Waze for Android Auto

https://blog.waze.com/2017/07/Waze-for-Android-Auto.html

by devy • 9 years ago

180 158 9 years ago

blog.waze.com

Royalaid• 9 years ago

This is the one thing I have been waiting for from Android Auto. Super happy to see it!

Someone12343• 9 years ago

Now that it is complete, I'd love to learn more about the work they had to do to port it over.

They've been talking about Waze for AA for over a year, so I'm guessing quite a bit of work had to be done to make this possible. In particular did they need to make any design changes to Waze to make it easier to use via the AA interface?

Unfortunately my 2016 vehicle only has mirrorlink v1.1+. Which unlike mirrorlink 1.0 doesn't actually mirror your phone, instead it is a proprietary app ecosystem with ten low quality paid for apps, even assuming any smartphone still supported mirrolink (which almost none do).

I wish there was just a single open standard in the vehicle industry. Toyota for example is refusing to do AA/Carplay and is starting yet another "standard" called SmartDeviceLink.

dawnerd4• 9 years ago

I'm disappointed Toyota went that route. When I was looking for a new car last year, CarPlay was a requirement so had to strike them off. Really wanted to buy another Prius too. It's also keeping me from going tesla too, I'd really love one but I just can't stand manufacturer developed entertainment systems. Ended up with a Passat that supports CarPlay, android auto and mirror link.

BoorishBears3• 9 years ago

Did you look at the Volt?

Someone12343• 9 years ago

That's where Ford gets it right. They too are working on SmartDeviceLink, but also offer AA and Carplay so consumers have a choice. Toyota are currently offering nothing usable, and plan to one day only offer SmartDeviceLink.

I love Toyota's vehicles (reliability, looks, features, safety, etc). But when our Prius V gets replaced, we won't even consider Toyota as their infotainment units are antiquated, voice recognition terrible, and smartphone connectivity non-existent.

Toyota reminds me a lot of Nintendo, in the sense that neither company really grasps how consumer behaviour has changed with smartphones, digital services, and the cloud. Toyota are literally losing sales due to their obstinance on this, all to save a few dollars in navigation upgrades.

mbel2• 9 years ago

Unfortunately my 2016 vehicle only has mirrorlink v1.1+. Which unlike mirrorlink 1.0 doesn't actually mirror your phone, instead it is a proprietary app ecosystem with ten low quality paid for apps, even assuming any smartphone still supported mirrolink (which almost none do).

Both versions of the protocol stream apps rendered by the phone. v1.1 allows to create third party applications for it. Previously apps could be only provided by phone vendor. ML was never supposed to stream the screen of the phone constantly due to potential driver distraction. The devices that did this were probably uncertified and/or buggy.

Toyota for example is refusing to do AA/Carplay and is starting yet another "standard" called SmartDeviceLink.

Well they do have a plenty of reason to not like AA/Carplay. Both give total control of head unit experience to Apple or Google. Which is a risky decision when you are dreaming about gradually moving from selling a product to providing related services.

JoshTriplett• 9 years ago

Both give total control of head unit experience to Apple or Google.

Which is to say they give total control to the device the user already has and uses everywhere else, so that they get a consistent experience. Anything the auto vendor provides will never be able to match that.

tiffanyh• 9 years ago

What the difference between Waze & Google Maps.

Google owns both and don't they share data on the backend between the two apps (e.g. Traffic data, etc)

_1• 9 years ago

Waze allows users to submit alerts (speed traps, and the like).

rawb92• 9 years ago

Waze is more of a social navigation app. You can add alerts to the map about traffic, accidents, police cameras and so on.

It also warns you of speed and speed cameras on the road, which google maps doesn't do.

xd1936• 9 years ago

The routing algorithms are completely different, as well as the map data itself. Waze allows users to edit the map, whereas Google Maps no longer does. Google Maps only allows users to submit/edit _locations on the map_. They do share traffic and accident data, but that's about all.

Why do they do it this way? Couldn't tell ya.

puzzle• 9 years ago

Two different user bases. Also, Google Maps is tuned for simpler directions (e.g. fewer turns), even if that adds an extra minute or two.

th5• 9 years ago

I find waze'S strong point is in dense metro areas where there are many routes to consider, like LA/OC.

That's where it shines. Other than that It seems to eat a lot of battery and make my phone run hot so I stick with Google elsewhere.

JTon• 9 years ago

Agreed. I find Waze has more aggressive rerouting. Maps tends to stick to simple navs at the expensive of a few minutes. Waze will zig-zag me around town. I do find both apps make my phone hot and gulp battery though.

vgrafe• 9 years ago

In my use case, stop light cameras and speed cameras positions. There is an obnoxious grid around DC/Maryland that costs me around $300/year in tickets. To the "why don't you go slower then" crowd - believe it or not, I drive carefully. Aside of the eventual speeding, silly situations like being half-way on the wrong lane while passing a green light can cost you $150 here.

