A stupid question posed by a geriatric.

stroller

stroller

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So please be very patient and understanding.

Some time ago my dear wife gave me a Telefunken 10" tablet 3G wifi as a present. It has a simcard with its own mobile number.

We have graduated from hard copy road maps to Google maps on the tablet by buying data and then watching our journey, and taking instructions from a very clever lady.

I intend fixing the tablet to the centre of the steering wheel so that I don't have to peer to my left to see the route.

Our car does not have one of these fancy infotainment centres. It has a USB port, blue tooth and a radio plus cd player. It can calculate fuel consumption, average speed and fuel range.

My question is what does a fancy infotainment centre have that I won't have access to on my tablet.

I'm quite aware of the fact I could land up with a bloody nose if there is any reason for the airbag set off and the tablet in on the wheel.

Maybe I should invest in a smaller tablet or a larger phone and mount it on the sun visor but I have the tablet and I like my phone.

I thank you for your patience.
 
stroller said:
I'm quite aware of the fact I could land up with a bloody nose if there is any reason for the airbag set off and the tablet in on the wheel.
Click to expand...
Please don't obstruct your airbag with a 10" tablet. Get a larger phone and mount it to your windscreen with a suction-cup phone holder.
 
stroller said:
So please be very patient and understanding.

Some time ago my dear wife gave me a Telefunken 10" tablet 3G wifi as a present. It has a simcard with its own mobile number.

We have graduated from hard copy road maps to Google maps on the tablet by buying data and then watching our journey, and taking instructions from a very clever lady.

I intend fixing the tablet to the centre of the steering wheel so that I don't have to peer to my left to see the route.

Our car does not have one of these fancy infotainment centres. It has a USB port, blue tooth and a radio plus cd player. It can calculate fuel consumption, average speed and fuel range.

My question is what does a fancy infotainment centre have that I won't have access to on my tablet.

I'm quite aware of the fact I could land up with a bloody nose if there is any reason for the airbag set off and the tablet in on the wheel.

Maybe I should invest in a smaller tablet or a larger phone and mount it on the sun visor but I have the tablet and I like my phone.

I thank you for your patience.
Click to expand...

Please mount the tablet on your dashboard and not the steering wheel.

In general your missing out on nothing. The built in systems are a more elegant set up, as it's one system for everything. It will turn off the radio when you get a call or when the gps voice speaks to you. There's nothing wrong with using a tablet, just check if it can charge properly from the usb port while in use.
 
"Why not just buy a GPS instead?"


I could, but my reason for my post is to find what people are on about when the give the thumbs up on infotainment quality in cars or criticise it because it is pathetic. I'm trying to establish as to what I'm missing out if I've my tablet in my Swift GL and Honda CR-V and in the other car is a smart and complex infotainment system.

I'm very pleased that you have responded because your comments on the Ignis, Baleno features in your post in Motoring Section has set me thinking.

In the March 2018 edition of Car magazine there's an article by Peter Palm "Keeping It Simple" and it is this that I agree with that many of today's cars have features that simply have no value to me. In fact I'm pleased that my vehicles don't have them! I hate that annoying buzzer that tells me that the key is in the ignition and the driver's door is open plus many more. I really don't care what the actual ambient temperature is, I can put my hand outside to see if it's hot or cold.

But I digress: So what can a smart arse infotainment system tell me that my phone or tablet can't?
 
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The tablet is fine, you're not missing anything.

Please don't mount it to the steering wheel, find a dash or window mount for it. Besides google maps there is also Waze.

You can also google 'tablet car infotainment apps' and pick apps that tickle your fancy...
 
ponder said:
The tablet is fine, you're not missing anything.

Please don't mount it to the steering wheel, find a dash or window mount for it. Besides google maps there is also Waze.

You can also google 'tablet car infotainment apps' and pick apps that tickle your fancy...
Click to expand...

Thanks.
But then I could delving into the arena of your signature?:o
 
This idea of mounting the tablet on my steering wheel has set me thinking.

Should the situation arise that the airbag is employed then the tablet will be between the airbag and me so my face will be in for some serious panelbeating.

Let's remove the tablet. What happens to the cover of the steering wheel when the airbag pops? It is the size of a soup plate. Won't that also rearrange my dial?
 
The cover is designed to flap open as the airbag deploys.
Please try Waze it's better than most in my opinion.
 
As already suggested, get a proper mount to mount the tablet on the dash board or on the windscreen.

