LarryQW

I started having problems with my VX8350 after upgrading to SYNC 2.0. It would no longer automatically download unless I gave approval each time on my phone. If I didn't dig my phone out of my pocket and approve the download in time, the phone would disconnect. I finally 'fixed' the problem by turning off automatic download. I manually download on any changes. But my phone history is no longerf available. I heard a rumor the new failure was due to SYNC 2.0 moving to the newer, more restrictive, Bluetooth standard. I'm not sure if it's true.

After the SYNC 2.0 upgrade, my LG VX8350 will no longer connect unless I approve download of the phone book on my phone. I have to do this every time I start my car. It's a total pain. My phone is listed on syncmyride as compatable, but only for firmware version 1.0 and I have firmware 2.0 I asked the dealer to go back to the previoius SYNC version, but he said they didn't know how! I found if I turn off the Auto Download, I don't have to approve on my phone each time I start the car. And I also found a SYNC menu (under the Phone list's Advanced button) to do a manual download when I change my phone directtory. But after the upgrade I still don't get my call history any more. Too bad as everything worked great before the upgrde to SYNC 2.0

My dealer in CA charged $50. It took him over two hours to figure it out as I was his first atttemp to upgrade anyone to SYNC 2.0. He said later he should have charged one hour, or $140. And my phone doesn't automatically repair when I get into the car anymore. I'm going back next week to let him try some more. Otherwise, the features are nice to have, but not essential. They don't add anything to everyday driving that I don't already have. But I'm sure they'll be nice in case of trouble.

Yep, it works fine. I have a Verison LG8350 phone, and it pairs beautifully with SYNC on my Taurus X. On my navigation screen, I get a display of all my address book entries, recent numbers dialed or received, battery indicator, antenae strength indicator, and much more. I just need to type in the code they give on pairing, and it works right off. Have you got any phone to pair with SYNC?

Or they, uh, will just get SYNC 2.0 to us before the end of "Fall".

Thanks for posting this. I'm glad some people at Ford are actually listening and responding to us on occasion. I'm looking forward to the SYNC 2.0 myself. And I've also noted their list of compatable phones is way out of date and inadequate. Having each of the zillion SYNC users each check phones at a cell phone store instead of MS/Ford just doing it once officially, is totally outrageous and absurd. I've had posts censored on SYNC because I was saying things not flattering to SYNC. It's more than just language! And once censored, everyone tends to shy away from saying bad things. I imagine Russia and China get the same effect with their censorshop. Nice try on their explination though... And their O2O forum setup is horrid. You don't get emails when responses appear. You can't go to the next page at the bottom of a given page, only three topics appear in any section, ....

SYNC 2.0 with 911 and Vehicle Health Report is due out in early December. OnStart is good, but you'll always need to pay the extra fee for the service instead of using your own cell phone, which has a lot of other advantages too - like music streaming to your sound system. As for automatic door opening. I just use the keypad on the side of my Ford Taurus X. Then I get in right away and don't have to call people and admit to them I was a dork. I also use the keypad all the time when I don't have a key in my pocket.

Oops, my mistake. It was the Fusion that doesn't have the update available.

Go look at the Syncmyride Owner to Owner forum, which you can do without logging in. Ford has said that it's NOT a mistake the Focus was left off the SYNC 2.0 update. The update for that car will come later, or.... As you might imagine, some owners aren't too happy.

Yes, most new phones now carry GPS chips, with phone location automatically reported to 911 as required by law. Also, triangulation between cell towers can be used to locate phones (with much less accuracy) for phones without GPS chip or reception.

Read here for lots more details including answers to your questions. I suspect the canned recording will indicate the SYNC 911 has been activated for a vehicle, before transfering voice to the passenger. Whatever it does may change as the designers work on it. We'll know for sure in the Fall when it comes out. "911 Assist is active when a phone is properly Bluetooth-paired, turned on and connected to SYNC. Before initiating the emergency 911 call, SYNC will provide a 10-second window to allow the driver or passenger to decide whether to cancel the call. If not manually cancelled within the 10-second window, SYNC will place the emergency call. A brief pre-recorded message will play when the call is answered, and occupants in the vehicle will then be able to talk directly with the 911 operator. Once the call is connected, 911 operators can respond to the situation exactly as they would with any 911 call. Emergency services can determine the medical priority and dispatch the appropriate assistance based on the situation. The wireless phone service involved can provide location information as required by federal law, which may be used to help locate the vehicle, if occupants are non-responsive, for example."

Wow! Ford's actually listening to our gripes to help improve their product? That's really nice! Oh wait, does anyone at Ford really listen to what you report to them?

