[John Clark]

So, a couple years ago I got a 2008 Odyssey Touring with built-in Bluetooth. It's a great system but one thing I've found is that the BlackBerry doesn't pair with the car according to any instructions found in the car's owner's manual or online in structions on the Honda website.

It took quite some time and some great frustration to figure out how to get them to pair and I'm assuming many have given up if they don't have the same geeky OCD that I do. So, below are my instructions for pairing with the Honda or Acura HandsfreeLink system. This may be the same on other makes and models, as well, but this is the only one I'm familiar with.


Pairing the BlackBerry Smartphone with the car:

First, you have to follow the car's voice prompts and get to the phone pairing menu. See your owner's manual for these instructions. Once in this pairing menu follow the instructions below:

1. Go to Options >Bluetooth >Add Device on your BlackBerry. Leave the phone on that screen but don't do the actual search for devices yet.

2. When you get to the pairing menu in the voice system on the car, the car will ask you to speak a four digit code (usually called a passcode) which the phone will ask for during pairing.

2. Once you speak the code, the car will speak it back to you. After you confirm the code is correct the car will begin to search for devices. As soon as it does, hit the "search" on your BlackBerry so that your phone is also searching for Bluetooth devices.

3. If all goes well you should see "1 Found" in the blue bar on the BlackBerry screen. As soon as the "HandsfreeLink" shows up in the list, select it and quickly enter the passcode you spoke into the car in step 1. Note: If you take too long to enter the passcode the phone will not pair and you will need to start over.

At this point the phone should now be paired! The confusing part of this process is that the instructions given by the car say to make sure your phone is in "discovery mode." However, just making your BlackBerry "discoverable" in the options isn't enough. The car has to search for the phone at the same time the phone is searching for the car.


Transfer your Contacts:

This can be just as confusing as there are no real instructions and sometimes you will get a message saying that the device doesn't support this feature. The BlackBerry DOES support this feature. Here is what I do to get my address uploaded.

1. Make sure your device is paired with the car as instructed above.

2. In your Bluetooth Options change the "Device Name" to whatever you want to show in the list on the car. Then make sure that "all entries" are selected for transfer in the same list of options.

3. Go back to the list of "Paired Devices" and highlight the "HandsFreeLink." Then select "Transfer Contacts." The device may think for a moment and say "generating contact list" then say "transfer failed."

4. At this point go to your Honda's menu and select "Import Phonebook" (for specific instructions on finding this option on the display, see your owner's manual.)

4. The Phonebook should begin to load. It can take a few minutes depending on how many contacts you have. I have about 300+ contacts and it takes 2-3 minutes to upload the entire address book.

5. Once the transfer finishes, for me, it always displays that the entire address book could not be uploaded but it seems that most of them get uploaded. I've never compared to see what is actually missing but I have quite a few contacts that don't have phone numbers so that could be the issue.

Hope this helps!

~John