Hey guys,

I was looking to upgrade to the OEM nav on the GSR. I was wondering if it is 100% necessary to get the buttons added to the steering wheel? That if I will be able to do all the functions on the nav itself without it? Such as answering and hanging up on screeen etc? Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

 

no. You have to have the steering wheel buttons in order to use the bluetooth.

Honestly the BT/Nav integration is disappointing.

 

What you mean? Not worth the $$?

 

Well...

My main issue is that you can't transfer your phone book. You have to manually, verbally, add each and every person and their phone number(s).

Then when you want to call some one, you hit the button, wait for it to say "handsfree connected" and then your voice with the phone name, say "Call Amy" (my wife's name), then "Call Amy [in my voice] at home or mobile?", you say "Mobile" then it says "Calling Amy [my voice] on mobile, confirm?" and you say "Yes".

I know you can turn off the confirmation, but it takes about 60 seconds to setup the call. Most of the time I dig out my phone and hit call since she's a speed dial... which defeats the purpose.

My wife suggested that rather than say "Amy" with "Home" and "Mobile" when I set her up in the phone book to have two "people" "Amy Home" and "Amy Mobile" to skip the "where do you want to call them at" BS.

When a call comes in, all you get is the number on the screen. Since you can't xfer your phone book you have to recognize the numbers (which is a problem for me when clients call).

On my old Pioneer unit, you just hit BT, scrolled through your phone book or favorites and clicked a button to call. Took about 2 seconds and wasn't utterly frustrating. We have a huge display. It would be nice to just be able to hit the phone icon on the Nav, select "phonebook" or "favorites" and then press someone's name to call them (like a preset on the radio).

Now, I'm a geek and a software developer and I am flabbergasted with how poorly written the nav unit is. Here's a quick list of problems:

- unable to copy/rip mp3s from CDs/DVDs. This is a NO BRAINER.
- no phone book transfer support
- when in nav mode, there is a phone button that when pressed just shows you the battery and signal level. Come on, wire this up to the phone book (if it existed)
- when in nav mode, if you change the sirius station, it shows the channel then disappears. I wish I could dedicate the 7.5mm at the top of the screen to constantly showing the name of the current artist & track.
- the interface to find/locate a POI is horrible. I seriously cannot figure it out (and I'm not going to read a 300+ page engrish "manual" to figure it out).
- radio station presets should roll (as in when you press the arrow on the steering wheel, go to Sirius 2 if you are on the 6th Sirius 1 preset)... or have more than 6 on one screen. There is a TON of wasted space on the UI, considering how small the buttons are to hit. Heck, make it configurable or something.
- dvd audio is very quiet compared to other sources
- using the joystick to scroll is a pain... and it's hard to hit poi targets to know what they are (whereas with my finger I could just jab at them)
- no voice activation/recognition support

All those complaints aside, I think that the Nav is worth it for these reasons:
- it looks better than the non nav dash
- touch screen with more text > one line of LCD
- the nav is very fast at finding new routes (especially when compared to DvD based nav units)
- the lap timer, graphical info displays (showing average speed, mpg, altitude, temperature) are greatness
- graphical setting of the vehicle options is nice, but honestly I've not touched it once I set things up like I like.

That said, I've had factory nav units in a few vehicles now and they all have issues.

Lexus:
- DVD based and horribly slow
- not integrated in with the audio controls!
- voice activation wasn't great, but functional
- nice view of the vehicle items (it was a hybrid so you got the hybrid display and some other cool stuff)

Infiniti
- hard drive based so quick
- somewhat odd usage
- a billion buttons that you have to figure out... and audio controls are mixed on the screen and down below makes it super confusing for the first hour... and then you still futz it up later
- still can't rip MP3 CDs to the hard drive
- has a CF (Compact Flash) port on the front. Who in the hell uses CF any more? Why not standard USB or SD if it has to be flash memory.
- no dvd in motion patch
- 6 dish changer in the TRUNK like it's 1993.

 

I think the hands-free system itself works well. The one thing I would have really liked to see is more integration w/ the nav. For example, I would really like to be able to view my contacts on the screen and select from there. Or even with the voice recognition... if it used the voice recognition on the phone, it would be better, but right now it uses a separate system. So you have to program your own contacts on the hands-free system. Once you have your normal contacts set up tho, it works very smoothly.

So I guess the original question was how does it integrate w/ the nav... Not that well. Basically you can bring up a # pad and dial the number you want. And you can see the status of your phone, like if you in a call, an incoming call, your batter, and your service.

A lot of it has to do with what phone you have. Check the mitsu owners site for compatability.

Overall, im pretty happy with it so far.

 

Oh ya... I with the nav had telematics like the GT-R too if I can be a bit greedy ;-)

 

You can hit the first button to interrupt the options and put it straight into listening mode.

 

ha good to know