Since getting my Curve 8900, (4.x OS), I've happily used my BBerry as my exclusive car MP3 player paired with the Bluetooth in my Toyota Prius, (first 2006, and now 2010). The sound is great and it syncs up perfectly over bluetooth, plus it's convenient to leave the additional MP3 player at home now. However there are some issues with the media player and the bluetooth connection that were very frustrating. I lived with them as best I could and soon found myself hopeful they would be addressed when I upgraded to the Bold 9700. Unfortunately not only were they not fixed, a big bug was added to the 5.x OS media player. My issues with the Blackberry media player and bluetooth, are summarized as follows;
1. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x, (and now 5.x) OS, media player will issue a stop command when a call is received or made. This means that you have to start the song over again from the beginning, once the call is done. The correct behavior should for the media player to issue a pause command, when a call is made or received.
2. The media player should also automatically issue a play command once the call is terminated, and to be honest, I don't remember if it does this or not. (It may). That way without the user touching the phone, (if using the car bluetooth connection controls), they can make, (or take), a call, and then the song will automatically pause and then continue playing from the point that the call was made, (or taken).
3. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x, (and now 5.x) OS, media player will issue a stop command when disconnecting from the bluetooth stereo device, (like turning the car off). The correct behavior should be to issue a pause command when disconnecting the bluetooth stereo device connection.
4. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x OS media player will issue a play command when initially connecting to the bluetooth stereo device. This is in fact the way it should work, but there should be an option to enable or disable this, media player BT "autoplay upon autoconnect" feature for those that don't want it on at all.
5. Finally the Blackberry 5.x OS media player has added this bug to the mix. Now in addition to 1, 2, and 3, when the inital connection is made between the phone and the bluetooth stereo device, (car), the media player is loaded, (if not already loaded), all songs are selected for play in random shuffle mode, and the player starts playing the first song. I currently have 1800 songs on my media card, so every day there's a new surprise. This is a definite bug that needs to be addressed by the developers. At the minimum it should be reversed to the 4.x OS media player behavior described in 4.
This occurs with my Blackberry Bold 9700, 5.0.0.330 (Platform 5.1.0.91), and exhibits itself when paired with a bluetooth stereo device, as in my car, (2010 Toyota Prius). It does not occur when autoconnecting to a standard paired bluetooth headset, like my Plantronics Discovery 925. From others posting to the Blackberry support forum in
this thread, this is a bug with the 5.x OS media player, not just on the Bold 9700.
If anyone knows of an update to the BBerry media player that addresses at least the 5.x bug, or knows of another media player for the Blackberry that behaves correctly when connecting via bluetooth as described here, please feel free to add the suggestion to this thread. I tried a couple of other media players and couldn't find any that I was happy with, as they provided less functionality than the BBerry media player. One I tried didn't even provide the ability to play the songs over the bluetooth connection. So for now I'm forced to pause before I start driving, so that I can switch to the media player and close it before driving down the road. <sigh>
This has got to be something that RIM developers address, and I just don't know how to communicate this kind of bug to them. If anyone can provide a contact point for the RIM developers for the media player, I would be happy to forward these comments to them directly, or you may feel free to forward these comments on to them yourself.
Thanks..