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My Ford Touch Thread

2M views 4K replies 396 participants last post by  Teamlosi23 
#1 ·
A member mentioned about having a sticky for the MFT sytem and I thought it was a good idea. Here's the thread for owners to discuss the MFT system, talk about and share issues they are having and to even share solutions. I know there are several MFT threads already out there, but we gotta start somewhere. Please keep this clean as it's going to be for everyone's benefit.

For everyone's information:
http://owner.ford.com/servlet/Conte...wnerGuidePage&year=2012&make=Ford&model=Focus

Enjoy.
 
#2,844 ·
I installed my update late last week. Overall, I've noticed some improvements (POIs actually show up on-screen when I'm asked to make a selection instead of nothing loading and Sync Lady yelling at me to choose, and the Shuffle LED finally works on my iPod!) and some issues.

Biggest problems...
- Nav route calculation is dreadfully slow at times. It took over 2 minutes to calculate/load a simple, 20-mile route on Saturday. And that was using a Favorite location.
- Nav in general is slower than before... takes longer to load map when you first switch to it, there's more lag when it's animated/moving while driving, etc.
- Voice commands are suddenly very laggy. Press the Sync button, and then it takes 3-5 seconds for the chime to play so I can say the command. Pre-v3.5.1 the chime happened nearly instantaneously.
- Candidate/selection lists still don't appear sometimes - if I say to play a song and it asks me to choose, no list pops up, but Sync Lady still asks me to pick one.
 
#2,845 ·
Biggest problems...
- Nav route calculation is dreadfully slow at times. It took over 2 minutes to calculate/load a simple, 20-mile route on Saturday. And that was using a Favorite location.
- Nav in general is slower than before... takes longer to load map when you first switch to it, there's more lag when it's animated/moving while driving, etc.
- Voice commands are suddenly very laggy. Press the Sync button, and then it takes 3-5 seconds for the chime to play so I can say the command. Pre-v3.5.1 the chime happened nearly instantaneously.
- Candidate/selection lists still don't appear sometimes - if I say to play a song and it asks me to choose, no list pops up, but Sync Lady still asks me to pick one.
I have the very same problems. Also have "the skipping of songs" after 15-20 seconds of playing. When using the Nav - the redrawing or refreshing of the screen as you drive is so sluggish that sometimes it barely refreshes before it has to try again. It feels like a computer that's been "on" too long, with memory that's over taxed. I wish they would just install a reboot switch. Lol
 
#2,848 ·
Gotcha. I've also seen the one you are talking about but only when I stick to the new simplified "play <title>" (without saying song or artist or whatever after play) commands and only if it is both the name of a song and album or album and artist, etc. etc. Same deal, please choose and see and hear nothing, wait for Sync-lady getting impatient tone, and then she tells me what to choose between.

The other one I only see when I stick to the traditional "play song <title>" command. Every now and then it gives me the right title on all four lines but, the first line is followed by no band name and the next three lines (of the exact same song title as line one) are followed by three different band names of bands that do not have a song of that title. If I try and choose one of the fictional (lines 2-4) ones I get "Sorry, unable to locate song <song title> by artist <artist name>". Well of course you can't, it isn't real. Not a biggie. Just a funny quirk. The right song is always there on line one so I just say that one and it plays it. After 3.0.2 left me with completely non-functional music commands I'll happily put up with this quirk just to have them work again!!!
 
#2,849 ·
Yup, this was using the new simplified (ha - right! [facepalm]) commands.

To their credit, it is awesome when it works. And I know I can get around the no-choices-displayed issue (assuming I don't have 10 songs with similar titles) by saying "Play Song XXX" or whatever.

Still, you'd think they would have figured out how to make the whole damn thing work correctly by now...

Oh, one other wonderful tidbit. First time I tried to play music from my iPod on v3.5.1, I got the infamous Nav SD Card Fault and had to reboot everything a couple times. Oddly enough, it's worked fine since then?
 
