UPDATE: phones and iPods in cars just got better

After searching the halls of CES for a reasonable car music/phone solution and being bombarded on the airwaves by Ford/Microsoft’s Sync commercials, maybe it is the solution that will stick. It’s got a few things going for it.

Mainly the price. $395 is to be the option price in new Fords, the top of the line models will have it stock. That is pretty close to the price of a good Bluetooth ear piece and decent iPod dock with FM transmitter. I’d pay that easily for good integration.

Another is how it works. After watching the Gates keynote where they did a demo of the SYNC in a Lincoln, it looked to work very well. You can voice control the phone and songs with amazing accuracy. It is said to work with Zune, iPod or what have you. There is a compatibility list you can check out..For phones, SYNC works via Bluetooth and can even handle texting functions on some models.

Working through a USB, the idea is power and music transfer. Most phones and media players have a USB cable for charging/file transfer so it makes a lot of good sense to use this as the great communicator. Still a cable but another way around the multitude of devices out there just isn’t practical.

Another big plus is voice control. With SYNC you can simple say, “play Devo” and whammo, Devo starts belting out a tune. Similar say-and-get features creep into the phone world. Each phone has a different level of compatibility with SYNC (or even software versions for the iPhone).

Overall, I have a lot of hope for SYNC. The price is reasonable, the integration goes beyond what I was simply hoping for and it looks like it actually works. I am excited. Now if only it gets shared with other manufacturers and an after market business plan would be handy as well. Something tells me hoping for either is fruitless.

What do you think? Will SYNC be a winner?

Site [SYNCmyride]