I was able to successfully set up text message support with the new software release (2019.40.50.1) working with my Android phone using Android Messages. However, I have turned the feature off due to what I consider to be a fatal flaw. There are several concerns I have with the text messaging interface listed in order of increasing severity.
First, I was able to send and receive SMS text messages successfully. So far so good.
However, the user interface requires way too much tapping on the screen to be considered hands free.
After receiving several texts - it was not possible to scroll to the text I wanted to re-read, but needed to touch the text message on the screen to have the car re-read the text.
Second, the car reads and displays the header and footer information associated with an RCS text message when receiving an RCS messaging format text message.
Here is just one little bit of what was displayed and read to me when I received that text.
=_8da2e63c-8241-444f-ac1f-ab8b0b37adc4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
Third, once the car starts reading a text, you can't stop it. It just keeps reading the text - on and on. One can imagine several reasons why you would want to stop listening to a text message, including this RCS example.
Fourth, the final disastrous failure that forced me to turn the system off. I received a very long text message, which the system read to the end - but when I looked for that message on the phone it had been deleted - along with every other text message ever sent by that person to me and every text message I had ever sent to that person. All gone.
Google tells me that if I want to restore the text messages from the backup I have stored on Google Drive - I will have to do a factory reset on the phone.
The Tesla text reading system clearly needs a lot of work before I will consider it ready for prime time.
First, I was able to send and receive SMS text messages successfully. So far so good.
However, the user interface requires way too much tapping on the screen to be considered hands free.
After receiving several texts - it was not possible to scroll to the text I wanted to re-read, but needed to touch the text message on the screen to have the car re-read the text.
Second, the car reads and displays the header and footer information associated with an RCS text message when receiving an RCS messaging format text message.
Here is just one little bit of what was displayed and read to me when I received that text.
=_8da2e63c-8241-444f-ac1f-ab8b0b37adc4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT
Third, once the car starts reading a text, you can't stop it. It just keeps reading the text - on and on. One can imagine several reasons why you would want to stop listening to a text message, including this RCS example.
Fourth, the final disastrous failure that forced me to turn the system off. I received a very long text message, which the system read to the end - but when I looked for that message on the phone it had been deleted - along with every other text message ever sent by that person to me and every text message I had ever sent to that person. All gone.
Google tells me that if I want to restore the text messages from the backup I have stored on Google Drive - I will have to do a factory reset on the phone.
The Tesla text reading system clearly needs a lot of work before I will consider it ready for prime time.
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