#2,850 ·
Been awhile since I posted here. I did the 3.5.1 update right when it came out and have had much better luck than previous versions. I did have one issue I found a workaround for in case anyone else has run into it:

After 3.5.1 my music would "skip" for a couple minutes after starting the car, mostly seemed to be an issue on USB devices. Oddly I found this was related to having the automatic phonebook sync turned on with my iPhone. Turned off auto phonebook sync and no more skipping, plus voice commands work much more quickly after starting the car. Considering my phonebook does not change that often I can handle updating it manually from time to time =)
 
#2,851 ·
Oddly I found this was related to having the automatic phonebook sync turned on with my iPhone. Turned off auto phonebook sync and no more skipping, plus voice commands work much more quickly after starting the car. Considering my phonebook does not change that often I can handle updating it manually from time to time =)
Yeah, I discovered this seems to help a lot back when I had v2.11 and have made it a habit of doing this on every subsequent version since. After any update install or master reset my first order of business after the phonebook loads is to go in and turn off the auto functionality (and my second order of business is to go change the damn voice commands from novice to advanced because it always feels obligated to switch them back to novice after either of these events).
 
#2,852 ·
I'm currently at 3.2.2 and have a pretty loaded Ti with MFT and NAV and have not yet received an update notice from Ford. I have had very few issues with MFT, or DCT for that matter, but I think I'll wait a bit before doing the 3.5 update.

My subscription to Sirius/XM expired in November but I seldom used it so no big issue other than it would be nice to have weather and traffic. My main media use is USB with a 32GB thumb drive holding 16GB of music. There appears to be some issues with USB but it's hard to know if they are on cars built in the first 6 months or not. Does anyone whose having USB issues with 3.5 have a build date after about October 2011?

Also, there appears to be some complaints about NAV being slower but once again, do any of the people with slow NAV have a build date after October 2011? I also noticed that one of the guys complaining about slow NAV did the update BEFORE getting the new NAV card and that the dealer performed another update -- generally you don't want to perform multiple updates when one should do the trick. If the dealer is going to do the update anyway when they give you the new NAV card perhaps it would be best to NOT perform the update yourself first.


Brian
 
#2,853 ·
My main issues with 3.5.1: (Non NAV MFT)

1. Radio silent when first starting the car - I have to press one of the radio stations to get the sound to work. Never did this with 3.2.2

2. If whilst listening to the radio/USB device with the engine off, I then start the engine, the system will randomly switch to the AV in screen (did this in 3.2.2 as well)

3. The light levels of the display will fluctuate - for example, today it was a rainy, very overcast, grey day and on the drive home the screen kept altering its light levels as if it couldnt decide whether to stay in day mode or night mode. 3.2.2 seemd to do this very occaisonally but its worse with 3.5.1.

I seriously wonder how much testing they do before releasing these updates. Its almost as if they have one test vehicle they drive around the block a couple of times and then decide its ready for release!

Despite this Im still glad I opted for the MFT and enjoy driving my FF every day.
 
#2,856 ·
Did you do a master reset after install? It might help with some issues. I've found that if you listen to radio when car is not started, when car is started the system won't respond for about 20-30 seconds then will go through all of the buttons you've touched since engine start. I've learned to power off/on after starting. If listening to USB when car is not started, it will go to AV upon start up, even if you leave vehicle and system shuts down.
 
