cars system, which is what I'm stuck with now, is such that I have to use the built in stuff. So, in theory, it may be possible, if my new Motorola has the voice command/control feature, that could work like the Nokia, if I can some how get the SMS turned off on my new phone. Is that correct?

Have you heard of the possibility turning off the SMS on a phone, or, as you wrote your are looking into, the car?

Thanks again, Taylor O

tus

SMS is Simple Messing Service, the technical term for text messages.

I actually just thought of attempting to turn off the Bluetooth link for text messaging on the phone after reading about the behavior of your old Nokia. I know if the system the phone connects to does not handle texts, it will fall back to the behavior you want.

If I remember, I'll check with the guys that deal with the handsets to see what you can and can't do on the Moto phones these days. Of course living in suburban Chicago with the polar vortex outside, I doubt anyone is going into the office until Monday.

TaylorO

Ach ha! I was looking around in the settings of my phone and didn't see anything about SMS.
I'm still pretty bummed to learn it's the car system that's weak - and that my dear old phone was responsible for the brief window of glorious text to voice to text...
Am I correct in understanding that text/voice activity was a feature of the phone, and, if so, it automatically went into effect in blue tooth mode?
Trusting you survive the Polar Vortex, hopefully you'll find something out.