Some very annoying issues. Bluetooth, My Toyota App, Satnav display settings

[MattPrice]

Hi everyone,

I don't know if this has been covered elsewhere.

First issue - When receiving a call it always displays "Unknown" as the caller's name. Tried it in a Jag and a Mazda and it shows up the name on incoming. I'm on Vodafone and it appears to be an issue with the phone number not being written to the SIM card. Other cards where the number is embedded in the SIM card and the name is displayed. Anyone else?

Secondly - The My Toyota App. When it shows the location of my car it places it 180ft or 55 meters away from where the vehicle actually is. As for trying to send any routes to the car, forgte it! Unless I'm doing something wrong it's never worked.

Thirdly - Setting on the SatNav for Night and Day settings. I put it on Auto setting so I'm assuming that it will change from daylight to nightime when the lights come on automatically? No... just stays on daytime setting all the time.

Any ideas anyone?

Getting really fed-up with this car. Had to buy this car as I couldn't afford to run my Jaguar XF any longer. I wish I could go back to another XF.

Best Wishes

Matt

[forkingabout]

What spec & model year of Corolla do you have as there have been a couple of different infotainment systems fitted since this current incarnation of Corolla launched.

[MattPrice]

It's a 2020 (70 plate) Corolla Design HEV CVT. 2 litre.

[Roy124]

Matt, my App has an accurate placing.  My Smart Connect changes day/night OK but today it has gone Ape on consumption. 

A journey out this morning had 149 with 170 back.  This evening a staggering 145.

B useless 

[MattPrice]

You'd think from a major manufacturer these things would just work. It's pretty pathetic they can't sort it. I'll be onto them first thing in the morning.

[Steve Trice]

I had the no caller ID on incoming calls issue on the Touch 2 system in the CHR which I had on hire for a few months, but am pleased to have no such issues with Smart Connect in my new Corolla TS. However, my friend just took delivery of a new Rav4 and this has the Touch 2 system and also the no caller ID issue. Our company phones are on Vodafone though, so may have a look at transferring his numbers to the SIM card. I should add that another colleague has the same anonymous incoming calls problem in his Lexus.

Steve

[AndrueC]

On 10/9/2022 at 10:44 PM, MattPrice said:

You'd think from a major manufacturer these things would just work.

Not really. Toyota are a hardware manufacturer. the only software that will have been properly developed will be that directly relating to the hardware - the ECU basically.

Anything else will either have been developed by an in-house understaffed, overworked team provided with an inadequate specification...or more likely farmed out to the lowest bidder who probably did the same thing. Consumer software development is rarely taken seriously by hardware manufacturers (Apple are a rare - and to me annoying(*) - exception to this).

An exacerbating factor is that most of the time bugs don't really matter because they rarely cause material damage and everyone knows that software can be fixed after the fact fairly easily. On the other hand if all software was developed to the same rigorous standards as hardware the pace of progress in IT would significantly slow which might work out more expensive.

(*)It's annoying because I dislike their overall business strategy. The walled garden. The restrictions imposed on third parties. The 'do it our way or get lost' mentality. I have a sneaking suspicion that's the only way to make good money from software and it rankles.

[Roy124]

"On the other hand if all software was developed to the same rigorous standards as hardware the pace of progress in IT would significantly slow which might work out more expensive." 

My first experience of a modern digital computer system was 50 years ago - 16 bit 8k core storage - software version 1.1 launched in 1970. 1.2 in 1972, 1.3 in 1973, 1.4 in mid 74, the time between 1.5 and 1.6 was 6 weeks.  These were all user requested enhancements but the pace of change made understanding and usage problematical. 

You can see a similar effect with many programs today where many users use but a fraction of the capability. 

With a car system there is a mix of mission critical modules that must, if they fail, fail safe and others less so such as App link to the mothership. 

Clearly this requires much more rigorous testing. "it's never done that before" is not acceptable if the car combusts or does not recognise a cyclist pushing a bike. 

User feedback is critical.  Does Toyota have such a user friendly feedback system? 

[AndrueC]

2 hours ago, Roy124 said:

"On the other hand if all software was developed to the same rigorous standards as hardware the pace of progress in IT would significantly slow which might work out more expensive." 

My first experience of a modern digital computer system was 50 years ago - 16 bit 8k core storage - software version 1.1 launched in 1970. 1.2 in 1972, 1.3 in 1973, 1.4 in mid 74, the time between 1.5 and 1.6 was 6 weeks.  These were all user requested enhancements but the pace of change made understanding and usage problematical. 

You can see a similar effect with many programs today where many users use but a fraction of the capability. 

Also on average software today is more complex because so much more of it is connected to something else and relying on other things to work. 20 years ago I was developing desktop software. I used one computer for everything and ran one debugging instance at a time. Today I'm still developing desktop software but now it's a client/server application. Although I mostly only use one physical computer it's hosting three virtual machines for support services and as well as debugging the desktop application I am also running three server applications under their own debuggers at the same time (not quite as bad as it sounds but I do often have to trace a call through the client then into and through one of the servers then back again). And we now have to be wary of security issues that were almost non-existent in the past.

2 hours ago, Roy124 said:

With a car system there is a mix of mission critical modules that must, if they fail, fail safe and others less so such as App link to the mothership. 

Clearly this requires much more rigorous testing. "it's never done that before" is not acceptable if the car combusts or does not recognise a cyclist pushing a bike. 

User feedback is critical.  Does Toyota have such a user friendly feedback system? 

There used to be something like that. Possibly a small forum that supported the infotainment system but I have a vague recollection that it was shut down and customers advised to report problems through their dealer which is clearly fraught.

[MattPrice]

On 10/10/2022 at 11:21 AM, Steve Trice said:

I had the no caller ID on incoming calls issue on the Touch 2 system in the CHR which I had on hire for a few months, but am pleased to have no such issues with Smart Connect in my new Corolla TS. However, my friend just took delivery of a new Rav4 and this has the Touch 2 system and also the no caller ID issue. Our company phones are on Vodafone though, so may have a look at transferring his numbers to the SIM card. I should add that another colleague has the same anonymous incoming calls problem in his Lexus.

Steve

I'm also on Vodafone and I don't think they write the numbers to the SIM card. Whenever I look in Setting then About Phone the Phone Number section says "Unknown" I've tried it in a Jaguar and a Mazda and they all show the incoming callers name. It's the software / firmware that Toyota use that's the problem.