LeifCarrotson• 9 years ago

silly situations like being half-way on the wrong lane while passing a green light

You're not supposed to change lanes in an intersection. It's confusing to people trying to turn and figure out what lane you're in. This is why they fine that activity.

djrogers5• 9 years ago

silly situations like being half-way on the wrong lane while passing a green light can cost you $150 here.

It's not a 'silly situation' and it's not just there - that's illegal. You don't change lanes in an intersection.

BoorishBears3• 9 years ago

driving carefully != driving slower.

If you don't care enough to slow down then I don't know why you'd bother evading speed cameras, and if you do care, slowing down is probably a smarter option.

seren2• 9 years ago

It might be because I am used to it but I find Waze interface better overall. For example, selecting alternative route is not that obvious on Google map for long distance travel, it is a single click on Waze.

amyjess• 9 years ago

Waze uses a completely different pathing algorithm, and it's straight-up worse than Google.

The way Waze works is that it will do everything and anything it can to avoid a busy intersection or a congested street, without regard to whether or not going out of your way will take more time than just slogging through the intersection or the street. Waze will prefer a route that takes an hour but only takes streets that are empty over a route that takes half an hour but involves multiple busy intersections. Google optimizes its routes purely by time: whatever route will get you there the fastest is what it'll go with.

Waze also has a notorious tendency to encourage people to make left turns from the right lane and vice versa. It's illegal and dangerous. These instructions often take the format of "turn right on [six-lane arterial] and then immediately take the next left", even though it's physically impossible to get across the street in time.

Waze also cannot recognize the entrance to my townhouse complex as an entrance. It will always suggest cutting through a neighboring gated community to get to where I live. As a frequent Lyft rider, this means that I cannot ride with any driver who uses Waze if I'm going to or from my home.

I often have to call drivers who pick me up from my house and say "please confirm that you are not using Waze", and if they say they're using Waze, I will immediately cancel. If they're close enough though, I'll just monitor their route, and I'll immediately cancel if they take a route that only Waze will suggest (for example: the entrance to my complex and the neighboring gated community are on separate but perpendicular arterials; if they're driving on the arterial my entrance is on, but they drive past my entrance and then make a left turn on the other arterial, I'll know they're a Waze user, and I will cancel).

Sometimes, when I'm being picked up from work, I'll see a driver starting up Waze, and I'll say "please don't use Waze; it can't get to where I'm going". Sometimes, the driver will let me manually navigate them or on rare occasion even start up Google Maps, but I've also experienced a bunch of drivers who will throw angry temper tantrums because I asked them politely to not use Waze. One driver started screaming her head off at me while punching the steering wheel. I've had to get out of the car and call their trust & safety hotline a couple of times. I'm convinced that these drivers know that Waze will suggest routes that take more time than Google does, and that they are deliberately using Waze to run up the meter and make more money; as such, they get pissed off when a rider won't play along.

kahirsch• 9 years ago

Waze also cannot recognize the entrance to my townhouse complex as an entrance.

If you install the Waze App, you can report map issues as well as police, traffic, etc.

I submitted a map issue at 11pm (Eastern Time) and it was fixed by early the next morning.

Yhippa• 9 years ago

Waze seems more aggressive about alternate routes than Google Maps. Waze also gives you the firehose of cop and other road objects.

bmurphy1976• 9 years ago

If you know the area, know where you are going, know when the nav is giving you a bad route, Waze is much better. It optimizes your commute time so that you can avoid traffic hot-spots. Save a couple minutes here, a couple there, it adds up. You just have to know that "yeah, that road seems quicker, but you always get stuck at the light".

If you don't know where you are going or are traveling long distances, Google Maps is better. Waze simply can't handle long distance routes very well and Google Maps is far less likely to send you down some weird road to avoid a hot-spot. You definitely want to try and avoid weird roads or odd routes in strange areas.

TheAdamist2• 9 years ago

Waze allows using the phone speaker for nav directions, even when connected over bluetooth. Google maps doesn't have this option. My cars bluetooth won't autoswitch over to the nav bluetooth audio when directions are coming in when listening to another source.

Waze traffic avoidance is also far superior.

julioneander• 9 years ago

Also, in Google Maps you can select areas to keep cached for offline use. Waze AFAIK doesn't offer that option, which is a dealbreaker for me.

