iBolt dual USB cable thingie and phone calls

[RobFreundlich]

I've got the iBolt car dock with the spiffy dual-cable USB thing that routes music and app sound through the car stereo but (thanks to Samsung's firmware [hardware?] design) still routes phone call audio through the phone's speakers. I like having only one cable to plug in, but am getting really annoyed at not being able to hear phone calls through the car stereo.

I've been thinking about trying a setup where I'd put a splitter onto my car's AUX port and run a second cable from that out to my phone's headphone jack. Would that work? Would there be any point to it, or would I might as well just use a plain old USB cable and not bother with the spiffy dual-cable USB thing from iBolt?

(yes, I know "would I might as well" is a weird grammatical construct. Sorry, I couldn't make it work any other way, and it gets the point across)

 

[MikaelPe]

Rob, we at iBOLT are equally frustrated too about not being able to run the sound from the phone calls to the car-stereo. However, there's a much bigger issue at play here. If the sound would go through to the speakers the microphone would have to be active and going into a different mode so it could pick up sound 2-3 feet away where the driver is. To do this the Samsung phone would have to feature echo-and noise canceling software so the other party could hear you, driver well. Unfortunately only Motorola have this feature so even if we would be able to run the sound to the speakers the other party would complain about background noise, echo and say "you sound like you're in bathtub" or "call me when you get home...". In summary, it simply doesn't work. Get a good Bluetooth solution and you're all set! Greetings from iBOLT

 

[RobFreundlich]

Rob, we at iBOLT are equally frustrated too about not being able to run the sound from the phone calls to the car-stereo. However, there's a much bigger issue at play here. If the sound would go through to the speakers the microphone would have to be active and going into a different mode so it could pick up sound 2-3 feet away where the driver is. To do this the Samsung phone would have to feature echo-and noise canceling software so the other party could hear you, driver well. Unfortunately only Motorola have this feature so even if we would be able to run the sound to the speakers the other party would complain about background noise, echo and say "you sound like you're in bathtub" or "call me when you get home...". In summary, it simply doesn't work.

Thanks for the info, Mikael. It's nice to know they've got a reason for what looks like a silly design. However, it still feels fishy to me, because everything worked fine before I got the dual cable. I was getting power through the USB power and running a cable from the headphone jack to the AUX port of the car stereo, and the other party in my phone calls could hear me just fine. In fact, my wife has complained that she could hear me better in that setup than in the setup I have now. It's as if with the headphone cable, the microphone *was* going into the 2-3-foot sound mode, whereas with audio going to the speakers, it isn't.

Can you offer any insight into what might be going on, or what might be different when using the headphone cable?

Get a good Bluetooth solution and you're all set!

Unfortunately, I don't think there is one. My car doesn't do Bluetooth, and I really hate the idea of having to use a headset for phone calls in the car when I had a system that seemed to work just fine. Is there any advantage to using the dual cable, other than only having to plug in one cable? If not, I might just go back to a 2-cable solution.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[MikaelPe]

Rob, the answer is pretty simple. When you connected the 3.5 mm cable into the headset jack of the phone it "believes" that it is connected to a wired headset so everything appears to working fine but I still have a heard time believing that the other party can hear you well at highway speeds etc.? The other party calling you probably have decent sound quality when you are going around town as the background noise is minimal below 40-45mph in a newer car. When you connect the iBOLT charging/aux-out cable the microphone does not know anything has changed and it is set to "listen" for sound "near field", as if you were holding the phone to the ear. There's one simple solution and that is to turn off "DockMode" in settings and this way you can use the aux-out cable you had before and our Dock is only used for holding the phone and charging it too of course. Hope that makes sense?

 

[RobFreundlich]

Rob, the answer is pretty simple. When you connected the 3.5 mm cable into the headset jack of the phone it "believes" that it is connected to a wired headset so everything appears to working fine but I still have a heard time believing that the other party can hear you well at highway speeds etc.? The other party calling you probably have decent sound quality when you are going around town as the background noise is minimal below 40-45mph in a newer car.

I'm not sure about that - I mostly use the phone on my commute, which is on surface roads, not on the highway. When I'm on the highway, my wife is usually with me, and she's the person I talk to most on the phone when I'm in the car

When you connect the iBOLT charging/aux-out cable the microphone does not know anything has changed and it is set to "listen" for sound "near field", as if you were holding the phone to the ear. There's one simple solution and that is to turn off "DockMode" in settings and this way you can use the aux-out cable you had before and our Dock is only used for holding the phone and charging it too of course. Hope that makes sense?

To be sure I'm clear: I think you're saying that if I turn off DockMode, audio won't go out through the USB any more. Is that correct?

I think you're also saying that the microphone has two modes: "near field" and something else. Whether I'm in DockMode or not, it's in "near field". Is that correct?

And I assume that the "something else" is speakerphone mode, and that the only way to activate that is to hit the "Speaker" button when in a phone call. Is that correct? This is the one that confuses me, though, because I wasn't hitting "Speaker" when I was using the headphone jack for audio, so if this statement and the prior one are true, then the microphone should have been in "near field". I think I'm still missing something.