thedjm

Has anyone figured out a way to have the MMI navigate directly to an address synced from your phone without the need to create a duplicate "nav address" entry from what the MMI interprets as a "mailing address" for every synced contact address?

Besides the lack of a2dp, the number of things like this I'm seeing in the MMI 3G is really astounding. Sloppy sloppy, Audi.

LeadToRome

I can't figure it out either, I don't think you can do it.

but a hopeful BUMP nonetheless

LeoR604

I have not found a way to do it.

pbcsd

Personally thus far, the MMI gets a big Fail from me. I don't find it remotely intuitive.

The Microsoft Sync on my wife's 2010 Ford Edge, by way of comparison, is heads and tails easier to navigate. Easier to switch between stations and bands. Very easy to use from a phone perspective. Touch screen. Navigation (setting routes, etc) is significantly easier/more intuitive. Information on the screen is laid out more intuitively with font sizes that allow for more real estate.

The MMI/navigation is certainly not a strong point of the Audi's IMO. Though every review I've read seem to imply the BMW is even worse. That's scary.

LeoR604

I recently moved to an iPhone 4 from an old Blackberry Curve and have now done the following:

I exported all my Blackberry contacts to Outlook and cleaned them up. Filled in missing info, made sure all information was in the right fields, addresses correct, business or personal, etc.

Synced the iPhone to Outlook and the iPhone pulled all the information in flawlessly. Uploaded all the contacts into the MMI and spent 15 minutes creating a nav destination for every contact that has an address. Backed up the contact list to an old SD card I threw into slot 2.

Now I have a nav address for every contact and all the information is backed up. New contacts can be created either on the iPhone or in Outlook and they automatically update each other. iPhone automatically updates the MMI. If I have made changes, I backup to the SD card again - only takes a few seconds.

Takes a little effort to initially get everything right but is well worth it. Now I simply use voice command to navigate to any of my contacts and I don't have to fumble with creating a new nav destination and then having to link it to a phone number. Quite happy with how this is working now.

Hope this helps.

Scotty (UK)

Since Outlook can export in Vcard format and I have all my addresses in the correct fields, it's crap that MMI doesn't just import and have them navigable.

To do all the addresses in my phone would take a lot more than 15 mins!

Pyro451

With over 2,400 contacts I can't even get the MMI to read all of them. Everything after "S" is not even accessible to dial by name. I can't imagine trying to create a nav point for all of them.

This is something that should be fixable (and should be fixed) in an MMI software update.

svander

I wouldn't hold my breath for any MMI updates. There was a rumored update that would add a2dp functionality back in mid 2010 (!) that was never realized. Now that the 2013s are going to have the updated MMI, I would consider the current gen MMI as good as it's ever going to get, unfortunately.

LeoR604

Just to be clear, to "create the address" you do not have to manually enter all the address info. You just go into your phone directory ("Name" button, green text), click on the name, scroll down to where it says "create nav destination", click again and you're done. All you are doing is extracting the address info that is already in the Vcard and saving it as a destination.

Yes, MMI *should* do this automatically but it doesn't and the extraction process doesn't take more than a few seconds for each entry.

Note that once this is done, when you are in Nav (blue text) and select "load from directory" you only see the nav entries and not the duplicate phone entries as when you are in the Names directory (green text).

With the exception of having to manually extract the address, I am quite pleased with the interaction between the iPhone, Outlook and the MMI. Any new iPhone entry shows up in the MMI within about a minute after entering the car. Few more seconds to extract the address and you're done.

LeoR604

Yes, with that many I can see it being a problem. I don't think the MMI was ever intended to be be a full blown contact manager for road warriors.

Do you actually *need* to have 2400 contacts at your fingertips while you are in your car? I have the names, numbers and addresses I am likely to use. I don't have nav addresses for overseas contacts or others that I would never actually drive to.

I don't have it in front of me right now, but the limits as to how many contacts, addresses, etc you can have are in the manual.