4b11b4• 9 years ago

I hadn't used Waze in a while but used it twice in the last month. Seems like no one uses it anymore, and it was 2/2 in leading me down a bad, more time consuming path.

davexunit2• 9 years ago

I very rarely take Waze's advice about alternate routes after being burned a few times, and I have learned to expect that it's ETA prediction will always be optimistic by about 15-20 minutes in my case. I mostly use it to pick between a few well-known ways to/from work and to get more traffic data than Google Maps will show.

The most infuriating thing about Waze is when you hit traffic that it already knew about but only then does it add 5-10 minutes in delay time.

dawnerd4• 9 years ago

Last I used it was a good four years back and it tried to make me take left turns from a small alley into a major high at during rush hour in la. Ended up costing me more time than if I just hopped on the main road to begin with.

parthdesai• 9 years ago

I had completely different experience. We would have been stuck in traffic for 30-45 mins had we followed Google Maps, but using waze's alternate route we passed through it in 10 mins.

balls1872• 9 years ago

My old boss had a saying "You need Nav twice a month, but Traffic twice a day."

I imagine that's why people use Waze daily.

nxsynonym2• 9 years ago

I stopped using Waze as soon as they disabled the ability to set Location Tracking to "Only when using".

There's no reason it should be all or nothing.

djrogers5• 9 years ago

Thankfully Apple has disabled the ability to do that in iOS 11 - all apps have to have the “only when using” option. Hopefully google will follow suit with Android soon.

Shebanator• 9 years ago

I'd prefer they give you a choice, but a big part of the Waze concept was that it was a social thing - you keep it on while driving so other people on the same road know how much traffic there is, you report hazards, etc. If you only use it when you are actively navigating then you aren't a true member of their community. (Note that I'm not advocating here one way or the other, just explaining their concept. I'm well aware of the privacy issues.)

Jtsummers• 9 years ago

Perhaps, but it absolutely wrecked my battery life when I didn't kill the Waze app the other day after arriving at my destination. I wasn't moving, but my battery went from ~90% to ~40% in the span of a movie: in my pocket, with the display off.

I care very slightly about the privacy implications (I'm already letting them track me sometimes so I can't be that concerned). What bothers me is that it continued to drain my battery to the point that my phone would have been dead before I got back to my car to head home.

nxsynonym2• 9 years ago

Yeah my issue was that it was originally able to be set to "only while using", which they disabled without notice. All of a sudden my location was being shared 24/7 without any warning or permission.

I don't mind contributing location data to the betterment of the app, it more comes down to a battery life and transparency issue.

balls1872• 9 years ago

I would imagine all Android phones do this automatically for Google.

theWatcher376• 9 years ago

Not that it applies to Waze, but Apple's entire location permission stack is hot garbage.

Most notably: Literally everything about dealing with significant location changes when in the background/app is suspended. That entire dev team has some bad karma coming its way.

davexunit2• 9 years ago

Should I be seeing an update for Waze in the Play store? It says I am up-to-date but I did not have the option to use Waze when I used Android Auto just a couple of hours ago.

recursion• 9 years ago

Me too. I'm on 4.26.0.3 and no update showing in play store. I'm in the UK and hoping I will see it there in the next few hours as I love Waze.

jdc05892• 9 years ago

Too bad Toyota is still putting frickin Entune in their cars with no Android Auto or CarPlay support.

I wouldn't be quite as annoyed by it if the damn navigation wasn't missing the address I need to enter damn near 50% of the time (in major cities too, in a 2016 model year car). One day I noticed they had a mobile app and assumed there'd be some easier way to enter navigation addresses from contacts, google maps, etc.. but no...its barely even functional.

But hey, I can check my stocks. so there's that?

Edit: I went on a little rant tangent there... Great work Waze team. I can't wait to be able to use this.

Mayzie• 9 years ago

Oh god, don't get me started on Toyota's infotainment system. It is absolutely horrible. Clunky and slow interface, unnecessary restrictions.

Someone12343• 9 years ago

Don't forget the completely broken speech recognition.

I also love how, in our 2014 Prius V, if the Bluetooth gets disconnected and there's another device in range, it won't let me reconnect to the original device until the car is stopped and put into park... Because no vehicle has a front seat passenger?

nunez• 9 years ago

agreed; they definitely have the worst infotainment system out there. it looks and feels like a 2007 beta product

jclardy• 9 years ago

Mazda owner here. Still waiting for they mythical CarPlay/Android auto update that will supposedly come to 2014 and up models. They are using the same infotainment system in 2017 models so I'm still holding out hope.

zapu• 9 years ago

Bought a Toyota SUV few years ago, they promised CarPlay update as well. Not that I believed that it would ever come, but still :|

MBCook2• 9 years ago

Good luck. Perhaps this?