There's that TSB for sure. OK, I don't know if there's actually a 'TSB' on it with a number, but it's a frequent and well known issue at Ford/Sync. So there should be one by now, or something similar in their system. This problem is with the USB audio becoming disconnected somehow in the firmware, even though the tracks are displaying and reading correctly. It happened also with my flash drive, and so it's not neccessarily related to an iPod.

Sync only handles the phone and music media. The Navigation, AM/FM/SR radio, and CD player are voice controlled by the Navigation system by Pioneer. As such, it's doubtful Sync will handle video. The new Navigation 2.0 system will display graphics and other items on the Navigation screen. But again, that's all part of Nav 2.0 and not Sync. I have the rear FES in my Taurus X. I can control it from the front using voice commands and steering wheel controls. But again, it's the Navigation system controls, not Sync. FYI, the FES can read MP3, CD, DVD, and many other disks, and it has an analog A/V input that can be selected.

This also happened to me. It's a very common and known problem, with a TSB on it now. The reset button on the menu didn't fix it. My dealer did a "fuse pull reset" and that worked. I also didn't loose any presets. :rolleyes:

No, I've not heard of this in any version of SYNC. Also, SYNC has limited storage for such music anyway. It could be the next generation navigation system, which has a hard disk, could allow this to happen. But it's not part of SYNC, and I've not even heard of this feature in the new Nav 2.0. In contrast, some separate (non-Ford) Sirius players can buffer up to 45 minutes of music for pause and rewind. However, they lose all songs when you change channel. It's only a buffer for your current channel.

The Status Checker isn't an essential function. My suspicion is that the Status Checker is reallly just a beta test for the upgrade procedure coming later. There's no upgrades until SYNC 2.0 (with 911 and Vehicle Health) in the Fall. I suspect they'll have the Flash Update bugs also figured out by then, and are using all the current failure reports on the status checker to get that cleaned up by then.

A lot of people have problems playing songs, with only a fraction showing up, if they don't have ALL of the tags filled out: Artist, Title, and Genre. Problems are usually become some don't have Genre entered for all their songs. You can put anything in there, like "none", but you need something. It could be that some of the songs can't play, so the the playlist won't work either.

Try saying "Help" to get more information. Also, you could have prompts turned off in Advanced mode.

I use WMP11 to rip and organize my CDs. I've personally never had a problem with SYNC from using it. I just copy all the music files from my PC's music folder to my thumb drive keeping the same structure.

Yea, I have that problem. Sometimes we're driving along on the freeway and the passenger wants to find a POI for us, but they can't because the navigation searching is locked out! I'm going to see if I can sign a legal waiver and get that block removed. For now, I found that we can use the map pan and zoom to locate a POI visually on the map, and then set the destination to that point. For sure it's the passenger that should be doing this as it's very visual intensive, but it can be done while moving. You can also change the type of POIs shown on the map by tapping the map and hitting the POI button at the lower menu. Another thing I've done is use the voice to locate POIs such as "Find an airport" or "Find a hotel". I can then select from the list shown, all while the car is moving. Since the map only shows local POIs, I use different POIs until I get closer. Like I first say "Find an airport", to show all airports in about 30 miles. I select one to go in the general direction on a major highway, and as I get closer, I then ask "Find a hotel" or "Find a chinese restaurant" or "Find a museum" or whatever, then select the one as it eventually pops up. Addresses are hardest. Too bad Ford's navigation or SYNC voice recognition can't do addresses yet.

Did you get your Fusion yet? What features are you getting (got)? Which model Ericsson did you get? The navigation system uses a DVD for maps (only), and the map DVD is included with the navigation system. The rear FES can play DVD movies, including ripped DVDs. But I don't think you can get the FES in a Fusion.

