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Warning about built in phone - for those who havent ordered it yet

971 views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  MEnthusiast 
#1 ·
You should know that the dialing feature on this phone is idiotic. If you want to dial a non-memorized number, you have to click through an extremely tedious telephone wheel (like on a rotary phone) within the NAV monitor. Cannot be done while driving. No speed or turbo dialing. Or you can just pick up the handset and dial on it, close it and speak. In my Mercedes, the same startak setup has a "hard" numerical pad next to the NAV monitor which serves as a phone pad for direct dialing or turbo dialing or as a preprogrammed channel selector for radio. The BMW does have a hard pad for radio only, but just has 6 numbers on it. The only way to dial with the built-in feature in the BMW is to use programmed numbers through the wheel control. This works, but the numbers are recalled in the location order, not alphabetically (in contrast to the recall order on the phone itself).
 
#5 ·
Yeh, it's been a pain in the neck but I now find that while driving I can select most numbers by adding or subtracting the consecutive digits in my head like so: keyed in 4 let's say, now I want 8, I rotate the knob 4 clicks towards 8, then to 3, 5 clicks, all while keeping my eyes on the road pretty much. It works pretty well for me and works best when traffic is flowing smoothly. I do miss the voice activation that my 540/6 had. I voice programed 411 into it so I rarely found myself dialing. I'll have to get it installed in the M now that the kit has arrived. I would appreciate a hard keeypad, or even better, a touch screen for all the functions done through the little black knob, though for dialing, I think my method is actually safer since it is a by-feel not sight system of number entry. If entry and confirmation were fast enough, a voice entry system would be nice.
 
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