Verizon wireless - New phone with old hands-free kit?

Author

New phone with old hands-free kit?

Hank Zoeller

2006-02-18, 5:48 am

My ancient but trusty StarTac has disappeared and I'm thinking of
upgrading to a new Moto phone.

When I got the StarTac I also had the matching, Motorola brand car kit /
speaker phone installed. It was pretty pricey -- something like $500
installed. It has an amplified speaker, a mic mounted near the visor, a
mounting cradle for the phone and an external antenna. It worked
*extremely* well with the StarTac. The guys who installed it told me
that I could later upgrade to a new Moto phone and would only need to
buy a 'personality' module or adapter or some such thing in order to
continue to use the car kit.

Before I go to the Verizon store I'd like to have some idea if this is
still possible and what Moto phones are most likely to work with the car
kit. Or, anything else I need to know..

Thanks,
--
HZ

Isaiah Beard

2006-02-18, 5:48 pm

Hank Zoeller wrote:
> My ancient but trusty StarTac has disappeared and I'm thinking of
> upgrading to a new Moto phone.

What the poor thief (if it was stolen) doesn't know is that Verizon
isn't going to ever re-activate that phone. And no one else but only
the most rural carriers who happen to run CDMA will consider touching it
now, because it is not E911 compliant.

> When I got the StarTac I also had the matching, Motorola brand car kit /
> speaker phone installed. It was pretty pricey -- something like $500
> installed. It has an amplified speaker, a mic mounted near the visor, a
> mounting cradle for the phone and an external antenna. It worked
> *extremely* well with the StarTac. The guys who installed it told me
> that I could later upgrade to a new Moto phone and would only need to
> buy a 'personality' module or adapter or some such thing in order to
> continue to use the car kit.

While that might've been true at the time, unfortuantely it most likely
isn't now. Motorola's phone designs have progressed by at least two
generations since the apearance of the StarTAC form factor. The old V60
series might've worked wiht that car cradle, but I doubt they would sell
adapaters for the current crop.

> Before I go to the Verizon store I'd like to have some idea if this is
> still possible and what Moto phones are most likely to work with the car
> kit. Or, anything else I need to know..

Sad to say you might have to get a new car kit. However, what I would
recommend is getting a Bluetooth enabled phone (such as the Motorola
E815 or the RAZR V3c, both share the clamshell form factor you're used
to), and a Bluetooth car kit, similar to:

http://tinyurl.com/75vwk

$136.44 is lot less than $500. And, you won't need to get any sort of
"personality" cradles for whatever phone you buy, so long as the phone
in question is Bluetooth capable. You're also not limited to just
Motorola phones: any phone with Bluetooth, such as the LG V or VX8100,
or any of the current model Blackberry or PDA Smartphones, should be
able to pair with this car kit.

There's also a Bluetooth adapter available for phones that don't have it
built in, but do have a headset jack:

http://tinyurl.com/dccqx

I won't guarantee that the car kit will last you for another two
generations of phone models, but Bluetooth does seem to be finally
catching on in the US, and as long as they continue to make phones with
that capability, the car kit should probably be able to hook up in some
fashion with it. And presumably, as long as you get the bluetooth
adapter, then it and the car kit should continue to be compatible with
new phones as long as they keep building them with a universal headset jack.

--
E-mail fudged to thwart spammers.
Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply.

Hank Zoeller

2006-02-18, 5:48 pm

Isaiah Beard wrote:
> ...text deleted for brevity...
> Sad to say you might have to get a new car kit.

Isaiah,

Thank you very much for a most informative post. I really appreciate
your response -- thank you for putting forth the effort!
--
HZ

LinkBot