My old TL had the first bluetooth car on the market. The system was not very good, but it did work. The interface was so bad, I would often just dial from my phone, and then transfer to the car.

I was expecting more from the TLX.

A little about me, and how I use my phone.
I have 300 contacts.
When I need to dial my buddy Jeff, I pick up the phone, press the phone button, and type 5-3-3-3 and the system auto searches for J-E-F-F and finds him. I call Jeff a lot, so he comes to the top of my phone list. I hit Dial.
FIVE "button" presses and Jeff and I are talking.
I can even do most of the dialing without looking at the screen, as I know where the buttons are.

Now, when I'm in my car...
Jeff is a good buddy, but he's not in my top 5. That's pretty much family members. So, I have to dial him manually.

Firstly I have to press the PHONE button on the car.
Then I have to hit the MENU button.
The car at this points keeps playing my Katy Perry radio, and the map disappears, to be replaced by a phone menu. (NOTE, I cannot use the touchscreen at this point, even though the point of the touchscreen is to give the driver a direct input device.)
On the Menu, I must rotate the rotary control nob util I get to "Phonebook" and then select it.
I then press RIGHT three times to take me to the JKL section of the phonebook, and must then rotate the control nob several times until I find Jeff. I don't know which way to rotate the control nob, so I get it wrong half the time. I have to watch the screen a lot, as I have no way to tell when I'm getting close to Jeff, or have passed him.

When I get to Jeff, the fun does not end there.
Take a look at my first photo - you can see that Jeff has three icons next to his name.
The first is a PHONE icon. They all have this. If an entry doesn't have a phone icon, then it doesn't show up. So, the phone interface, that's showing me a list of phone numbers is confirming that this phone entry has a phone. Way to be redundant!
The second icon is a blocky square icon. I'm assuming that this is supposed to be an office building, this probably indicates that Jeff has a WORK phone number, which is good, because he does.
The last icon is a Fax machine. Okay, I have to send Jeff faxes now and then so I've save his fax number. It's old technology, but Jeff's an old bird, so what can you do.

Okay, so I've found Jeff, and I want to call him. I hit the ENTER button.

Now the f'ing interface shows me Jeff's contact asking which number I want to dial.
BOTH OF HIS NUMBERS ARE LISTED AS "OTHER".
WTF!
A moment ago you showed icons for Work and Fax.
Now I have two entries for "Other".
I have no idea which number is his work, or which number is his fax.
I have no idea which one to call.

So, instead of pressing 5 buttons on my phone, I've had to use this 70's era rotary phone device to navigate a menu through hundreds of contacts to find one contact to then be presented by multiple phone numbers labelled OTHER.

This phone interface is frustrating.
Why would anyone use a rotary phone instead of a touch-tone phone?
Acura seem to think its a safety issue, even though the rotary system takes my eyes off the road for MUCH LONGER and takes MORE of my attention span.

Why can't I just dial J-E-F-F on a dialpad, or 5-3-3-3 to find Jeff???
Why can't I tell which number is his when the numbers pull up.

About half of my contacts show "OTHER" when I get to the dial screen. Some work numbers show up as work, some show up as Other. Some Cell numbers show up as cell, some as others.
The interface is difficult to use, and inconsistent.

My phone is an HTC One (M8) running Android Lollipop (v5.02).
I have no idea what software the car is running.

 

Calling manually is a pain. The voice system is awful - haven't made a successful call yet using voice.

But depending on how long your frequently called list is, have you tried making shortcuts for them? Hit your phone button on your steering wheel, list pops up in front of you. Scroll wheel on your steering wheel to get to the right one, call button again and you're off.

 

@nickpoore, I feel your pain. I gave up on navigating the phone system UI. I was/am impatient. Maybe I should try relearning again. I can't believe how unnecessarily complicated and slow the interface is.

I put my effort into learning how to control the car via voice and it's been going okay, like being able to adjust the climate system.

Fortunately, I've been able to call via the voice system easily with my connected iPhone5.

