If your car is new enough that its console and display supports bluetooth, using this feature with your cellphone is a no-brainer! (We had this ability for almost a year, before we finally got around to setting it up and trying. Consider yourself reminded that hands-free CALLING by the driver is now the LAW in about 16 of the 50 states in the U.S. (In general, those 16 tend to be the more politically 'blue states' in the U.S.) Whereas, TEXT-MESSAGING by the driver is illegal in about 47 of the 50 states in the U.S.) (Source:this article)
Here's a glimpse of what you'll experience, once you have it configured and working. So, each time you step into car with your cellphone present and its bluetooth chip enabled, your contact names and associated phone-numbers get loaded/updated into the console. So, when you select your console's 'Phone' screen (e.g rather than its FM-radio-screen, etc), and then touch its on-screen 'list/contacts' button, you'll see an itemized list of all your phone contacts. And, then you'll be able to INITIATE a call to someone, by just selecting their name from that on-screen list. Similarly, RECEIVING a call should be equally transparent. Let's say your console screen is currently displaying the FM-radio screen that you've tuned to. Typically, you'll hear an ring-tone, and screen will flip to a phone-screen displaying the person's name/phone-number, and with a single touch of an on-screen 'answer' button, you'll be talking to the caller. (And, any incoming TEXT-MSG typically get SPOKEN to you, so you don't have to remove your gaze from the road to read it). Pretty cool, yes!?
The music 'hosting' device might be a cellphone or a bluetooth-capable MP3-player(e.g. SanDisk's "Clip Sport" MP3-player). Learning to extract your fav music tracks from commercial music-CDs and loading them onto an MP3 player or your cellphone, etc, is quite straight-forward, using a home computer.
Details hereThe music 'hosting' device could be a modern tablet or a smartphone or laptop PC, which all support bluetooth links.
After using a few for 6 months or so, it slowly became clear to me that I prefer the other type of wireless mouse...namely, the 'USB-dongle' models. These are the ones that have a little three-quarters-of-an-inch long so-called 'dongle' that plugs into any of the standard USB-ports. They use much less battery power than blue-tooth mice. And, they are totally just plug-and-go...no need for 'pairing'. Perfect especially for laptops.
Examples: A smartphone and an MP3 player and a tablet are all examples of what I mean by 'master' devices. Whereas, a headset and earbuds and speaker(s) are all examples of what I mean by 'slave' devices.
Note: PAIRING is the one-time intial 'marrying' of each of multiple bluetooth devices to any given bluetooth 'peripheral device.
At a minimum, you'll need to learn the specifics of putting any given slave device into a state where it is listening for a 'pairing-request'. And, then, understanding how to cause the master device to initiate the ' pairing-request'. (If you happen to lose or misplace the instruction-booklet for any master or slave device, just do a 'google-search' on the Internet for those details of that model. The YouTube.com site has dozens of so-called 'unboxing' tutorials and reviews of virtually all models of bluetooth devices, and many/most of those tutorials also demonstrate the steps for 'pairing' the device.)
Sometimes, simply switching on the power on the slave device and letting it settle for a few seconds into a steady state, will put it into listening for a pairing-request. Then, on the master-device, navigate to its pairing-request screen or button and actuate it, and you should then typically see some visual indication of 'hand-shaking' (e.g. toggling values of hex-digits, etc), followed by some 'done' indication. Finally, on the master device, you'll end up seeing some cryptic abbreviated name/text string that is unique to the slave device.>
For example, one of my master devices is the bluetooth-capable model of SanDisk's "Clip Sport" MP3 player (onto which I've loaded about 100 separate MP3 files, including additional small images of 'album-art' for each music-album.) So, I've now 'paired' this MP3-player to two different bluetooth slave devices: (1) A bluetooth headset, and (2) a bluetooth speaker. When I look at the MP3's bluetooth-screen of its list of paired devices, I see the two names (1)"Grind wireless", and (2) "XT1481". These unique names, tho non-obvious, seemingly arbitrary and cryptic, are typically NOT needed during day-to-day usage.
Also, note that of course the two slave devices I mentioned might also be paired with OTHER master devices. Sure enough...I have both my headset and speaker paired with my Android-based "Nexus-9" tablet. But, as mentioned, any given master device is typically used in an entirely different location(room) and hence only one will typically be powered up/usable at any given time.
Note that having bluetooth ON/ENABLED is entirely different from having the master device powered up and being used for other non-bluetooth purposes. It is very common to turn-off just the bluetooth chip (and/or wifi-chip) on a cellphone or tablet (so-called 'airplane-mode', etc), when you don't wanting the signal(s) radiating. Doing that will also consume less battery power, and you'll not need to recharge that master device quite as often.
One last hint: Even if you NORMALLY don't read/study the how-to literature that comes with your tech-devices, I'm finding that I often miss important neat features. Just one key example: Both my BT-speaker and my BT-headphones have directional 'arrow' buttons. It turns out that both devices have a feature that I wasn't initially aware of. These 'arrow' buttons have MORE THAN ONE use! As you might guess, the headphone's two arrow-buttons are primarily for increasing/decreasing the volume, and a normal press-and-release do exactly that. But, on both devices, the arrow-buttons have an unexpected secondary function. On the headphones, instead of just a normal press, if you instead press-and-hold those buttons (for 2 or 3 secs), they send a control-msg back to the master device, to command it to skip to the next/previous song. Super-cool...so you don't ever have remove your master-device from its holster or clip, to restart or bypass a song. Who would have known this, unless they studied the device's documentation!
[ I'm very happy with my "SkullCandy" bluetooth headphones. I chose them after googling around, where I learned that these earned a "PC-Magazine Editor's Choice" award. Also, I'd noticed at my daily 'Planet Fitness' workouts, that many more people have full over-the-ear wireless headphones, than wireless 'ear-buds'. Here's a YouTube review of a slightly higher-priced, but otherwise visually identical model. (Mine didn't come with that 'plugin-microphone-wand shown in the video.) Mine DOES have microphone 'hole'...tho I don't plan to ever TALK with these, as I also own an old WIRED USB-headset w/ swing-down microphone wand, that I still use occasionally for 'skyping' at home on my laptop. ]