#2,855 ·
I had MFT 3.5.1 installed a couple of days ago, and I'm happy with it.
  • Happy they brought the ambient temperature reading back to the 8" display. You can turn it off if you don't want it there. I feel like I've been reunited with a long lost friend. No, the read-out in the smaller display in the instrument cluster isn't the same ambient temperature. That's his ornery cousin.
  • Contrary to some other posters, MFT's overall performance has improved for me, but that could just be because my system hadn't crashed--er um "performed scheduled maintenance" in a while.
  • My navigation favorites were gone. I had to re-add them, which led me to realize that keying is a lot more responsive now. Feedback was close to immediate--a huge improvement over the key and wait I had to deal with before.
  • The previous version had empty boxes for the radio stations on the main screen and was missing other info on the Media screen. I see radio stations now. Lap of luxury! This wasn't a big deal to me before, since I tend to listen to music on my smartphone via USB. Speaking of...
  • I have an iPhone 4S. Before the update, if I plugged in the phone, it'd take up to several minutes to switch to the device and start playing, and usually it would just switch to the device and not playing, requiring me to go to the Media page and press play. Other times, it would be in la la land and wouldn't play when I pressed Play, requiring me to connect and disconnect the phone to get it to linked up properly. I'm sure I only ran over three or four pedestrians while sorting that out.
  • The MFT lady seems a bit more long-winded now. Last night she didn't quite catch a name I was asking to dial and went on and on about my options, including the option of calling an 800 support number. I know I could have interrupted her, and I would've, but I found the help monologue oddly entertaining. When I arrived at my destination, I prompted changed the voice option from Novice to Expert.
  • I was so hoping the ability to program the 1 and 2 stars favorite buttons on the wheel would come back, but, no dice there. If I had my druthers, one would go to Nav and the other Media, because I'm super lazy and I think the 8" display steals the user's soul whenever he or she touches it. Okay, maybe not, but at a minimum, it gets greased up. I don't see how you can argue this was done to simplify the system. "Favorites" are inherently custom buttons. To set them to arbitrary destinations is presumptuous, to say the least.
  • I saw someone post that the MFT Shuffle function actually works with iPod now. I'm hoping that means it works for iPhone 4S, as well. That was a major bug before. If I selected a specific song, MFT refused to go back to Shuffle, regardless of the Shuffle setting. The only way to fix it was to unplug the phone and set the phone to Shuffle.
  • The MFT navi seems to be even less calibrated than before the update. It takes several minutes after driving out of a parking garage before it latches on to my location, and even then, it's still not accurate. I might have to get that checked out the next time I go to the dealership.
  • I noticed after leaving the dealership that the clock was way off, which is nothing new. The date and time have randomly slipped from time to time. I'm not sure if this is related to the update or if there's still a date-time-keeping glitch. I'm guessing that sort of thing can't be corrected by a software update.
 
#2,857 ·
[*]The MFT navi seems to be even less calibrated than before the update. It takes several minutes after driving out of a parking garage before it latches on to my location, and even then, it's still not accurate. I might have to get that checked out the next time I go to the dealership.
If you do get it checked out by the dealership, please post back with what they tell you (if anything). Mine actually started doing this after the 3.0.2 update and 3.2.2 and 3.5.1 haven't fixed anything as far as how long it takes to lock on (and I hardly ever park in structures, even parked outside under open sky it takes forever after startup).

3.5.1 has increased the frequency of occurrences where it places me off of the road I am actually on. Sometimes it places me slightly to the right or left of the road on the map, sometimes it places me way off of the road. This happens even after the system indicates it has locked on to a signal. It was very rare for me with 3.0.2/3.2.2 but seems to happen much much more now.
 
#2,860 ·
I got my new map chip and the download of the 3.5 today. When it warms up from -25 i'll install it. Before i installed3.2 i pulled/reinserted the fuses, did the install and then did master reset and in over a year with 3.2, i had no problems whatsoever....I will be using the same plan to do this install and can only hope i have the same luck.I'll be posting in a few weeks with any news good or bad.
 
#2,869 · (Edited)
I updated to 3.5.1 a week ago and its all good . As with my last upgrade to 3.2 prior to plugging in the usb drive, I pulled the fuses and reinserted, then plugged in the upgrade and it took approx 45 mins including the time at the end to do a master reset.... all things work as normal and nav is spot on and fast and flawless...btw, using this procedure for 3.2, it worked flawlessly as well for almost a year
 
#2,870 ·
OK, maybe I'm just old, but it seems that everyone is talking about installing MFT V3.5.1.

Well I got a letter in the mail today from Ford telling me that I can now get or download the software to update my system to V3.5.

If you guys are installing V3.5.1 why is Ford telling me that V3.5 is the latest update out.
What am I missing?

PS my 2012 Focus Ti does not have the Nav system, but its got damn near everything else.
 
#2,872 ·
OK, thanks for the info.
Thought I was just getting old news or something for a while.
 
#2,884 ·
Reading Text Messages

Does anyone know the logic as to how MFT arranges/saves text messages? Every time I get a new one now, it doesn't place it #1 in the list, so when I tell it to "Read Message" ... it reads an old one, the one in the first position on the MFT message screen. Even when I tell it "Read New" (not even sure it is really a valid command, but it takes it), it still does the same... reads an old message.

Basically, I can't get it to read the newest message ... ugh. Has anyone else had this issue? I'm still running 3.2... waiting for warmer weather to do 3.5 on my own.
 
