iPhone 3GS, Bluetooth and the Mazda CX9
Posted on September 4, 2009
Filed Under gadgets |
We recently bought both a Mazda CX9 GT AWD and an iPhone 3GS. Talk about Christmas in July! Anyway, I wanted to write an article about how well Bluetooth connectivity works between the two - in a nutshell, I’m thrilled!
Pairing the two was pretty straighforward. You have to make sure the CX9 is in park or not moving though - the initial pairing functionality doesn’t work when the vehicle is moving for safety reasons. When you pair, make sure you pair both the phone and music/audio functionality of your iPhone - the latter part is where things get really interesting! FYI - the CX9 allows for pairing of up to 7 phones; one for each passenger I guess.Once paired, the bluetooth phone functionality works great. Calls are clear and the person on the other end can hear just fine as well. Voice dialing in the CX9 also works well. I can just say “Dial 800-555-1212″, and the car repeats the number, asks for confirmation and then dials. Very handy.Now, on the audio part, things get really fun. The CX9 supports Bluetooth A2DP which is essentially stereo music streaming. That means you can play your iPod on your iPhone and have the music stream wirelessly to the car’s stereo. It works like a charm, and the sound quality is awesome (we have the Bose 11 speaker system in our vehicle). Best of all, the Bluetooth functionality does not use much power, so you only get very minimal power drain from this. Granted, I’ve only used it for an hour or so at a time, so I don’t know how bad it is on long distance trips.Now, here’s a really fun part. Since you have an iPhone, it is connected to the internet via 3G or Edge. That means you can listen to Pandora or internet radio, and stream the music via A2DP to your CX9’s stereo! And I am happy to say that it works great! Pandora sound quality is excellent on the iPhone. (I used to have a HTC 6800 (Mogul) WM9 smartphone on Sprint with EVDO, and the Pandora music quality was much worse for some reason). The only drawback is that you can’t forward songs from the steering wheel or the display, but I think that is an iPhone limitation (I believe this functionality may work on other Bluetooth enabled phones - I didn’t try it with my HTC).Presumably this kind of functionality should work on any vehicle equipped with Bluetooth and A2DP. Let me know what your experiences are.
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2 Responses to “iPhone 3GS, Bluetooth and the Mazda CX9”
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What do you know about 07 CX9 and MP3’s? I’ve heard you either get the sat radio OR MP3’s , not both. Your thoughts and maybe some references to sites that know about this? Thanks!
Awesome info. I am thinking about getting a cx-9 within the next year and I have an iPhone 3gs for “work” and I would love to be able to make “business calls” in my car. lol. It’s nice to know that a2dp streaming and calls work.
Does it just pipe your normal iPhone voice dialing through the system … so that you can use all the functions of the iPhone voice control … like what song is playing … call Jessica … dial blah blah blah… etc?
Thanks for the info.