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/07/gm-to-offer-ota-softwar...

tacomonstrous• 9 years ago

I got to try out Android Auto on a rental Ford Focus last week and now I can't drive my 2015 Mazda 3 without hating it a little.

I'm sure you know that there is an unofficial Android Auto installation available on certain Mazda forums. Unfortunately, they still haven't managed to fix a serious issue with Bluetooth calling.

brettlangdon• 9 years ago

I used Mazda AIO Tweaks to get Android Auto support (along with other changes) in my 2017 Mazda 3. I am pretty sure they support older/other models as well. Very easy, took about 20 minutes from downloading to updating the car.

https://mazdatweaks.com/

MBCook2• 9 years ago

When they announced that it DRAMATICALLY sped up the car search I was doing at the time. No CarPlay? I'm not buying a Toyota.

Today I think the direction Toyota is going in extremely ugly (too angular/aggressive for me).

I'm not buying another car without CarPlay. It's too nice.

davidbrent• 9 years ago

I bought my Toyota for the motor, so I didn't pay a lot of attention at the time of purchase. I wish I had though. Entune is absolutely terrible. I'm still mind boggled that a quality manufacturer like Toyota would allow such a terrible piece of engineering in their vehicles.

sliverstorm• 9 years ago

Panasonic makes them, which made it click for me. Both Japanese companies, both titans. No betting on scrappy startups.

But I agree, I bought mine for the motor as well, and really that's what's important to me. Would I like a better head unit, sure, but I'd make the same choice again.

edgesrazor• 9 years ago

Don't feel too bad about this - Android Auto is nice, but it still has a lot of drawbacks and deficiencies. I just switched to a car without it and realized I don't miss it at all.

chaostheory• 9 years ago

Are there any Japanese cars with CarPlay or Android Auto support?

I just wish Waze would come to CarPlay as well and Navdy.

I guess anyone wishing for Android Auto and CarPlay support will have to go the aftermarket route.

pmcjones• 9 years ago

Honda has both CarPlay and Android Auto.

gizmo385• 9 years ago

The new 2017 Subarus have support for both.

tcskeptic• 9 years ago

My 2017 Nissan has both

gambiting• 9 years ago

My 2016 Mercedes GLA was supposed to have support for Android Auto but the car arrived without it. Mercedes was working on the update for over a year now, and just few days ago I received an official reply from Mercedes Benz customer service saying that the technical department won't release such update, it was cancelled. It sucks to have such a modern car without support for it - and my partner's tiny volkswagen Polo supports both android auto and apple car play.

jonathansizz• 9 years ago

I assume you didn't realize you can install the Android Auto app directly on any Android phone running 5.0 or higher?

You don't need a built-in system, and in fact I find my phone [$130 Moto E4] coupled with a magnetic dash mount works far better.

jdc05892• 9 years ago

I am aware, but I really like having gps directions right in front of me on my screen in the gauge cluster. I'll probably figure out a dash mount solution at some point, but it would be so much nicer if everything just played nice together.

guelo• 9 years ago

Since Android Auto runs on phones now, and it can be set to launch automatically when it connects to your car's bluetooth, I jerry-rigged a phone cradle that sits in front of my car's infotainment screen and mainly use that.

ajmurmann• 9 years ago

The idea alone that car companies would even try to provide their own navigation system that's built into the car is infuriating to me. I will have my car for way over ten years. By that time anything computer related that came with the car might as well have seen the thirty year war. In that same time I will have gone through three phones easily. The navigation and entertainment system needs to be as dumb as possible and as easily swapped out as possible. Anything else is ridiculous.

taternuts2• 9 years ago

Do they have it for IOS's car play? Though I suppose I don't care all that much since car play is so bad I disable it and just use my phone anyways.

usaphp• 9 years ago

Hmm. What is exatly is so bad about apple car play? I think it does exactly what it has to, provide simple interface for calls and maps

taternuts2• 9 years ago

It's just very limited in what you can do, I think specifically to increase safety for the drivers

dkrich2• 9 years ago

Was trying to figure this out myself. After looking at the Car Play website, it doesn't seem like they do, which is annoying.

I'm assuming that Apple isn't playing nice with Google and giving users free choice about which nav apps they can use and that Google would release a Google Maps and/or Waze version for Car Play if given the ability.

Again, these are assumptions, if anybody can correct me on that, I'd love to hear otherwise.

This to me is a big enough deal that I would seriously consider an Android over an iPhone for this reason alone. I never use Apple Maps, it's an inferior product on every level, and I can't understand why Apple seems insistent on the idea that people want to use it. In my experience the only people who use Apple Maps are those who are too lazy to change from the default nav system built into the iPhone or just don't care enough to use a better nav system. It's never people who actively prefer Apple Maps.

pat2man• 9 years ago

Google Play Music works just fine in CarPlay, but currently Apple only allows music and messaging apps. We don't know why Apple doesn't't allow navigation apps but its not because they are pushing Google out.

