The difference between the UT and UP packages are around $1000. You get the nicer screen, the ability to have an easy to use phone book. Also the navigation is in a good place to see it without having it in your way. To put most navigation systems in the car you put them in inconvenient locations. Not only that illegal locations in some states (some states do not allow for windshield attached navigation systems, or any thing attached to the windshield). Also, integrated navigation systems are far less likely to have your car broken into. If you 'forget' to remove your portable you are a fairly large target lately. I have looked at the car without navigation and wasn't excited by it, and there really wasn't a good place I could think of to attach a personal navigation system, and all of them would have a smaller screen. Also I can give commands to the navigation system in the car from the steering wheel.

This is not to say I am super happy with the Toyota unit, I like the Honda unit 10 times more myself right now, but I have only had the car for a week and my Honda for 3 years.

The big problem with the navigation is that when you get navigation, you get sunroof, leather, heated seats and mirrors all thrown in. You have to buy these additional packages. Toyota just doesn't seem to ship this vehicle without all these features together. Unless you plan to order a 2009, you will get what they package it with. I almost ordered a 2009 with the feature set I wanted but it made sense to just buy one off the lot as they were willing to heavily discount that one to the point it came close to the price I was expecting to pay on the 2009 with the additional features.

I have a Motorola phone paired with it, and most Motorola bluetooth phones pair the same way. This doesn't mean you won't have problems. Take your phone with you to the dealership and pair it in a car. You can always unpair the phone quickly enough. That being said, it looks as though there are features supported by the car's bluetooth interface that my phone doesn't support.

I have driven my Camry this entire last week. It has been around 34 all week long, plus or minus a few degrees. I did not warm it up at any point, and while it was chilly at first to drive, this didn't seem to be much of an issue for the car. It did take a long while before some of the Hybrid type features started to take hold because of the cold. And to make sure I got the most out of it, I did turn off the heating system which will allow battery only operation to work even when really cold. I turned the heat back on when I got driving on the road at a speed that battery operations were going to do anything anyway (around 50MPH).

 

I actually tried placement of my Garmin in the (nav) version I test drove, and it places OK.

Here's what happened to me: I had driven a non-nav rental Prius, which has the "big screen" and many of its features, but is of course missing the navigation ability.

I then test drove a nav Camry, as there was no non-nav Camry on site. It had a sunroof, leather, heated mirrors, etc. IOW, loaded.

I was advised that the non-nav Camry that was being priced out for me (FE HM LA UT CF) was "basically the same" as the one I was driving except for not having the navigator and sunroof. As I didn't care about either one, but I did care about the other stuff that was cool for me. What I obviously didn't have any way of knowing was the other differences in the non-nav Camry... because I assumed, reasonably, that it would have a similar display and features therefrom to the non-nav rental Prius.

And I just found another issue... I told the salesperson that I did want heated seats, which are very important up here... but it looks like the car she printed out has only heated mirrors, not heated seats, based upon http://www.automobilemag.com/am/2008...s_options.html

Am I reading that right?

 

When I purchased my 2007 (March 07) I did not have this problem. That said I wanted all those features but since I did a factory order, I listed what I wanted. If you take the packages given to you yes, but if you are willing to wait, you can have it built the way you want.

Unless this changed.....

 

Yes: HM -> Heated Mirrors.
CQ -> Heated Seats and Mirrors

FE doesn't really matter, it isn't an option package. Not sure why they listed it as such, it is mandatory in most places. It also is a no cost option.

Honestly though, I had an option of paying Invoice + $200 for exactly the vehicle I wanted or Invoice - $1600 for the complete package. Given that Sunroof and heated seats is something that is sort of cool at times, I just took what they had on stock for the Invoice - $1600. I ended up saving $672 over what they would offer on an ordered vehicle. ($1000 of that was the rebate).

By the way the packages you listed included Navigation. UT - Navigation UP - No Navigation.

I tried this, I would have paid more for less features, thus my car would have had a lower resale value, but I would have paid more to get it. Since I sell cars between 5 and 7 years usually with under 50k miles, this is important to me.

 

I have been using my Moto Q for about 9 months now. Solid connection. Without NAV you are limited to 20 numbers being stored in memory. THe nave version holds I believe 200.

 

Which of course is right, which means that the salesperson who intended to quote non-nav/heated seats quoted nav/no heated seats.

Oopsie.

 

As was already pointed out, you can indeed receive calls while driving. You can also make calls while driving, using voice commands. I had the non-nav radio briefly while I was waiting for my back-ordered nav system to come in, so I've used both, and I can say they both work well.

As far as whether or not it will work with your phone, I don't know. But if not, there's always the solution that worked for me - I changed phones.

 

I thought I'd chime in on this--Boston, plenty of cold weather, had my 07 for 2 winters now. I never warm the car up prior to driving. I think it's simply burning gas to go 0 miles, aka 0 mpg. The only time I ever feel a need to do anything of the sort is if there's visibility problems from fog/frost on the windshield and I can't move until it's cleared up. If your battery's got a good charge you can run it without starting the car up for a bit, but you're probably going to need to run it at least some. Clearly different people have different tolerances for the cold. The "heated seats are absolutely required here" is a view I don't see--they might be comfy but far as I'm concerned if I can bear to walk to the car in whatever I'm wearing, being out of the wind is likely to mean inside is relatively comfy in comparison. There are times I turn the heat on but usually I don't even do that.

My usual morning procedure is hop in the car, push the start button a couple of times (no brake applied) to get it in basically 'accessory' mode, then when I'm clear to pull out (hopefully managing to be parked where I don't need to inch back and forth--street parking--to pull out), I start the car, pop it into drive, and head out, 1 2 3. The ICE runs fast for the first bit, especially if your battery's low, so as far as I'm concerned I might as well be moving and getting >0 miles out of my fuel. If I have to come to any lengthy stops before the car warms up, I actually shut it off so I'm not just burning gas to warm it up while not moving. And once it starts warming up it'll shut off the ICE on its own.

And the accessory mode thing, in my experience, makes starting up faster--when you just go straight to "on", you'll notice the "ready" light blinks a few times before it's steady and you can start driving. And the ICE can kick in before you have a chance to change to drive, forget about starting to move. But if you go from accessory mode to "on", it's pretty much instantaneous, no delay, making it possible to start moving sooner, most of the time before the ICE starts. Plus in the winter you can get the wipers going, rear defogger, etc going so your ability to see is better before you start burning gas.

That's me, obviously some people can't imagine not driving in a cozy 70 degree car. But it does in fact warm up (can't say how warm, no thermometer showing the _inside_ temp), even with the heat/fan off.

 

Just spoke with my salesperson and am working out issues -- I'm going to end up with the full option load, or everything but the moonroof if that's possible. (I'm not putting the dealership down at all. I have been very happy with them in regard to sales and service, more so than at any other dealer I've dealt with. I think it's just a case of this salesperson not having dealt with the Camry Hybrid that much if at all before now.)

Many thanks for the info from a fellow Northerner. For me, the heated seats (which I have in my Sienna) are really helpful, and I know that's a YMMV thing. I have an unheated garage, so the scraping isn't a biggie except when it accumulates during the day. I wouldn't have though about going to accessory mode first, so I definitely will try that, especially when parked outside in bad weather.

 

You're quite welcome. And remember that all the tips here are going to be things worth trying out to see how they work for you--and you may very well pick up other tricks yourself from your own experiences. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else talk about going from off to accessory to on to be able to get moving faster after turning the car on, for example. And you'll probably find tips other people use that don't work out so well for you. Very definitely a YMMV thing, all around.