Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

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Whatever touchscreen you provide, my phone will be better, smoother, have a more polished UI and easily upgradable to stay current. Navigation apps are infinitely better than what you get stuck with, and I can navigate by voice using state of the art tech that keeps getting better with updates. Just give me a decent phone holder (upgradable) and bluetooth, and make that bluetooth a module that can be swapped out as newer bluetooth versions become available like swapping out an old ISA card on a PC. Same with usb. You buy a 10 year old car and get stuck with ancient USB ports with very low charging rates that don't really interface with modern equipment. All this "modern" crap dates the car before the actual utility of the car (a thing to get you places) does.

I am thankful for the physical audio volume knob on the dashboard. I literally don't even use the touchscreen (except to change the clock 2x a year), as I have a lovely 12" tablet that does everything I want with a large beautiful display that is easy to read, blocking it. That's on a 2019 model.

I was on that train for a long time, but I've swung all the way around to the other side now. I want my nav available without me having to take my phone out of my pocket and hook it up (even if it's wireless, which comes with its own issues). Like, I want to sit in the seat, then scroll through recent destinations with a button on the steering wheel and be done.

Also, and this is huge, I want the turns in the HUD. Before you have one, a HUD is a dumb gimmick. I got one on my current car just because that's what was on the lot... and boy oh boy, I'm not going back to looking next to my knee before every turn. Not gonna lie, I'm an average driver at best. I need to be focused on the road at all times. Glancing away is all the time the car in front needs to slam on its brakes.

The trade off is not the absolute, most accurate turn by turn directions; not taking the best and latest traffic into account at all times. But I've also found that I'm not cool with weaving through neighborhoods to save 3 minutes. Putting on a good podcast and sitting on the freeway is okay with me.

> then scroll through recent destinations with a button on the steering wheel and be done

This, but with a voice control option, please, so I don't even have to distract myself looking at the options.

> I want the turns in the HUD

And IMHO - ideally - on a real HUD, the one projected over the windshield. I drove a Volvo that had it, it was nowhere perfect (especially in sunlight) but if the conditions were right it made a whole world of difference compared to the under-windshield or worse (behind-the-wheel) displays.

Not to mention that real HUDs are typically quite limited and thus not crowded with useless graphical bells and whistles.

I really loathe car dashboard designs. It's either something straight out of 60s, huge round dials without any thought put behind their meaning - like the engine rpm being the largest one, on a car with automatic transmission; or "modern" designs with lot of colorful icons and those animated blinking moving parts showing how engine braking recharges the battery right this moment.

An HUD like this https://www.volvocars.com/images/support/imga73646cb4d8984f3... (sadly, cannot find a real photo, but it looks quite similar in real life) is almost perfect.

Haha, that's exactly mine. The car I'm talking about is a late-model Volvo.

HUDs are not a dumb gimmick even if you don't have turn-by-turn directions.

Turn-by-turn in the HUD is awesome and really helps - but don't tell me that it's not a little bit dangerous to try to check your speed while you're driving without a HUD!

The ideal solution is a HUD that communicates with carplay/android auto. Once that is here I will feel like the future has finally arrived.

Whatever you refer is a bad implementation of your car. They not able to supply you with decent update system and maps. I never use a phone in my car, and that's the best thing I experience in the car since 3g start working good during trip. You have good big screen for navigation, you don't need this ugly phone mounts in the car, it doesn't fall-off during turns, you don't need stupid wires. That's a right way to implement it. When car manufacture put a big decent screen with good brightness and willing to pay tiny fraction of the car price to maps API provider. If BMW is not willing to do that in 2021 they are bad manufacture that it.

Even better would be just leave out the entire entertainment unit (except maybe an amplifier and speakers, and have a standardized rectangular hole with mounting brackets.

Even better if you put all the physical buttons for accessories (heat, amplifier volume etc) on a panel fitted into an identical hole.

Replace the pointlessly curved dash with nowhere to mount anything with a standard shape that can be removed with bolts (and without removing all the trim) while you're at it.

That was once the case, and led to a whole ecosystem of car stereo stores. The auto companies wanted to capture that revenue, so now that's all built in.

How well do the Apple and Android car/auto integrations work? Do they push enough of the smarts into the phone that you can mostly avoid bad automaker interfaces?

A few years back I got a ~$300 head unit that supports CarPlay to replace the CD/tapedeck in my 2004 truck and it is still streets ahead of any modern first party offerings I’ve seen. If automakers had the sense to leave climate controls as physical buttons and dials and just provided a dumb screen that booted to “connect your smartphone for media and nav…”, we’d all be better off.

That’s exactly how it is on my 2021 Corolla Hybrid. We bought a wireless CarPlay adapter and the whole experience is amazing. The touchscreen is useful, I have up to date information on it, podcasts, music, audiobooks… it all just works. And everything but that is still controlled via physical buttons, so I can stay in CarPlay the whole time.

Imho this is an absolutely killer feature of the car and I would deeply miss it if it were gone.

The last car I owned had Android Auto. I like it a lot and would plug my phone in to get it pretty much every drive.

I have a 2021 Honda. Yes, CarPlay is basically the iOS philosophy of “full screen touch interface with Siri that becomes wholly focused on whichever app you’re using.” Maps, Spotify, and Messages are the 3 I mainly use, but I could download more from the App store or even make my own.

Always use a cigarette adapter for faster charging.

There isn’t anything inherently preventing touch screens from being upgradable (software is already possible today).

I'd rather a car with usable USB ports than using antiquated cigarette adapters.

But only as long as they get the USB power spec right. Because, if not, the cigarette lighter with an adapter is going to be more useful.

True.

You forget to explain why one would do any of that instead of selling you a newer car.

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