Thrymr• 9 years ago

In my experience the only people who use Apple Maps are those who are too lazy to change from the default nav system built into the iPhone or just don't care enough to use a better nav system.

And people who use CarPlay, unfortunately.

thepumpkin1979• 9 years ago

There is no Waze for CarPlay, Spotify works for CarPlay though.

Beamer92• 9 years ago

Did anybody else find Waze super distracting? I tried it once around Seattle, on/off the freeway and there was just too much. Like, how can we add all the distraction of texting-and-driving, but into a navigation app. Bam! Here's Waze.

I couldn't help but think "Get all this stuff off my screen so I can see where I'm going" followed by "If I actually paid attention to or used this app it'd get me killed".

I'm sure if I'd stopped and played with the settings I could've got it to a manageable level but I really couldn't see the point. You're driving, the social aspect is a dangerous and unnecessary one. Just get me from Point A to B the best you can. Back to Google Maps.

dkrich2• 9 years ago

I use Waze for nav and I don't find it any more/less distracting than Google or Apple Maps. I did turn off all sounds/alerts and never report on things while I'm driving. So basically I just use it for a nav app and nothing else.

djrogers5• 9 years ago

Yes! I recently used it for a road trip and was horrified at how much clutter and crap they put on the screen - it's like gamified navigation.

A great example - I really really don't need to know how many waze users are behind me, or driving the opposite direction, or hell - even in front of me. I also don't need 3-4 indicators on the screen showing the speed of traffic going the other way on the freeway. I only care about where I'm going and how quickly I can get there.

seren2• 9 years ago

In Options > Display on Map, you can select what is and what is not displayed on the map. The first option allows you to remove other wazers.

jonknee2• 9 years ago

FWIW the display of other Wazers is useful if you want to know the likelihood of any speed traps being correctly identified (a lot of other Wazers ahead of you in either direction should suffice).

TheAdamist2• 9 years ago

It literally is gamified navigation, you get point rewards for driving over "candy" on your route, although so many people use waze nowadays i only wind up with a piece of candy every few months.

acomjean• 9 years ago

I use it as my navigation app. It works better when I got the bigger phone (Not sure how I used it on an iPhone 4s). There is a lot on the screen, but I usually just use the voice navigation feature.

It gives pretty good directions most of the time, and reroutes gracefully. Works in many countries.

I don't like the UI though. It figures out you've stopped and as I glance to see the map, an add pops up over the top of the screen, which is anoying. Clicking on the bar on the bottom of the screen to "stop" or enter a new address never seems intuitive. Its workable though and good at finding locations by name.

One feature it has thats nice, is that you can send someone your route, and it will when your about 2 minutes out (alternatively they can watch your progress).

zippergz2• 9 years ago

I hate the interface, but I find that it does a better job of routing me around bad traffic than Google Maps does (even though it supposely takes Waze data into account), and MUCH better than Apple Maps. So I use it every day for my commute. I ignore the other crap and just pay attention to the route it is sending me on.

If I'm actually navigating to a place I don't know how to get to rather than commuting, I'll tend to use Google Maps instead. The display is much easier to read while I'm driving. And Waze's traffic avoidance routing is very aggressive, so it can sometimes suggest really stupid stuff. On my normal commute when I know all of the roads, I can easily tell it's trying to get me to do something stupid and ignore it. But in an area I don't know well, I'm more likely to unkowningly follow an illogical direction.

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

It's fantastic for a passenger to help someone navigate with, but I could see it being distracting for an individual.

When you're a passenger, you can point out (and report) upcoming obstacles, amuse yourself looking at the little catcar bubbles, etc. They should probably make a quick "I am the driver/passenger" button, though.

rconti6• 9 years ago

The UX is goddamned terrible, and there needs to be a setting to mute alerts but allow turn by turn directions to be spoken. Why the hell I want to hear about every dead squirrel on the side of the road but NOT hear directions is beyond me.

theWatcher376• 9 years ago

police reported ahead is amazing.

cjrp2• 9 years ago

You can turn off specific alerts (at least on the iPhone version); I've disabled "Hazards on shoulder" because it was getting annoying hearing it so frequently.

avip2• 9 years ago

Waze has an eagle-kick level killer feature: The "Commuting time distribution graph".