 

Agree, the phone system/interface in this car just is/was not ready for the showroom. After hours of frustration with the system I actually
went out and purchased a new phone thinking things would improve...but they did not. Nothing logical, intuitive or straight forward about using the phone other than answering an incoming call.
It took me weeks to put an end to the repeating screen and voice prompt telling me the system was unable to download my call logs. which appeared even when I turned the feature off from the phone... (not including the useless and unhelpful calls to Acura's vendor, Hands Free Link)
What really gripes me is my old phone and my new phone both worked flawlessly with the 6 year old systems Infiniti and Ford MySync is putting in their new cars. Of course, Acura Hands Free Link told me they may do a software update in the future....and I'm thinking I may be driving something else before they get it working.
Very frustrating to own a $45K car that will not allow me to turn the seat heaters/coolers to a setting and leave them on, make phone calls while driving with two or three simple voice commands and has a navigation system that can verbally take me to a "sewing store" with two commands, but cannot list upcoming rest areas on US highways. I fully understand why Honda's CEO was asked to leave.

 

I really don't understand why you didn't put JEFF in your speed dial list if you call him so much. Then you press the phone button and the multi information display lists your speed dials. Scroll the volume wheel to select the one you want to call. Push the wheel and you are calling.

Not a good interface? Certainly works well for me.

 

Putting people in a speed-dial is a short term solution, with serious limitations.

How many contacts is this a good solutions for?
Once you get 20 are you just scrolling through the phonebook again?
What about 50?

The issue here is that the phonebook app does not work well.
Using a scroll wheel to go through 300 contacts is not a good interface.
What about people with 1000?

Every cell-phone nowadays lets you find your contacts by just doing a search.
It's the default interface.
It's 2nd nature for every cellphone user.
Nobody thinks about "performing a search", they just open their phone and start dialing the name.

In the 90's, people would have cellphones that only stored 100 numbers.
There was a top-10 speed dial list that you could program.
Once smartphones came along, the speed-dial went away. Sure, you can still program a speed-dial for your wife, perhpas your kids. But you're not going to program one for your best friend, or a casual business contact. For those you just dial their first name, and up they come.

Why do we still have a 90's phone interface on a car sold in 2015?

 

I don't put facebook friends in my phone book and I only have a handful of people I want to talk to. Works for me. You might need the NLX.

Sorry, my Sarcasm filter was off.

 

Sorry to hear about your troubles with the phone. I've had my TLX for only two days, but have had no problems at all. Maybe things just work better with an iPhone (6) since system does seem to favor phone's Siri voice system (which you can access by just pressing the TALK icon button for 2-3 seconds). But even when I just press the TALK button for a second, it instantly pairs with my phone's address book and is able to reach the person I want (from about 100 contacts). Occasionally, though, it has trouble hearing clearly, and may call up a list of 4 possibilities, which you can then select through screen or by voice.
Maybe this is just an Android issue that software can fix.

 

I dunno in every car that I have had with my windows 8 phone it was press talk, say "call 1 dad mobile" and voilla, call completed 04 TL, 06 TL, 08 TL, Ford Taurus, Subaru Forester, RDX, MDX, and Subaru Outback.

 

Just recently read an article somewhere talking about how smartphone development "lead times" are counted in months, whereas carmakers have to commit to tech years in advance because car development takes so much longer.

A 2015 car design (including its technology features) was committed to sometime in 2013, so suppliers and designers and toolers and so on could all incorporate it into their plans and tool up for production. By the time that 2015 car is halfway through its model year in, say, June, 2015, its technology is over 2 years old.

Carmakers just don't have the ability in most cases to have cutting-edge stuff in their products because their lead times are so long. So we're going to have "old tech" until someone comes up with a way to design cars and tool up for their production in a just few months.

.
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The report on lead times seems reasonable, but carmakers can and should provide software updates just as like software products are regularly updated without changing the hardware. The environment is changing and the carmakers have to catchup to stay relevant.

Yes, they have some additional challenges. They must provide a rock solid bullet proof environment that is secure and safe from hackers, a tall order.

 

Both comments are very true.

