When I got the car back from the body shop they didn't put in a piece of the center console so that's why there is a gaping hole above the stereo. The stereo will actually go in that location once the other piece is installed where the stereo is now.
I got the Sony MEX-BT3700U model. I don't know what the MEX stands for but BT means Bluetooth, because it has built-in Bluetooth functionality (I'll get to that in a sec). Pretty sweet! It plays radio, of course, and CD's as well as data CD's with mp3, wma, and aac formats. It also has front-end line in jack that can connect anything that has a headphone jack out, so basically any mp3 player or laptop even. The real reason I bought this model though is because it has USB outlet on the faceplate as well. I had this on the stereo that was stolen, and I used it as my primary way of listening to music. I would just load my 8 GB jump drive and play whatever music I wanted, except it wouldn't play wma. Now, it does and more. I can also connect my iPhone (or iPod, if I had one) and it will recognize the iPhone and allow me to control the iPhone through the car stereo controls, as well as give me a scrolling display of what album, artist, track I am listening to. Pretty neat, huh?
So, now for the best part, Bluetooth functionality! There is a simple pairing process that lets my iPhone and stereo talk to each other and it is only required to be paired once. After that it automatically finds it each time I get in the car. This functionality allows me to stream music from my iPhone to the car stereo wirelessly. I control the iPhone just like I would normally from the device itself and it offers me several options of how to output the sound; either the speaker on the phone, the headphone jack or over Bluetooth to the stereo, which it labels XPLOD. It works fairly well, but there are some issues when I'm driving. The Bluetooth radio field might be getting interference so it will occasionally drop. The other neat thing about Bluetooth is that no matter what input source I'm listening to it will automatically mute the music and allow me to take a phone call through the stereo handsfree (almost, anyway). The ringer and caller's voice comes out of my speakers in the car, I just have to slide the answer button on my iPhone to answer the call. I can hear the caller perfectly clear and I simply speak normally. I don't know where the mic is for the stereo but I think it is in the faceplate. I haven't had any problems with people hearing me as of yet.
Here is a little clip of me trying to explain the functions, with some difficulty and an impromptu demo of the Bluetooth phone functionality:
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