BMW Bluetooth ULF, caller id and calling back to the US

updated: 10/1/08 new screen print.

The 13th generation BMW I-Bus Bluetooth module works very well with the iPhone 3G. The contacts are seamlessly transferred to the car and the incoming call contact's name is displayed on the nav screen.

One of the nice features of the ULF unit is the voice command feature which allows you to save voice tags and phone numbers allowing you to voice dial (a feature missing from the iPhone). Once you initiate the call the contacts name is displayed only if the system finds a perfect match with the phone number associated with the voice tag.

The problem I found was that the contact name for outgoing voice dial call did not always display. The reason was that I had some phone numbers setup with the +1 international dialing code so I can dial US numbers when I am traveling overseas. When I remove the +1, the ULF unit displays the contact name.

The downside of removing the +1 is loosing the ability to dial back to the US when traveling internationally, but the Apple designers must have forethought this issue by including an option to automatically add the +1 to numbers in your contacts which do not have an international dialing prefix. I assume that the iPhone add the appropriate country code based on the iPhone owners residence. The option is set by default in settings/phone as shown in the screen shot.

I updated the picture, since the iPhone TypePad app has issues with screen print images. TypePad says it is an iPhone problem...