What most people don't see is when you are buying parts for a production run that could be in the tens of thousands of units, there is a very long lead time involved in simply arriving at a design, going though all the regulatory issues with that part (communication, safety, etc.), and then securing the parts and materials to make X amount per month for Y number of years. The amount of testing will vary depending on how close the item is to a safety issue. But getting any part on a car "production ready" is more involved than what meets the eye.

As for updates, we have to remember that unless it's an update we are paying for, the cost is paid for out of profit. And the cost of an update isn't cheap. Basically they aren't going to update anything outside of production unless it's a safety or defect issue. They might make a change from one model year to the next if they feel like an issue is impeding sales, but any update has to earn it's way on to the car at that point - that the sales will more than offset the cost of R&D, testing, recertifying (if regulatory issues are there), and alteration of the production line (which BTW is no small issue). The idea that Acura would update the entire phone interface (or even a portion of it) just because it doesn't meet the needs of 5% of the owners probably isn't going to happen unless Acura knew for sure they'd sell 1000 more cars because of it. Maybe in the 2G TLX, because now is the time that car is starting to get designed.

 

An example of a software update is the ODMD that was released in the US along with an update to the Handbook and Navigation Manual. A nice little functional updated. But guess what, it has not been made available in Canada.

So updates are possible and provide goodwill to some owners and frustration to others.

 

^ No question updates are possible, but it it will be driven by a business case that says if they don't update something sales will slide. That would be the only reason they burn profit to change something.

I agree with all that's wrong with the phone system, but for someone like me, who is probably and average user, once I got the shortcuts set up for the 15 or so people I'd ever call on a regular basis it does everything I need it to do. So I wouldn't give it a bad review from what I need, but I can see how someone who had higher demands would be frustrated. Question is whether that frustration will be loud enough to drive some kind of update.

 

I have no issue with the phone interface. I either call by voice which works fine or the people I call often are 2 buttons and a scroll away. Most of us are not doing a lot of business in the car and having 5 -10 folks in the scroll in the interface directly in front of us is great. Having said that, not sure why you don't use voice assuming it's in your address book.

 

OP, not sure if you have enough room in the contacts section of your phone to do this- but a possible workaround for you might be to make more descriptive names for your contacts.

For example- instead of just relying on the icons to differentiate the numbers for JEFF- it may work out better for you to create 3 entries on your phone, like:
"JEFF CELL"
"JEFF WORK"
"JEFF FAX"

This way, it will be clear when the TLX presents your choices which actual number for Jeff it wants to call.

Also, I'm not sure if you are from Canada- but the updated ODMB software in the States improved the "manual dial" function. You do not have to use the "rotary" function on the top screen, but rather can direct dial the phone number in on a displayed keypad on the touchscreen.

And the latest ODMB update allows you to use the numeric keypad WHILE the car is moving (the previous version disabled the keypad unless you were stopped).

 

Ah ha. Now I understand why that update has not been released in Canada. Use of the keypad while driving would not pass Canadian regulations. But are you sure you can do this as the Navigation Manual (both original and updated) suggests that it cannot be used while driving.

 

Yes. At least it works in my TLX V6 tech! I dialed a call manually using the keypad on the touchscreen about an hour ago, while cruising at 65 mph on the highway.

And I wasn't able to do that (while moving) with the prior (original) release ODMB software.

 

The OP must not have a phone that transfers the phonebook and uses the phone's voice look-up. All I have to do on mine with NAV is press the talk button (and press again if I want to skip prompts) and say "Call Joe Smith, Mobile", it finds the right one from hundreds, says what it found, and I press enter or off hook to verify and complete the call. It works the same as my non-NAV Lexus. Same as the phone system (MotoX).

 

You can get rid of the need to hit the button twice. I just hit the steering wheel button and say the name. If its not sure the upper display shows closest matches. In then say the number - 1,2,3 whatever. Works fine.

That said the keyboard lockout is still annoying as not infrequently if calling a business, and ironically once when acura Canada called me, you are asked to enter a number. And you can't....so you have to dig the phone out or stop the car which is far more dangerous..