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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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