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Automakers Struggle With Pairing Smartphones To Car Infotainment Systems
Lucas123 writes "As Toyota owners have often found out the hard way, they cannot use Bluetooth to pair an iPhone to their car's Entune infotainment system in order to use mobile apps. Drivers can set up their iPhones as a WiFi hotspots, but there's a fee for that. Part of the problem is that Toyota bundles all of the available Internet apps — such as Bing, iHeartRadio, MovieTickets.com, OpenTable, Pandora and other data services such as local fuel prices, traffic and weather information — on the infotainment system so it can track how they're being used. The company suggests drivers simply plug their phones into the car's USB port. Toyota's not alone in its wireless dilemma. Part of the problem is automakers can't keep up with mobile app software upgrades, so they use proprietary interfaces. But that may soon be changing. Toyota said its next model year will include Bluetooth pairing, but it still doesn't solve the longer term problem of how to upgrade infotainment systems without waiting the two to four years that new car models typically take to roll off the lines. Some automakers, like Audi, are moving to modular infotainment systems that allow chipsets to be replaced on the fly."
Allow software update of the system through USB.
Download the latest version from the Toyota website, put it on a usb key, plug in the car, select Software update in the contextual menu, and boom, you're done.
Or have it all running directly off an SD card which can be replaced/upgraded if it ever fails instead of built-in storage that can fail over time and is harder to change.
My girlfriend has a new Prius C. She tried to convince her father not to get the one w/ the in-dash computer but they got it anyways, & here's just a little sample of what you get: You can't seek FM channels backwards. That's right. You passed your channel by accident? You better have bookmarked it because you're gonna have to do it all over again. You can't play FLAC files if you use your phone as a USB mass storage device so get ready to haul around an auxilliary audio cable. Bluetooth playback works but there's no real means to browse on the computer-- you'll have to do song selection on your phone & better hope you don't have to rewind. Oh yeah, you can't rewind. The maps application is supposedly able to pull Google Maps maps/traffic/fuel price data through your phone but who knows how long it'll be API compatible. You're also stuck w/ bluetooth bandwidth as (I've tested) internet tethering over USB doesn't work. I say tear it out & drop in an Android 4.x anything (tablet, phablet, proper in-dash computer, even a glorified phone mount), but, you know, resale value & all.
Unless customers express a strong preference for standards, nothing is going to change. The manufacturers believe that they can make a lot of money from updates and upgrades during the life of the vehicle (just look at how much updated maps for integrated GPS systems cost) and they are not going to give up that income without a strong signal from car buyers.
Car manufacturers love this income stream because it doesn't affect the price of a new car -- it may be the second owner who has to pay it.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The way car audio is, not even the dopeheads will try to rip out radios anymore. In a way, this is a lot like the market for phones circa 2006, where there was little improvement other than perhaps a slightly thinner RAZR variant or perhaps a new feature here and there.
A company like Apple, Microsoft or Google could easily announce a product and sweep all the competition aside. If they made a 1 DIN audio head that could handle BT audio (and I mean handle it, not "support" it half-assed), have a good navigation system, and perhaps a 3G/4G antenna built in to autodownload maps via a Whispernet-like network, run some apps, and provide the usual amenities (XM radio, local FM radio, local AM radio, a CD player, USB connection, maybe even a Wi-Fi network using the above mentioned 3G/4G antenna with a subscription.
An audio head made by one of the above companies would utterly change the car audio industry, just like iPhones and Android devices swept out the dumbphones as mainstream devices in just a couple years. In the past one bought an Alpine for the name. Now, most OEM car audio systems are decent enough for most people. So, with the "good enough" reached, there isn't much innovation in this market segment.
I really like where QNX is heading.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
All they need is a phone/tablet dock. Paying extra for an infotainment system is dumb. All I need is power and audio connections for my phone/tablet. All the car need provide is speakers and microphone and maybe some steering wheel buttons which can control some phone functions.
Is that a problem with the iPhone or is it the US Carriers being greedy?
Yes to both, but more to the point, the problem comes from auto manufacturers not getting the same damned clue the rest of the world figured out 30 years ago - Use cheap commodity parts instead of rolling your own everything, and at least try to hide the fact that you can spy on your customers' every move.
I have a fairly new car, for example. It came with the manufacturer's in-house version of OnStar, which I adamantly refused to let them activate (you should have seen the look of horror on three different levels of the sales food-chain at my refusal - The manufacturer has clearly pushed them hard to get 100% compliance). Except, it just doesn't work that way - The dealership's own techs literally can't clear codes (including the easy ones like "oil change due") on the goddamned thing without processing the order through the manufacturer's website and having it download the change to my car via the built-in cell-enabled TMU module.
So, as a result, it nags me to register it every fucking time I start the car. On the bright side, A friend scored me a copy of the technician manuals for my model, so I had no trouble disabling the cell and GPS features of the TMU (hint: You can't, but you can leave them effectively trapped inside a faraday cage with no way to talk to the outside world). On the down side, the dealer will have no choice (practically, not just contractually) but to reconnect it every time I need even the most minor work done on my car.
"What, you don't want built-in emergency assistance?"
"I have a cell phone"
"The car knows your location and can dispatch EMS right to you"
"So does my phone"
"But your phone won't know if you rolled over and died in a ditch!"
"I won't really care, then, will I?"
Similar to the carputer, I put together a mount for a Nexus 10 tablet in the dash of my car, and I use an AT&T MiFi Liberate for data access on the go. You just have to resist the urge to touch that beautiful 10" screen while you are in motion. I'm thrilled with the setup, and when I get to my destination, I take the tablet with me. And I threw in a couple of NFC tags for when I enter/exit the car, and it does all my typical setup as I'm putting it into the dashboard mount. I'm embarrassed to say how much I paid for the nav system integrated into my car when I bought it half a decade ago, but I'm glad I didn't buy any overpriced map update discs for it. Google maps and navigation are starting to rock the auto industry.