If you want SYNC to read text messaging, you need to go with AT&T instead of Verizon for your wireless carrier. Verizon disables text messaging over bluetooth on most all their phones. And then you need to choose your phone carefully. The latest phones tested are here on syncmyride.com. They update this list every 3 months or so. No phone does everything, and many are missing the ring tone transfer including the Sony Ericson - but that one's not a big deal. The AT&T Ericsson W5801 can do everything else, including audio streaming, which is missing on the W810i model. Audio streaming allows you to play music from your phone's memory, or from the internet to your car via Bluetooth, if your phone can access the web! In general, by far the best way to use SYNC for music is with a low cost flash drive on the USB input. It's the most compact and lowest cost storage. It also indexes the fastest. An 8 GB flash indexes in a few seconds the first time, and instant thereafter. In contrast, the iPod is the horrid in terms of speed. It can take over 20 minutes for SYNC to index a 20 GB iPod the first time, and again any time you change the music. Any time thereafter is instant. Also, SYNC often switches "User Device" from USB to the analog audio input on startup, because the iPod takes so long to boot up that SYNC thinks it's not there. You need to manually change the input back to USB, which is annoying to a lot of people. SYNC cannot voice control the satellite radio, or regular radio. That's handled by the navigation system's voice control if you have it. In general, having the navigation system allows much more voice control, and better screens for reading and choosing music libraries and other things. The navigation system is very nicely integrated with SYNC, and many regret not getting it. However, the navigation adds one more higher level menu, where you need to choose sub menus like "phone", "navigation", "audio system", "user device", and so on. Only "phone" and "user device" (USB, Bluetooth phone, analog input) are SYNC controlled. The "navigation" and "audio system" (AM/FM radio, satellite radio, CD,...) sub menus are navigation system controlled and not operational with SYNC only. The navigation system voice recognition (by Pioneer) is not as good as SYNC. I get near perfect, over 98%, VR success with SYNC, but only about 80-90% success now with the Navigation system. But it's still very nice to have. And once you get to the sub-menu, the voice and system changes as you use SYNC instead of Ford's VR system. Ford's navigation system is a lot more expensive with less features than the $500 small-screen portable GPS systems. But you get a built-in unit with a much larger screen. Note that larger screen GPS systems can cost more than $1200 if bought separately. You don't have to deal with wires, and it's usable instantly with out having to drag out, plug it in, and waiting a couple minutes for it to boot up and capture satellites while you miss all your turns and run into other cars in traffic. The Ford system is more than a GPS - it's a navigation system. It also includes distance sensors and angle gyros to work in situations without GPS signal, like in tunnels, big cities, and deep canyons where I see it continuing to work while displaying a "no GPS" symbol. This has been a big plus for me in cities and in tunnels with turns within them or soon after. My Garmin portable just says "no satellite signal", effectively meaning "you're out of luck - find your own way." A big advantage of the Ford navigation system is mostly in car system integration. It will lower the music volume a little on just the front speakers as it gives you direction. It will integrate nicely with SYNC on menus, Voice Recognition (VR), and display of commands. It's will provide you easy to read lists, especially when you want to select an artist or song and can't remember the name exactly to use VR. The only disadvantage to Ford's navigation system is the low number of Points of Interest (POI). I only see about 10% of the stores I find on my Garmin. But Ford's "Next Generation" navigation system includes a 10 GB hard drive, music album covers to display with SYNC, and more than 3 million POIs versus 0.5 million on my current Ford navigation. This is approaching the 6 million POIs on my Garmin, that has just about every little store. The price is also a down side. But you get a nice big screen that's very well integrated with the rest of the car for all sorts of purposes. With discount, I got it for $1800. I figure about 1/2 of it was for the navigation system including maps and gyros, and the rest for software and display integration with SYNC and the rest of the car. It's well worth the overall cost. Also, you don't mention what car you're getting. With my Taurus X, the rear Family Entertainment System was very well worth the $860 I paid. It's not just a DVD player. It can play CDs, MP3 disks, accept game and camera inputs, relay music from various sources to two headphones on two separate channels, and many other things. For instance, I was riding along with my youngest daughter watching a DVD cartoon on Channel B wireless headphone, my teen daughter listening to her cell phone music streamed to Channel A on the wireless headphone, and I was listening to the Satellite Radio news up front. The system automatically muted the rear car speakers and the system could easily be set up from front or high resolution back LCD screens. For this purpose, having a Navigation system with the big LCD up front is essential. The greatly extended features of the FES is very well worth the price if you have a large family or diverse group.

That's not what I get out of the announcements. Like this link says "Ford also announced it will lead in-car connectivity even further forward with the launch of a next-generation navigation system available for the first time ever with SIRIUS Travel Link" The "first time ever" part suggests to me you need the next generation nav system. This nav system is quite different with greater connectivity, a hard drive to store songs and gracenote album covers, and so on. My only hope is that I may be able to upgrade in a couple years. Oh, and the Travel Link costs around another $6/month. More fundamental, I just wish that Ford's navigation system included more Points of Interest on the DVD software. When I visit a town, Ford has practically none of the stores, maybe only 10% if you're lucky! As backup, I take along and have to pull out my little portable Garmin 60CSx and look for a POI on it's 2 GB SD card, then put the address found from the Garmin into Ford's Nav system. For $2,000, they should be able to do better than 10% of the POIs on the little Garmin at 20% of the price. :mad:

Yep, that's my guess. Similarly, I suspect the only reason that Microsoft finally opened up their Owner-to-Owner site after months of stalling is because they saw this forum taking off, and wanted to keep the discussion under their control. It worked. They managed to pull the discussion back over there, and are doing heavy handed moderation. It's too bad, as this forum has more immediate response (no waiting for part of day for Big Brother to approve your thoughts) and has more honesty as well. Also, this forum has a much nicer structure that's easier to navigate and search. MS wins again :-(