Well...I learned a bit more, but still no joy just yet...
My blackberry 8900 is on the Hyundai list of "approved" phones, and supposedly it tested fine with all BT features (voice dialing, receiving / making calls, streaming music, etc). Or so it says on the site...
1st discovery is re: "Pairing failed! Pairing failed!" (repeated ad nauseum). I finally found the condition that causes this horrible loop. It happens when you've got the Sonata stored as an entry in your phone (in my case, my blackberry 8900), but the phone has been deleted from the Sonata's storage. Apparently the blackberry attempts to connect to the car, but the car rejects the connection since the Sonata no longer is paired to the phone. Solution: go into the phones BT config, and DELETE the Sonata as a paired BT device, then make sure that all traces of your phone (or blackberry) have been deleted from the Sonata's phone configuration.
On to the voice dialing problem. What I've found is this:
Once I've got the phone paired to the Sonata (no nav), it takes less than a minute to transfer 332 contacts from my phone book. Apparently this timing varies widely depending on the phone you're using. I can verify that the phonebook transferred, because any incoming or outgoing call using a number from my contact list winds up displaying the name (backwards) on the car's audio system display while showing that it's an "active call".
Incoming calls are great. Outgoing calls initiated from the blackberry are great, and all work perfectly over the BT connection to the car.
Number recognition is great -- I can reel off a number and the Sonata gets it right every time.
When I attempt name dialing, though, the phone repeats back a totally, wildly different, name and offers to dial it for me. Even weirder, when it repeats the name it thinks I want to dial, the pronunciation is truly bizarre. For example, "Joe Gleason" becomes "glissen jew" when the car "reads" it back to me and offers to dial. Weirder yet, When I say, "call voicemail", the car comes right back saying "call glissen jew at what humber?" It also says "glissen jew" VERY fast.
So I drove back to the Hyundai dealer last night and described the problem. A salesman walked out to my car with me, and we paired his iPhone 3GS, saw the confirmation that the phonebook had transferred, and tried it out. This time, aside from the backwards "last name" "first name" issue, voice recognition got all the names right -- and repeated them back to us at NORMAL speed, properly pronounced.
This tells me that when the phonebook is being transferred to the Sonata from the blackberry (and probably any other phone that has trouble), the phonebook must be getting some kind of markers or parameters set that are either incorrect, or confuse the Sonata because it isn't programmed to deal with them. In short: the address book is apparently coming over to the Sonata, but formatted incorrectly for the Sonata.
Late last night, I upgrade the BB OS to version 5.0.0.1036. I unpaired the phone and Sonata, deleted the respective entries in the car and the blackberry and tried pairing again. Pairing is fine, but all else is the same. Somehow, the contact list is getting "damaged" as it's transmitted to the Sonata, even though the 8900 is an "approved" phone on the Hyundai site. That suggests that what's really going on is messed up, in all likelihood, to the version of the OS installed in the phone. I wiped my 890, and replaced the OS with a couple of different versions (got very little sleep last night!) - result remains the same.
I'd like to get this working -- but will be getting a new smartphone in the name month or two anyway, or maybe a newer blackberry. When I do, I'll be dragging the salesperson out to me car so we can test before I pay a dime!
- Jon