Guess what the number one car infotainment complaint is...
I don't have a public source, but for some vehicles bluetooth problems are the number one complain OVERALL.
I don't have a public source, but for some vehicles bluetooth problems are the number one complain OVERALL.
I get why car tech lags a few years in cars, but I'm constantly surprised by how terrible it is even in high price ranges. Since stereos are no longer swappable modules in the dash, the buttons have sprawled around the console. I was driving an in-law's Mercedes over Christmas and couldn't figure out how to turn on the stereo. When I did, I couldn't tell which buttons were for the stereo, climate control, or other, more core car functions.
Car makers don't really care. They want features on a list to check off and don't care how well they work. You can't return. The car easily after a month of frustration and realization that the car is the problem not you or your phone trying to interface with them.
* It's probably not anyone's job to make it better [1]
* They're probably just buying the IVI module from someone else and slapping some logos on it. [2]
1: I'm misremembering or can't find a talk by Seth Godin along the lines of "everything sucks because it's no one's specific job to make it better"
https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_this_is_broken_1/up-nex...
I'm confident most people care a lot about the infotainment systems. Even 10 years ago, the Millennials cared about getting their iPods to work. I had modded so many friend's cars or upgraded their head units. Their parents, boomers, just assume it's too complicated (which it is) for audio and navigation. I feel like after literally a decade they've all just given up on everything except basic Bluetooth audio (when it works out of the box).
I've ended up renting, borrowing, and test-driving (and buying) a surprising number of cars over the past 5 years and it's pretty uniformly terrible. I remember being sheepish a couple years ago when the most important thing in a new car was phone compatibility. I would have happily preached and bought something that just worked well.
Volkswagen Jetta?
I would also have the mirror adjustment knob on the door snag on my clothes and snap off.
Just as you describe, the entertainment system UI is god awful too.
“PortaPow 3rd Gen Data Blocker” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QRRZ2QM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_X....
In addition to blocking the data lines, it should also provide faster charge speed.
The album art and track progress I don't really care about (eyes on the road!) but via Bluetooth that's AVRCP and there's a stack of standards for people to butcher there, too.
Fortunately it seems like bridging the two data lines (essentially a 0 ohm resistor) is what’s needed to allow high-current charging (I think it’s 2 amps), so as long as your supply can withstand it (which pretty much every single device can, given that it’s tied to its own 5V rail which can supply many amps) you can just bridge the two pins together. Worst case scenario the overcurrent protection on the port will protect the source device.
For example, people want the experience of turning on their devices and auto-pairing with their other devices. But headphones, for example, don't have much of a UI to manage this.
There's the hellish scenario of everyone in your car hearing the conversation you thought you were having on your back patio in private just because you walked too close to the car (happened to me). But it's not obvious how to prevent that while offering the seamless phone-to-car handoff that people may also expect.
This is just terrible UX, the choice reality gave us was between auto-pairing that is frequently wrong or having to make one UI interaction. Guess which one they chose?
It is a valuable lesson, never let designers hand-wave away reality because they have a delusional vision of a magic device. Acknowledge reality and design around it instead or you will build crap.
There is still the design problem there however. You kind of have to guess which one 1, 2, or 3 is. And you need the recipient device to actually be on and maintain the connection when you make the switch. So it's not just 1 UI interaction. Depending on your situation, there can be at least 3 and they're spread across multiple devices.
Ideally we'd have a standardized overlay or display on any bluetooth device to indicate its connection status and what it's paired to. But that would be its own headache and would seriously constrain how devices can look or be shaped. How much UI can you really fit on a pair of headphones that are meant to be small?
And there's also the case where I indeed do want my headphones to pair with my iPhone that's 15m away in another room instead of the Macbook in front of me. And not my car that my girlfriend just started on the driveway 10m away. And I want to manage this from my headphones which only has two buttons and some multi-tap gestures.
The trade-offs get complex. Also, your tether idea is still something implemented per device rather than something Bluetooth as a technology can solve with some simple tweak.
And then Bluetooth is just hot garbage in environments with lots of interference - I work at a games studio so we have loads of devkits with controllers lying around, and my pretty expensive Sony Bluetooth headphones stutter like crazy unless my phone is within a foot of them.
I don’t know if it was for the reason you mention (to mitigate complaints?) or just to upsell it being bundled with the satellite radio/ gps package, but I was surprised to find that Bluetooth on the infotainment console of the 2018 Camry had been completely disabled.
As in there, but all options grayed out.
An aux connection worked, but I was more frustrated by the idea of disabling basic functionality than anything.
Would they charge to use turn signals if they could?
I dislike bluetooth. It's so much problems. But atleast it has got better since it was introduced in the late 90s(?) when I first tried it with a Ericsson headset.
It's the same UI-less problem as I experience with Chromecast. When the magic box doesnt magically work, you are stranded with no clue what to do other then reseting stuff in random order.
VW issued a TSB for it and the radio firmware could be updated by the dealership but it was a 3 hour process. I did it, dealership went in thinking it was 1 hour billable and were pissed that I only agreed to pay 1 hour!
They did not get to charge me when the DPF cracked a few thousand miles out of federal emissions warranty because dieselgate scandal already broke and I said "If you can program it to cheat, you can program it to fail"