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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Recently switched from a Renault Captur (with touchscreen) to an Audi A3 (without touchscreen) and the amount of focus the touchscreen requires compared to a non-touchscreen with a radial button is amazingly scary. How did anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place? Can't imagine going back to having a touchscreen now, and hope they slowly disappear from everything cars.

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It must be said that the Captur on board software is hilariously bad. (I have a 2018 captur) it's not that it's entirely dysfunctional, it's kludgey and painful.

It's not only the superiority of physical buttons, carmakers seem to be bad at simple, distraction-free UI.

- A single UI task (cancel navigation, switch radio station) takes 4-6 screen presses through some dialogs/menus that have only one option

- the thing responds too slow, there are some superfluous animations and in general there's long delays between presses and feedback on the screen that you touched something.

- Random crashes when not doing anything besides driving

- Random crashes (more frequently) when using android auto or making phone calls

- Updating the software takes 30 minutes, during which no information is shown besides a randomly resetting progress bar.

Exactly ; I had a similar experience sometime back when I was lent a 2010 Audi A4 for a few months, there was a quite natural control knob placed much like in the article's pics. It really is night and day compared to my brand new Peugeot where you have to look at the screen -and wait for the interface to update on each action- to do basically anything that is not taking a call / moving the volume / changing the track or station which you can do from the wheel.

And yet the article cites Audi to be giving in to pressure from the fearless (and from Tesla?), moving from the established rotary to touchscreens in future models.

I guess that when you already had touchscreens, it's much easier to sell haptic interfaces as an improvement than when you avoided touchscreen from the beginning. "Still no touchscreens" vs "already beyond touchscreens", even when they have the exact same controls.

The only reason the A3 still has a non-touchscreen is due to the fact that it's still running a rather old platform, which is outdated compared to the Golf, Leon -- the new A3 landing this year won't have dials.

I have recently bought a 1 year old Seat Leon with their newer touch screen setup. I find it pretty well made - you still have all the dials and buttons you need for climate control and audio volume, but if you want to set up navigation you have the touch screen in a well reachable location, which is much more convenient than a dial. Best of both worlds IMO. The only thing I do on touch screen while driving is to play/pause bluetooth audio and zooming in/out of navigation.

Can you expand on this? I really don't get it... I understand why people would prefer "fixed-function" buttons like temperature up or lock doors, but I don't understand how radial button (which is just switching focus on the display) is any better than touchscreen... To me, it looks strictly worse, you need to focus on the button and the screen (to see what's selected), instead of just focusing on the screen and touching what you want directly.

I've had the Audi for around 1.5 weeks now, and I've already learned how to navigate the system without looking. Can easily go from navigation to Spotify in Android Auto without paying attention to where the radial is or what's showing on the screen.

Compare with the Renault Captur which I could never learn to use without having to look at where I have to tap on the screen.

Edit: while driving, I'm not doing things in the onboard system that I haven't done before, like browsing through settings and other things. I'm only interested in doing modifications to already running things or turning on/off certain systems while driving, and those were much easier to get learned under muscle control when having a radial than using touch controls (which with touch I never managed to actually learn).

I guess an easy way to compare them would be to say, going from navigation to Spotify would require me to:

(radial): drag radial down, three clicks to the right, and click

(touchscreen): find button about 10cms from the left without looking or any tactic feedback

You don't need to look at the button to use it. I forgot exactly how the Audi one works but once you're used to it, it's like: Press, Turn right twice: Map. Press turn left once: Audio player. Press: Play. You don't need to look at the controller and, when you're used to it, you don't even need to look at the screen. With touch screen, you'll never get used to it to the point of doing anything without looking at it.

This is a key point. With physical controls, you learn their location and use them without looking. This leads to better focus on driving. With a touch screen, you're distracted every time you need to use it.

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