This feature is so damn useful I'd still use waze even if it were a bash script.

teejmya• 9 years ago

How can I access this graph in Waze?

mosaiclifestyle• 9 years ago

Holy hell, I was just lamenting Google Maps' lack of such a feature, and the range of commute time estimates being way too conservative. Lo and behold, they had the feature, it was just in Waze.

flavor8• 9 years ago

Thanks, that's a nice feature that makes it worth having on my phone. I'll still switch to google maps for the actual navigation because of the cleaner UI, but being able to look this up ahead of time is useful.

emodendroket• 9 years ago

Yes. Especially when I watch some other people driving with it on and constantly answering questions. I'm surprised this has hardly been an issue.

theWatcher376• 9 years ago

Absolutely not. Waze is the pinnacle of GPS vehicle navigation apps. Google and Apple maps don't even come close.

Waze has probably saved me at least $1,000 in speeding fines, and has an almost uncanny ability to report upcoming hazards liked stopped cars or debris in the road. (Seriously, I can't believe how some car that just stopped is there)

Reading your comment is thoroughly confusing, since you really shouldn't be "looking" at waze while driving much since it talks to you the whole time. Adding an event is trivial, I mean I'm not sure how you could make it any more simple.

Unless you suffer from a specific condition preventing you from taking your eyes off a nearby screen I can't see how it would impact your driving any worse than any other GPS app

foobarian• 9 years ago

Is there some clever way of entering events better than touching the screen? I find that I often can't deal with the phone the second I see a hazard/construction/speed trap but would like to at least "register" it so I can send it off a few minutes later. Same for confirming alerts from others, I find that I can't verify an alert until I get to the location, and at that point I only have about 200 feet until the option goes away.

zippergz2• 9 years ago

I defended Waze in this thread, but frankly it's absurd to me that someone would argue that a process which requires several taps on specific parts of the screen (like reporting a stopped car) is the same level of impact as other GPS apps that require literally zero interaction while you're driving...

cjrp2• 9 years ago

It serves ads for nearby coffee shops (for example) when you stop at a traffic light. Terrible idea.

jcastro4• 9 years ago

I've been beta testing this on my Ford Focus with Android Auto. It's a nice system, but it does make me wish that they made a screenless little android auto device I can leave in the glove box so that I don't have to go through the hassle of plugging my phone all the time and going through the whole dance.

I tend to need to charge my phone anyway but for short trips sometimes I don't even bother launching AA, which is a shame.

Waze has been pretty good though and it works well in the AA environment, which is purposely limited so you can't get into to much of a distracting flow.

djrogers5• 9 years ago

Curious - what is the 'dance' that's required beyond just plugging the phone in? Seems that needing to do anything more than that is bad design on either Android's part or Ford's.

jcastro4• 9 years ago

It is a combination of bad design by both parties and initial setup hassle. I'll try to document what it's like to leave my driveway. After the initial setup, bluetooth pairing, making it a trusted device, etc.

- Start car.

- I can't plug the phone in right away, because it will miss some kind of internal step, I have to wait for Ford Sync to finish "booting", then plug in my phone and stow it the box where my USB plug is.

- Android Auto then launches, unless another app on your phone is prompting you, at which point nothing will happen, you have to dig the phone back out to find out what happened.

- AA launches, click mic button on wheel (it's a hw equivalent of ok google): "Play Metallica." Always launch music first because if I launch nav first and then want to play music, it will switch off the map and show you the music controls, which I only want when I'm not navigating. But if you launch them in the right order you'll get nice music notifications on the map.

- Click mic button on wheel: "Navigate to whereever", unless of course I don't know where I am going, but if I was clever enough to put the address in my gcal it will already show up on my auto's screen, this is my favorite feature of AA. If I don't know where I am going I need to look it up on my phone, so dig it out, and then the AA app fullscreens a splash screen on the phone, so I need to drag down the notification bar, unfullscreen it, use my phone, relaunch AA again (or just unplug the phone and plug it back in) then stow the phone.

- If I put the car in reverse before this the rear backup camera turns on so I can't access the UI at all, so I might have to do steps some of the steps again depending on when I put the car in reverse and if the car was listening.

- Car now moves away from house and kicks over from Wifi to LTE and most of the time this works, but occasionally the music will just stop playing so I have to click on the "play" button again the UI.

If I'm unlucky Ford Sync will notice that something stopped playing so it will automatically put on the next music source, FM radio. Now there's no way for me to get back into Android Auto without unplugging the phone and plugging it back in. Sometimes(?) there's an android auto icon that shows up in Sync that lets me back in but I haven't determined why sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't.

It's not a bad system, it's just still 1.0ish; once you're past all this crap and on the road it's really nice to have all my music and maps available, and of course having the google assistant is much nicer than I anticipated, so I can do things like "good morning" via a voice command and it will play my daily summary.

