I have an Alfa Giulietta (with blue & me) and this worked perfectly with a HTC Touch. A couple of weeks ago I bought a HTC Legend and the connection with the B&M is a disaster. B&M and the Legend connect and sometimes I can call via B&M. But answering the phone (via the car audio system) isn't possible.
I tried it with the 2.1 and now with the 2.2 and I expierence the same problems.
Does anybody have any idea or workaround for the annoying problem?
Yes! I've finally had some repeatable success with getting HTC and other Android phones working with B&M from Android 2.2 all the way to 4.1, although it's taken me a while to write this up!
Before you start:
You need to understand how the contacts are stored on your HTC Legend (or similar phone such as the Desire) and why this causes an issue with Blue&Me. By default the phone stores contacts locally on the phone using the contacts application rather than saving them to your Google address book. The contacts application will show all contacts, namely those that are stored on the phone, along with any other contacts from your Google account which may include lots of 'learned' email contacts. All of this when used with B&M means that the car tries to drag all this contact information over and usually ends up with a deluge of information such as email contacts which are pretty useless to it.
So how do you you sort all this out? The best method is to make use of your Google account as the 'master' for the contacts which also has the added benefit of being a phone backup and allowing your address book to easily move across Android phones. Remember the steps to backup (export) your contacts in this and remember you do this at your own risk and anything you break is completely your own responsibility.
This bit needs to be done using your Google account using a browser at
https://mail.google.com:
Export *all* your contacts in vcard format from your Google Mail account. Do this via a browser and keep this file safe.
This bit needs to be done on the phone:
Export *all* your contacts in vcard format from your default HTC people or contacts application (which ever the built in application is on your version of Android), this saves them to the SD card. If you ever stored contacts on the SIM card, back these up also, as they are better off imported into your Google account (later). Once you've backed these up, transfer the saved file to your PC via your favourite method (i.e. Bluetooth, USB, physically with the card).
Delete all your phone contacts, yes you read that correctly.
Making sure your address book isn't full of unecessary or disorganised contacts:
Make sure your Google Mail settings don't try and store every email address that's ever been in touch with you because this fills your Google address book full of junk. This then get's synchronised to your phone, and no surprise Blue&Me also then tries to suck in this address list of useless email contacts.
Settings > General > "Create contacts for auto-complete"
Make sure this is set as "I'll add contacts myself" and NOT "When I send a message to a new person, add them to Other Contacts so that I can auto-complete to them next time." which auto-saves all the junk.
The next bit is a little tedious and needs to be carried out using a browser at
https://mail.google.com.
Go to Contacts > "Other Contacts" - Review the contacts in here, for any you wish to keep, go into the contact and hit "Add to My Contacts", this will do what it says and move this to "My Contacts", repeat until you've got all the addresses you want to keep, finally select all "Other Contacts" and delete these. Most of this you'll notice will be just junk.
Import the phone contacts from the file you saved earlier to the phone's SD card (you remembered to tranfer it to the PC, yes?) from Contacts > "Import Contacts"
At this stage you'll probably wonder why you started this whole process and might find that you have some duplicate entries in your Google account's address book, don't worry too much as there's help and it can be found under Contacts > More > "Find and Merge Duplicates". Run this, review the output and see what you end up with.
Again, review "My Contacts", see if there's anything which didn't merge which you expected and correct this manually using copy and paste, the goal being that each person has one 'Contact' for all their data, for example 'J.Bloggs' has a work, home and mobile number along with a work and home email address all under the same contact. If you have a picture of the person, you can add this too at this step.
When you've finished this, which can take some time, you should have a nicely organised address book, you can then add people to groups such as "Starred in Android" which you should fine your phone has kindly added to your account already.
The good news is, that's all the hard work done and you should be left with a sensible amount of contacts that you actually want, need and use. Not only this, but now, if you ever buy a new Android phone, as soon as you sign in with your Google account, it'll automatically bring in all the contacts.
Finally, check your phone's contact application is set to use and show Google contacts and double check your synchronisation settings on your phone under Settings > "Accounts and Sync".
When you use Blue&Me next, delete your old data from the car menu, turn on your phone's Bluetooth and make it visible, search for the phone from the car, pair it using the code, allow contacts to be sync'ed (on the phone) and finally. You should have a usable phone with Blue & Me, doing all this finally sorted out mine, and several other people's HTC phones with B&M and also made navigating contacts in the car a lot easier!
If it all went wrong, just delete all your contacts again from phone and Google mail, restore the backed up files and you will be back where you where.
I have a HTC Legend updated to 2.2 and Fiat Linea with Blue and me updated to version 5.5. There are no connectivity issues, but it does not read messages though. All other functions like connectivity, phone book, last call info are working fine. You can get the blue and me update @
www.blueandme.net I have just installed a blue tooth media streamer software from the market in my phone and I will have to try if I'm able to stream media through the bluetooth to blue and me, if it works... it will be superb!
Media streaming is not supported with Blue&Me on any version, even the latest 5.6 and 6.0 releases.
Message reader only works on old devices rather than smart phones so assume this will not work unless you have something like a basic 10 year old Nokia phone. Android, iPhone, etc. forget it, message reader just won't work, see
www.blueandme.net for a compatibility list.
I have a Sony Xperia running android 4.0 and I can not pair it with Blue and Me in my grande punto emotion.
anyone can help?
Also hoe can I update the blue and me in my car. I purchased it last year
Android 4.0 and even 4.1 are fine with Blue&Me, just make sure that the phone is 'Visible' when attempting to pair the device (See Settings > Bluetooth).
See this post on updating Blue&Me generally:
Blue&me 5.5 update - Alfa Romeo Forum, it's the same process on all Fiat group cars, at the time of writing 5.6 and 6.0 are the latest versions depending on what hardware is installed in your car. All Blue&Me updates can be found here:
http://www.blueandme.net/blueandme/index.aspx?brand=fga&lang=en
Hope all that helps!
Bootsock
