Car manufacturers out of touch with how users use “infotainment” | Hacker News Reader

Car manufacturers out of touch with how users use “infotainment”

thedrive.com

6 pointsbastard_op7 comments

Almost every media play in car, still for the past 10 years I've touched has been garbage. Car manufacturers all appear to just glue a tablet to the dashboard, and call it a day with no, or worse, poor integration. More of the same here, but really - does no one actually test these things that have actually used a mp3, flac, or even service like spotify under 70 years old these days?

Some 3rd party solutions exist to replace horrendous Nissan/Infinity units (as in mine) and others globally vilified, but why is this so hard for auto manufacturers to get?

I don't necessarily want to defend car makers for their historically (and hysterical) media systems but there are lots of things working against them here.

Firstly, the technology cycle since the introduction of the iPhone moves a lot faster than the new model car cycle. What seems like a great idea yesterday (an AUX input onto a radio/dvd player) is hopeless today or tomorrow.

The second problem is catering for a wide variety of uses. For me, I don't care about video playback whatsoever. When I'm driving, it's the phone call performance that is super important and after that, if I can listen to bluetooth for maps guidance and music that is about all I need.

Other people like to see the maps, or have kids that need entertaining or whatever. My personal opinion is anything that plays video on your dashboard is a major hazard but other people might think it's OK.

So it is hard to manufacturers to "get" because by the time they release the car, the entertainment system was set in stone 2 years ago. The in-car navigation systems are even worse in this regard.

The obvious answer for me would be if the manufacturers offered bluetooth, media buttons / phone buttons and screen mirroring and that's all. Forget about fancy integrations or Apple Airplay or Android whatthecar or whatever the hell they are calling it this year. The integrations are always broken / out of date by the time the car is released and people like me simply want to be able to use their phone to do navigation.

What's working against them is a terrible product.

When an infotainment system doesn't have seperate volumes for different media sources, and jumps back to radio when you turn on the vehicle instead of staying on Bluetooth when the vehicle was turned off - I can't blame anyone but the manufacturer.

In my vehicle, Bluetooth is quieter than the radio, so I have to turn the volume up. When I start the vehicle, it reverts back to radio and blasts it through the speakers because the volume was still raised for the Bluetooth audio.

(When I start the vehicle, it does resume on the Bluetooth screen, but says it can't find my device so then it reverts to radio. I've tried different devices, and they all resume the Bluetooth connection, but always after it reverts back to radio. And it's not the infotainment unit, because that's been swapped out by the dealer as well.)

I'm talking about Uconnect. I highly recommend avoiding vehicles with it.

This digresses a bit but by any chance is your phones volume not set to max when connected to your car? While some Bluetooth speakers will synchronize their volume with whatever your phone's set to, most just treat it like an aux cable and will have its own separate volume. So even if your car speakers are set to max, if your phone volume is at 50%, then it's not gonna be that loud (and will sound like shit).

Uconnect does not synchronize with the phone's volume. (I do have other Bluetooth devices that do.) I appreciate the suggestion though.

I actually like the AUX input because at least it works predictably. Last time I tried getting a (purely software) Bluetooth compatibility problem fixed I was told it works in the newer car models if I perhaps wanted to browse them? And not on a cheap car..

Wow, that thing just looks terrible.

Physical dials for AC, and a hole for an aftermarket stereo. That's what I want.

Not touch controls and this monstrosity.

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