The steering wheel is a very bad idea as already pointed out. The issue is about charging tablets, phones and even GPS units from the USB power sources in a typical car. Most of these power sources provide NO protection for the device being charged. You need to find a buffer power source to provide you with some protection against overcharging and the voltage fluctuations typical to many cars.

Fancy infotainment systems? Never had them and don't want them. KISS is my moto.

Google maps is notoriously unreliable at times. It can lead you up the garden path quite often. Waze is only slightly better. But it depends on where you go I suppose. The major centres are pretty well covered most of the time. BUT there are parts of CT, Pretoria and the rural areas of Gauteng that are very badly covered. Try and find the Cradle of Humankind from Pretoria, or the Elephant Hotel complex in centurion and see what will happen if you blindly follow that voice. My daughter's home address in Centurion is incorrectly recorded on google maps is another example. Taking it up and reporting it to Google for the last year has made zero impression and has not been fixed. Because she lives in a pan handle property, that stoopid voice will take you to the nearest point, which in her case is in an adjacent street, instead of to the entrance of her drive way. I switch the voice off, and never use it. Another example is anywhere there are toll gates that can be bypassed with a relatively small deviation. Google WILL and DOES suddenly decide that it can't track your location, to deliberately prevent you from finding those deviations! That is where a GPS with a route you have previously prepared pays off hands down.

The best is a dedicated GPS provided you pick one that has a lifetime guarantee that you will get all the updated maps for free.

Lastly, I will never do away with my paper maps! I never leave home without the latest AA maps available for the area I want to visit. But then I grew up when the only reliable source of maps was 1: 50 000 topos from the government printer. Those are now available in digital form which I also always have with me. I still use my map books ( they live in the car), even though they are hopelessly out of date. It is only a paper map that helps one to develop a good sense of direction, to know where North is, instinctively, even in the dark.
 
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So to sum up...

The infotainment system is designed to integrate any possible feature that the user might need onto a single, user-friendly interface.

If you decide to buy your own GPS for instance, it will work just as well as the one on the vehicle. However, it might not play the navigation instructions through the car speakers, or allow voice commands through the car's built-in microphone. If the infotainment system has steering wheel controls for the radio, they might not work if you bought an aftermarket radio.

All of this stuff is nitpicking, but some people prefer the idea of having everything fully integrated into the car instead of having to fiddle with each individual device.

Personally, I only need a GPS when I'm going somewhere new or obscure. I don't think that it is worth buying a R20k infotainment system to navigate once a month or listen to my mom on the phone in surround sound.
 
Now that we've established just how bad an idea it is strapping a tablet onto an airbag... :)

I think a 10" tablet would be overkill, and just a little distracting. The nice thing about the more modern infotainment centres is that they display the bare minimum of information they display especially when your using Apple's car play or Android Auto... even if AA is a buggy POS at the moment. The big problem with CP and AA is that they're incredibly locked down so you're forced to use their navigation apps.
 
stroller said:
"Why not just buy a GPS instead?"


I could, but my reason for my post is to find what people are on about when the give the thumbs up on infotainment quality in cars or criticise it because it is pathetic. I'm trying to establish as to what I'm missing out if I've my tablet in my Swift GL and Honda CR-V and in the other car is a smart and complex infotainment system.

I'm very pleased that you have responded because your comments on the Ignis, Baleno features in your post in Motoring Section has set me thinking.

In the March 2018 edition of Car magazine there's an article by Peter Palm "Keeping It Simple" and it is this that I agree with that many of today's cars have features that simply have no value to me. In fact I'm pleased that my vehicles don't have them! I hate that annoying buzzer that tells me that the key is in the ignition and the driver's door is open plus many more. I really don't care what the actual ambient temperature is, I can put my hand outside to see if it's hot or cold.

But I digress: So what can a smart arse infotainment system tell me that my phone or tablet can't?
Click to expand...
In general the modern trend to in car infotainment is to leverage the smartphones everyone already carries and use anyway instead of built in navigation systems and prevent needless duplication for the modern folk.

So essentially they'll show you EXACTLY what your tablet does maybe just in a different more car friendly interface. The data is generally the same.

However by your own admission and the need to ask these questions I think a dedicated GPS might be the better solution for you for the fact that it doesn't have data costs and works anywhere.

The benefit on the other hand of a smart device and infotainment system is that all the other features like streaming your music from your device and messages are also possible. Even audio books and in some cases video.

If the latter isn't your use case and you just need navigation then a GPS will be less hassle.
 
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