Orangeair2• 9 years ago

What exactly do you mean by "the whole dance"? I've found Android Auto to be pretty simple to use. There's just one short USB cord I plug in right next to my shifter and I'm done. Everything comes up automatically. This is on a VW Golf, so maybe it's simpler than it is for you in the Focus?

Most of the problems I've had have been software bugs. Like this morning when I attempted to send a Hangouts message. The assistant voice made it sound like it worked, but nothing every actually sent.

Anyway, I'm not sure a screenless device is really what you want. Most of the appeal of AA is that it uses your regular phone, so it can use your data, read and send message, make calls, etc.

Disclaimer: Google employee

jcastro4• 9 years ago

I left more specific feedback in another part of this thread.

With regard to the screenless device, I do like having my phone be the centralized device of the entire thing, I just would like to make it a more permanent part of the car so I can just hop in and drive.

I am debating trying a spare SIM and an old device and just leaving it in there plugged all the time, but that just introduces an entirely different set of problems.

kkotak2• 9 years ago

Waze always baffled me. No one I know uses it and most never heard of it. Google had pretty sophisticated data/algo of their own when they paid $1+B for this thing. ELI5 - why should any one care about Waze?

j_s• 9 years ago

They gamify user input (mostly from drivers I assume) while they're on the road.

CharlesW• 9 years ago

Waze's primary innovation was to crowdsource near-realtime traffic information. They weren't the first[1], but they were the first to do it on a large scale. Some of it is automatic (e.g. speed, which usually reflects traffic conditions) and some of it is interactive, encouraging users with "points" to fumble with their phones in order to report police sightings, road obstructions, etc.

No one I know uses it and most never heard of it.

Intersting — everyone uses it in California, to the point that it strongly affects traffic patterns[2]. Where are you?

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dash [2] http://www.gq.com/story/waze-ruining-los-angels-side-streets

kkotak2• 9 years ago

I'm in Palo Alto and actually had seen their small office on Hamilton. I do know how it works and tried to myself but found it really cumbersome. The only explanation I can see is iPhone users who didn't have the benefit of Google maps a few years back that propelled Waze's use. As for the valuation - if they had even 10M active users, Google paid $100 for each of them, knowing that it was inevitable that they'll eventually get the iPhone users anyways.

jonknee2• 9 years ago

Waze is great for commutes or other local driving you don't normally need nav for because the traffic routing is top notch (I've had experiences where it has told me to exit highway immediately and easily saved me an hour because of a terrible wreck that just happened). Also great for identifying speed traps on the highway which is why it's really popular with truckers.

It has international appeal as well, the map editing feature has made it a hit in places with less than perfect map data:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/10/2...

srcmap• 9 years ago

My kids played with it a few times on long drive to tell me where he spotted the police car(s), accidents, etc.

Kind of fun thing for your kids to do on a long drive. That might be why the cartoon like interface.

Like Pokemon Go, the constant network traffic + GUI interaction makes it huge battery drain. I deleted the app from my phone.

Google map's traffic info is very good. I suspect Google paid that much likely because potentially FB, MSFT or Amazon "might" get it and use it is a beach head to enter the Mobile Map App market. If that's the case, it is a very good play on Waze's part to get the high valuation.

gorkonsine2• 9 years ago

My kids played with it a few times on long drive to tell me where he spotted the police car(s)

There's something seriously wrong with society when both kids and their parents are working together to evade the police, and obviously have no respect for the police. And the problem isn't with the kids or their parents. Average citizens should not see their police as an enemy group generally working against their best interests.

KevinKorb• 9 years ago

When Waze overrode my music to tell me that a fire engine was coming up behind me I was sold.

surds• 9 years ago

First time using Apple CarPlay in Honda Civic 2017, and wow!

It's a annoying system at this point. Unless I want to use it as a glorified, big interface for podcast control, it is of no use to me. It cannot run mandatory apps like Google Maps, doesn't have Waze and I am not using Apple Maps.

Also, I cannot play the podcasts when I am using Google Maps for directions. The Maps app is unable to give voice directions, the podcast acts up and soon one or the other of them is stuck.

I gave up and just use a bluetooth based connection to run both of these apps at the same time.

rconti6• 9 years ago

I've got CarPlay in my 2016 Golf and it's useless. Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me. The only potential advantage would be running Apple Maps on my in-dash screen if I didn't have a Nav system already, but I do. And frankly, I'd rather just clip my phone to the dash than have all phone controls taken over by my car.

From the folks that use Android Auto with the car, many of the frustrations seem the same. It seems slightly better from a functionality standpoint, but less stable.

Waze may be the game changer. If only I could buy a cheap android phone and add it to my data plan without paying a ton of money extra each month...

