You have just acquired a new smartphone, a recent vehicle, or you have just changed car radios, each of these reasons can be a good pretext for wanting to connect your phone via bluetooth to your car. For that, you wonder how to activate the bluetooth in your car, know that you are at the right place. Our team has written this article to help you with this task and allow you to make calls in the car or to connect your Android or Apple phone to it. To do this, first, we are going to look at the interest that your bluetooth car radio can bring you, then, how to activate bluetooth on a vehicle and finally, how to activate bluetooth hands-free kit on a car.
Car radio bluetooth: How does it work?
Bluetooth technology: What is it?
To begin this article, we are going to be interested in the bluetooth technology, and more precisely in its origin and in how works the bluetooth on a vehicle. The bluetooth technology was developed in 1994 by the mobile phone brand Ericsson and in 1999, an interest group of several technology companies was created and bluetooth technology was integrated into the first devices. Its objective is to replace infrared technology which could already transmit information wirelessly between two devices but needed to be at a short distance and not have any obstacle between the transmitter and receiver of information. Unlike infrared (IrDA) which used light waves, bluetooth uses 2.4 Ghz radio waves, allowing it to pass through objects. In general, the transmission power will allow data to be transferred over a distance of about ten meters. As regards the operation of bluetooth in a car, it will allow you to connect your smartphone to the car radio of your vehicle and to benefit from the basic functions of your vehicle in hands-free. This is a significant advantage, as the use of bluetooth headsets in the car is dangerous.
The features of bluetooth for a car
Let’s take a closer look at the features of bluetooth on a car. The bluetooth as we have seen previously has the basic function of transferring data between two devices. Nevertheless, its functionalities are quite limited. Indeed, we will mainly use the bluetooth on car for:
- Make hands-free calls with the sound of the call over the speakers of your car’s.
- Transfer your music by bluetooth and listen to it on the sound system of your vehicle.
- Retrieve your phone’s phonebook on the car radio.
- Control your smartphone by voice (e.g. call someone or change music)
All of these features are close to what you could now get with a USB connection from your smartphone to your car, however, not all car models are equipped with a USB port, and bluetooth technology is becoming the standard. It means you don’t have to plug your smartphone into your vehicle to enjoy these features.
How to activate bluetooth in a car?
Now let’s focus on the part that is probably the most important for you. How do I activate bluetooth in my car? It’s very good to know that your vehicle has this technology, but how do you do if you want to make a bluetooth call with your car? The method is quite simple and we will show you in a few steps how to activate your bluetooth and how to connect your phone to your car:
- Go to the settings of your phone, then in the tab “network” select the bluetooth and search for devices to pair with.
- Once the search is done, launch the connection with your car, there should be in the name of the bluetooth “car”, a code should be displayed on the screen of your car, it’s up to you to check that it is the same on your phone and to validate the connection with the car radio.
Second possibility, you can also carry out the manipulation directly via your car radio:
- Go to the settings of your car radio, tab “connection”.
- Choose the option “search for a device”
- Select your smartphone from the list, taking care to activate the bluetooth connection on it beforehand.
- To finalize the connection, all you have to do is validate that the two codes displayed on your two devices are similar.
Now you know how to activate Bluetooth in your car. It only remains for you to take advantage of all the features that this technology will allow you to do, such as calling in bluetooth on your car, or listen to your music in bluetooth. If you want to connect or activate Android Auto in your car, we have made a complete article that should allow you to do so without any problem.
How to activate bluetooth hands-free kit in a car?
Finally, last part of our article, how to activate the bluetooth hands-free kit in my car? This action is only the result of the step we have just done. Once you have completed the previous steps, the activation of the Bluetooth hands-free car kit should only be a formality. In fact, the car radio in your vehicle should be ready to take calls on your vehicle’s speakers and let you take advantage of the built-in microphone to communicate. Try to simulate a call to check that it is activated, otherwise you will have to go to the Bluetooth settings of your car and activate the “hands-free call” option. If you have problems on the bluetooth of your car, do not hesitate to consult this article which will help you to solve them.