#2,885 ·
Is there an abbreviated guide to the voice commands for NAV? Specifically, commands to define a destination in the various ways one can define a destination. Sometimes you may want the full street address in the form:

Street#, StreetName, City, Zip, State


At other times you may want:

StreetName1, StreetName2, City, Zip, State


And at other times you may simply want:

City, State


Brian
 
#2,886 ·
Google Maps on your phone...

[wiggle]
 
#2,896 ·
I haven't been here in awhile so I'm not quite up to date on everything. Pardon my laziness but this is a really long thread and google isn't helping me at the moment. I still have 2.11 installed in my 2012 since I've had no major problems with it and I really like having my favorites buttons on my steering wheel more than is probably healthy. It's to the point where I turned down the MFT update when I took my car in for the six month check up. I don't quite recall but I remember there were a few other annoyances like something with Sirius in the audio quadrant on the home screen. Anyway, on to my question. Are there any significant updates in 3.5.1 that I should consider losing my favorite buttons for? Basically, as stupid as it sounds, I like being able to flip back and forth between FM (Star 1) and Sirius (Star 2) without having to reach the infinite distance to the touch screen. (It's a very stupid reason. I'm okay with that.)

As for 2.11, the only problem I've ever really noticed is that on occasion my album art would get corrupted and everything would display the default red music note. I haven't had that problem ever since I discovered that one of my tracks was using a 2mg image.
 
#2,897 ·
There have been some improvements and some steps back. If you're happy with 2.11, I'd just sit tight until there's some revolutionary new update out. Most of us wish we could roll back to 2.11.

That said... 3.5.1 has improved call quality quite a bit, simplified voice commands, improved nav (according to some) and a few other things that 3.0.2 and 3.2.2 failed to do. But again, if you're happy, I'd enjoy 2.11.
 
#2,902 ·
For me so far -

The good:

- BT seems to connect a lot faster and is more reliable.
- BT metadata seems more reliable.
- Voice commands for music work again (3.0.2 completely broke them for me).
- BT call quality is better (3.0.2 completely destroyed that one for me as well).
- Sirius traffic/travel link is more reliable (it used to fail regularly and I would have to reboot every 5-6 days to get it back w/3.0.2).

The last three above all worked fine for me w/2.11 so this version just got them back to "almost as good" as they were with that version, just more fixing what 3.0.2 wrecked, the top two were pretty bad w/both 2.11 and 3.0.2 so definite improvement over all previous versions for me.

The bad:

- Nav can take forever to lock onto a signal (which is a problem I had w/3.0.2 and 3.2.2 so it is not a new issue, just wasn't helped w/this version for me).
- Nav seems to enjoy placing me either not on a road at all or on another road completely. Occassionally happend w/3.0.2 but happens a lot more for me with this version.
- Every single time my screen switches from light to dark mode, or vice versa, Nav zooms me out one increment (but the scale remains the same on the actual map). This used to happen very rarely w/3.0.2 but now happens 100% of the time to me.
- Sometimes when issuing voice commands that involve a selection, the system gives a "Please choose...." command but does not show or say anything to choose from. Kind of leaves you hanging there for a bit wondering what to say.
- Still the occassional instances where it just refuses to recognize anything is plugged in USB even when something has been plugged in, untouched, and working fine for quite some time.

Of course, as we've seen time and time again even though we are all installing the same vesion we get mixed results.

How about you? Know you haven't had much time with it yet but anything jump out (besides the temp) so far good, bad, or indifferent?
 
#2,903 ·
I really realy hope the Ford IVT team is forced to drive a vehicle with MFT to/from work each day so they can fully experience its idiosyncrasies. Kinda like what Zuckerberg is doing with his employees and the Facebook android app.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2 using Tapatalk.
 
#2,904 ·
I really realy hope the Ford IVT team is forced to drive a vehicle with MFT to/from work each day so they can fully experience its idiosyncrasies. Kinda like what Zuckerberg is doing with his employees and the Facebook android app.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2 using FF Mobile.
Ahhh yes... this would be wonderful. The list of things I miss about my iPhone has only 3 items:

1. battery life
2. camera/picture quality
3. Facebook App

lol
 
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