SystemOut• 9 years ago

So I have none of those frustrations as a 2016 GTI owner. Google Maps is wayyyy better than the built-in nav. If I searched for an address on my phone or even my laptop the address is already in my list of recent addresses in Maps and I don't have to even voice search for it. Although voice searching rocks and I dread having to enter an address in my wife's Odyssey nav interface through their knob interface. Then there is traffic routing which is also way better than what comes with the built-in nav. I can voice search and call a business from the same interface while I'm en-route as well.

I do wish that they would add the ability to have a real weather app in the ecosystem. After moving from the west coast to the midwest where they actually have real weather that can be spotty and fast moving it'd be really nice to be able to pull up an up-to-date weather radar view to see what's coming at me.

Now, there are the bugs....such as occasionally when I call someone it switches to the speaker on my phone vs. my car which is really annoying. It used to crash on a semi-occasional basis but I haven't seen that since I upgraded to a Pixel. Occasionally I do have to reboot the phone when it fails to connect. That is probably the most annoying one.

csours• 9 years ago

Google Fi project.

eddieroger2• 9 years ago

Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me.

I've owned several cars thus far in my life, and so far, the functionality of every single head unit has been changed exactly zero times since the car left the line. When CDs became a thing, I had to add a CD player if I wanted to listen to them. When XM and Sirius came out, I had to add something to use them. Who knows what's going to come next? But if my phone is in the driver's seat, so to speak, then I can expect new updates just about every year now going forward, with new features coming this Fall with iOS 11. My 2017 Civic at least has a chance of being updated since the head unit runs Android underneath, but odds of Honda ever updating it are pretty slim.

zamalek• 9 years ago

Why on earth I would want my car to take over the full functionality of my phone is beyond me.

Because it's probably required by law and for good reason - just like the Bluetooth systems disallow visually reading texts.

The only potential advantage

The other one is that you are not endangering children and other humans alike while fiddling on a tiny phone screen.

Stop it.

jakerrd• 9 years ago

i feel the same way, so using navtool i have extended my carplay to full phone mirroring, check it out @ www.navtool.com

TylerE• 9 years ago

Why do you refuse to use Apple Maps? It's really quite good these days.

s3r3nity• 9 years ago

I agree that it's virtually on feature parity and quality with Google Maps, including getting _really_ good at adjusting directions based upon traffic patterns in real-time...at least in the US. When I travel internationally, even in a big/populated locale like London, I just don't quite trust it just yet.

It's a shame, because on iOS Maps is a pretty polished product and the team deserves credit for where they've come.

Fej• 9 years ago

Traffic data. Waze closure reports. And of course it's just better maps and routing.

arkbyte• 9 years ago

I refuse to use Apple Maps on principal. I prefer Waze, and use it. Yet when I click an address link, I get directed to reinstall the Maps app, and it won't let me open the links in the map of my choice.

albedoa• 9 years ago

I tried to switch back this past fall when I moved to the city. I wanted to be able to get directions using Siri. I thought for sure they had worked out its kinks by end of 2016, years after its initial release.

I lasted less than a day. It had no idea where I was at times, even on major roads. It would more often tell me to turn after the turn than before it.

I don't know anyone who has used both Google Maps and Apple Maps who would call the latter "quite good", so I suppose it's relative. If all I knew were Apple Maps, I'd probably agree with you.

tomerbd• 9 years ago

do yourself a favor and just stick with google maps navigation.

nikofeyn• 9 years ago

in a dense urban environment, like where i live, waze significantly out performs google maps on a day to day basis. its routing is much better for real time issues and is very quick to react to things happening on the road, including cops, stopped cars, hazards, etc. when i am doing less serious driving (i.e., outside of commuting or running late), my car's navigation or google maps works fine.

keriati1• 9 years ago

I use Waze daily to get to work and get back to home. Europe is full with speed traps and total unexpected speed limits. For me Waze is a must have app every time I go somewhere with the car.

I can't say I would ditch my iPhone just because of this (or maybe I would?), but I might get an android phone just to use it with Waze in my car if this really works great...

Apple CarPlay is total useless so far, even to play music from my iPhone in the car, I rather use the built in media app from VW. Apple maps in Europe is a total joke. Many times it tells me I should drive into a one way street or it would try to take me into pedestrian zones...

crusso• 9 years ago

After the last decade-plus of having car companies try to force you to buy their updated maps, I refuse to buy another car that doesn't include CarPlay support.

I rented a car with CarPlay a couple of months ago and I was surprised at how easy it was to just plug my phone in and get going with it.

cordite• 9 years ago

I wish more apps had CarPlay (apple) support too.

MBlume• 9 years ago

Doesn't seem to work through the Android Auto app on my phone

Waze for Android Auto

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