| Sungale Your Bluetooth Link! Car Kit
|
Installation and Operation:
The physical installation better not take anyone more than a few seconds, as the speaker phone obviously just needs to be plugged into an available 12V outlet, available in just about any car. The next step is to "pair" the speaker phone with your Bluetooth capable mobile phone, and that could be a bit more involved. While I won't bother getting into the details of this step as it will vary from phone to phone, I will cover a few key points as experienced with a Motorola RAZR phone.
Before setting the phone to detect the speaker phone, the Sungale kit requires that it be placed in "Pairing Mode". According to the manual, the device is initially set in stand-by mode (indicated by the green LED flashing every three seconds) and it must be turned off by holding the blue button for three seconds and waiting for a short beep acknowledgement. Then the blue button is pressed for six seconds to enter pairing mode, and another short beep and solid green LED should acknowledge this new status. This is an area where overly simple controls can make things confusing. Despite the fact that short beeps are used to indicate two very different states, the problem is that while I am confident I held the button for six seconds to enter pairing mode, I wound up back in stand-by mode on my first few attempts. After only a minute or so of trying I did find pairing mode, and the Motorola RAZR was quickly able to find the "BTS-800" and lock in on the input code provided in the manual. From that point on everything was pretty much automatic.
The images below show the Sungale Your Bluetooth Link! Car Kit installed and ready for use. Other than the fact that my car doesn't have conveniently located outlets (one hidden in an ash tray and one hidden in the center console), it looks and works very well. As shown, the stem / 12V adapter of the speaker phone has been adjusted to a more ergonomic angle and allows conversations that sound good on either end.
 
Once setup, operating the kit is quite easy. The device powers on automatically thanks to the outlet being tied into the ignition, but even if you prefer to turn it on and off manually, it requires a simple push of the blue button. To answer or end a call you give the blue button a quick press again. While in conversations the audio was clear and loud enough for me to hear over any other noise in or out of the car while in traffic. I asked each person I spoke with how it sounded and no one had any complaints, and no one ever asked "can you hear me now?".
Three complaints I have may be minor but worth addressing. The first is that while at higher volumes the speaker phone emits a hiss that is easily audible over an idling engine. Turn on the music, roll down the windows, or start a conversation and the noise is lost, but if you are looking for silence in your car, the Sungale kit will interrupt it.
The second could be related to my phone or the way I speak, and could quiet possibly be fixed if I retrained the device. When attempting to use voice activated dialing, which has always worked fine on the phone when used by itself, I am now about 0 for 50 with the Sungale kit. In general my phone either tells me to say the name again or say the name slower, and only once did it make a connection... to my Father's mobile phone as I tried to call my Wife at our home. Everything seems like it should work, and it is definitely trying to connect, so perhaps this second issue can be overcome.
The final issue is that there is no customization for ring tones, and anything programmed into your phone is lost while using the Sungale speaker phone. Any incoming call is introduced with the same generic ring, and if you are like me you may find yourself making the extra step of checking your phone's screen prior to answering a call just to see who it is. A job I previously entrusted to custom ring tones.
|
|
|
|
