I've owned a Parrot CK3100 for many years now and I can honestly say its a great Bluetooth car kit, one of the best in fact. No matter what weird and wonderful phones I have thrown at it in the past (and trust me I've had some wierd phones over the years) with a bit of persuasion its always worked.

This time around I had to do a bit more persuasion than normal so I thought I'd let you guys know how to get it working and hopefully save someone a lot of effort.

Synchronising Vodafones Samsung SGH-I640V

I've no idea how many phones will have the same problem but since my Samsung SGH-I640V is based around Windows Mobile 6 (which a lot of phones are starting to use now) I'm guessing there might be quite a few affected....

When setting up the Bluetooth pairing in the way you normally do with a CK3100 (such as getting into the car, powering on the ignition, waiting for the Parrot to boot, picking up the phone and selecting
'settings'->'connections'->'Bluetooth'->'Add new device' and following the wizard) everything appears to go completely to plan. The phone connects up, your contacts automatically sync and all is well - but closer inspection reveals the following type of thing stored in your Parrots phone book:

Fred Bloggs/h
Fred Bloggs/m
Joe Smith/h
Joe Smith/m
Joe Smith/w
A N Other/h
A N Other/m

For some reason the auto synchronization appears to send the numbers individually with a location prefix (h = home, m= mobile, w=work) added to each entry instead of combining them in the normal way. This is a total pain as it means the Parrots location selection (where you speak the persons location as home, mobile, work, etc) wont work. It also means your contacts directory looks a mess and will fill up much quicker than it should.

Tracking down the problem...

A quick test showed that if I pushed contacts over to the car kit individually they formatted correctly and each of the different numbers were stored underneath one contact name like they should be. This means the problem did indeed lie with the auto sync.

Unfortunately without taking on a firmware rewrite I couldn't see a solution... Theres no way to delete the bad contacts, no way to disable the autosync on the phone (since it practically happens on its own) and there appears to be no way to disable the auto-sync on the Parrot ....or is there?

The Solution!

After a little investigation I noticed that there is an phone listed on the CK3100's pairing menu called "SE K750, No Sync", which I'm guessing is for a Sony Erricson K750. I don't know much about it but obviously it has some problem with sync because it disables it - which is just what we need!

To use this Sony setting first delete any pairings already on your phone and car kit which relate to each other; then on the car kit select 'Settings'->'Advanced Settings'->'Pair with Phone' and click the "SE K750, No Sync" option. Once complete go to your phone and select 'settings'->'connections'->'Bluetooth'->'Add new device' and follow the wizard. If all goes well hopefully your phone will connect up and no longer syncronise!

You can then transfer your contacts across manually using the 'Send Contact'->'Beam' option in the phone book the same as Parrot have detailed for earlier model phones such as the SGH-I620. I know, I know, its seriously painful doing them one at time, however one silver lining is the Parrots firmware is so well written you can upload contacts over bluetooth and record your voice tags at the same time. This means it really doesn't take much longer that it would anyway - hence why I didn't bother to check out some of the synchronisation software which I have heard means you can bulk send.

Anyway it got me up and running (no side effects so far) and hopefully with this guide you can get yourself working as well, at least until Parrot release their next firmware update which hopefully should sort it properly.

Posted by Daniel: 16:07, Fri 7th Dec 2007