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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

Just rented a car with wireless Android Auto, and while it was convenient when it worked, it occasionally dropped the connection and I had to manually restart it (and sometimes it would refuse to connect). On one day where I was on a road trip, this happened several times.

Also, when I wanted to turn it off temporarily, there's no easy way to do so on either the phone or car. Gotta turn the car off or dive deep into infotainment settings. It looks like neither the auto manufacturers nor Google have thought this through.

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The first and only time I tried Android Auto, I asked my wife to look up directions to a place on my phone. It kept saying not to use the phone while driving, and effectively blocked it.

I mean, I get the spirit, but the experience was terrible.

I was using Waze a couple days ago while connected to CarPlay, but at a dead stop with the car in Park. The route selection screen on the phone wouldn't let me choose a particular route (HOV route) but it also wouldn't say why. It just either didn't respond to the input or else the route label flashed but didn't actually activate. The CarPlay screen only included the non-HOV versions of the routes, so I just plain couldn't pick the route I wanted.

I unplugged the phone for two seconds, picked the HOV route, and then plugged it back in, but I was infuriated by it.

This is not a knock on CarPlay, but rather Waze's UX decisions. It requires GPS access to function, it can tell if I'm stopped or not.

Oh yeah that's awful. Even dumber, that's only true for Android Auto, not CarPlay (even with Google Maps still).

I have a BMW and my Apple CarPlay kept doing this to me where it would disconnect and then take like 30+ seconds to reconnect itself. When I looked for support, the stuff I read was unclear whether it was a CarPlay issue or an issue with the BMW software, but eventually it did fix itself and I rarely have an issue with it anymore (and when I do, it's more of a "blip" than a full disconnect).

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