[bobcpa]

I have owned a 2012 CT200h for about 2 weeks now. And, in that 2 week span, my contacts have been deleted at least 5 times. My car comes with the Navigation system and I have an Iphone 4s.

I have been able to isolate the issue, I think. If my phone is off, I start the car, and I then proceed to turn the phone on.....this action causes the deletion of all of my contacts and I have to re/upload the contacts from my iphone. I have been to the dealer a couple of times and have been told that they will contact Lexus corporate. Unfortunately, reading other forums, other users have experienced the same issue going all the way back to the beginning of 2011. Also, it appears that this issue is not isolated to the CT200h. Apparantly, Lexus corporate was to contacted as well; however, I cannot find any solution to the issue.

I have not seen this issue talked about on this forum. Curious, has anyone experienced this....and, if you have, can you offer any advice how to fix other than...."don't do that no more?"

Thanks

 

[bcarpenter]

... Solved !?!?

Yes, this is a common problem. It has happened with me on an iPhone 3GS running iOS 5 & iOS 6, and with an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.

Of course, the problem is bigger than you say. Your method is a reproducible one for deleting contacts, but they are also deleted at random times. With the deletion of contacts stored on the CT200h, you also lose speed dials & voice tags, so there's no point spending the time to set these up. But it gets worse. Using Siri to dial phone numbers doesn't work, with the phone disconnecting rather than placing the phone call. So, essentially, there's no way of safely making phone calls while driving the CT200h.

Firstly, the bad news. My local Australian Lexus service department has told me that he has never seen a nav/phone/entertainment/etc system software update/upgrade for a Lexus car. Engine management/etc software upgrades, yes, but not for the nav/etc. So, there's no point holding out for a Lexus solution to this issue.

However, I seem to have found a solution! I haven't found this documented anywhere yet.

Firstly, pair the iPhone with the CT200h, then sync contacts from the iPhone to the CT200h. Then, turn syncing off. How? Go to the iPhone Settings app --> Select Bluetooth --> Select the CT200h Device (whatever name you've given it) by clicking on the Blue Right Arrow --> Change Sync Contacts to Off.

Since I did this about 4 weeks ago, I have not lost contacts, despite trying to reproduce the problem multiple times.

Please give this a go & see if it solves your problem. Let us know. At the moment, my trial consists of dataset n = 1 & I'd love to expand it!

 

[bobcpa]

bcarpenter, THANK YOU SO MUCH. I did exactly as you suggested and that seems to have corrected the issue. I will monitor this over the next few weeks; however, I did try to recreate the problem as you have, and the contacts, speed dials, etc remain in tact.

After about two weeks, I will come back here and post an update.

 

[TSoprano]

GREAT job bcarpenter! thanks for the tip!

 

[bcarpenter]

I should add a note to say that this obviously prevents new phone numbers "syncing", but I'm not sure that they ever synced automatically. Never tried it.

 

[bobcpa]

bcarpenter, please see my updated post in the Contacts Deleted thread....unfortunately, my contacts were deleted again. As I mentioned in my other post, next time I will make sure that my phone is not hooked up to the USB port and see if this has anything to do with what happened.

 

[bcarpenter]

Oh well, I was hoping this was a fix for all since it worked for me, or perhaps it's just coincidence & I might lost my contacts tomorrow. I have been unable to replicate contact deletion since I applied my potential "fix". I doubt the USB connection has anything to do with it, but give it a go anyway.

 

[Joe166]

Back to the drawing boards. That's not it. Keep trying, though. I have just given up and act as though that feature doesn't exist. I can access my Iphone contact list and speed dials (favorites) just about as easily as the phone in the bluetooth in the car.

 

[bobcpa]

I kinda knew that the hook up to the USB port was inconsequential, but I wanted to try all possible solutions. In fact, I was correct. The USB port is not related to the problem.

Joe166.....don't give up on the feature....the feature is there and it does work. The practical workaround is just to be sure that your phone and the bluetooth feature of your phone are turned on BEFORE starting your car. That seems to be the best workaround. If I discover anything else, I will be back with an update. Thanks bcarpenter for the effot.

 

[Joe166]

No, I thought that leaving the phone on helped, but I haven't turned off my phone in a couple of months since it charges up on my way to work every day and it still dropped the contacts yesterday. Maybe my car (or my phone) is cursed?

 

[my95tsi]

This is so weird. I have an iPhone 4 and never had any such issues. I sync'd my phone the day I bought my car and the contacts have been there since.


Sent from my iPhone using AutoGuide.com Free App

 

[bcarpenter]

Oh well, sorry all for getting your hopes up. As my95tsi has shown, different people seem to get slightly different problems. Mine has been reproducible using the "turn car on, then turn phone on" technique, but would randomly occur at other times as well, sometimes when turning the car on with the phone already on, sometimes just while driving & not touching the phone or in-car phone system.

My solution while this was all unstable was to create just a short address book group using my Mac, sync this to the iPhone, then use the iPhone settings to sync just this short list of 8 names to the CT200h. That way, every time I lost the in-car phonebook, I wouldn't have to scroll through so many names to repopulate my speed dial list.

I can access my Iphone contact list and speed dials (favorites) just about as easily as the phone in the bluetooth in the car.

The problem with this is that it's illegal in Australia to touch any part of the body of the phone unless the car is legally parked, ie. not even while stopped at traffic lights. "Handsfree" means voice activated or using controls on the car itself.

 

[bobcpa]

bcarpenter.....how do you do this? I was under the impression that you cannot pick and choose which contacts to sync and that you could not sync a separate "group" that you create. Or, are you just syncing this minimilistic group from your Mac to the iphone and not syncing any other contacts to the iphone....then, I can see how to do this

 

[bcarpenter]

bobcpa, this is what I do. I don't know if this works differently or not at all if you are using iCloud to sync your contacts. I put the contacts I want to sync into their own group using my Mac machine, then sync to the iPhone using iTunes. Once the car has been paired with the iPhone, I go into the iPhone's Settings app --> Bluetooth --> select the blue right arrow next to the name of my CT bluetooth device. Make sure that Sync Contacts is On. Under this, there is a list of Groups. You can select one group to sync.

 

[Fsport]

damn, lost my contacts & voice tags a couple weeks ago, 1st time in 6 months though.
Had to do the voice tags again.

To make it worse, my brother recently bought the RX270 and you don't need to do voice tags. It automatically does a voice match with contacts and works well.

 

[Joe166]

I give up on this problem. There are far more important things for me to concentrate on, such as the morality of the use of Predator unmanned aircraft and when I have resolved those issues I will get on this right away.

 

[fredunger]

We have the same problem. The Lexus RX350 deletes the contacts every time if you start the car without the iPhone turned on. This is a big problem if more than one person drives the car. If I drive the car without my wife's iPhone with me and turned on, it deletes her contacts. It is a real pain to re-add the Speed Dials.

 

[Bertie]

I havejust bought a new ct200h F sport and have a simular issue when I first connected my Iphone 4s it worked excellantly.
however I did get a number of comments that I seemed muffled and distant by people I phoned I finally took the car back to the dealer who made a change to the phone setting deep in the software of the Cars Computer which seemed to work.
on the way home i noticed my contact list was empty and no matter what I did I could not get it to load manually or automatically it just seemed to sit and hunt.
Finally I took it back to the dealer and they tried to link one of their Iphone 5 s and they had the same responce no contact list.
The technician spent over an hour playing with the settings before finally giving up. he left me saying he would have to phone the issue through to lexus and see if it is a known issue , and how to overcome the problem.

a week later I am still waiting

 

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