Android Auto (Google Assistant) vs Apple Carplay (Siri)

Google Maps finally pushes Waze reports to Android Auto

Google promised to incorporate Waze data into Maps in July, over a decade after Mountain View acquired the crowd-sourcing sat-nav platform. The first features finally hit Android Auto.

Police reports are now popping up on the vehicle screen, as we found out while commuting to the GSMArena HQ, but the reports don't say whether it is a speed trap or something else.

The rollout of Waze features to Google Maps and Android Auto is still gradual, and only a few users will see the feature. Google promised it would start with police reports, but other types of publicly sourced incidents will also appear.

 
A family member still wants to go old-school and stubbornly still uses a Garmin navigator. When I ask him why he doesn't use Google Maps on his car's Android Auto, he says that "what if there's no signal, or he does not have any data". I then told him that you can load offline maps on the phone, he's still adamant that with a Garmin you already have a map available and also a GPS signal will always be available. "You do not need to do any of that, a Garmin just works."

However, about two weeks ago he had to go to a venue for a work-related event, and his less than one month old Garmin with the latest available City Navigator Southern Africa 2025.20 map installed, the venue wasn't listed on the map, even though the venue has been there for at least 4 years. He had to phone the venue to find out what other landmarks are close to them so that he could use that to navigate to the place.

When he told me about that, I showed him that he would have been able to navigate to the venue with Google Maps without problems.

I will be surprised if you still can get a car navigator from Garmin in 5 years' time, I think they will increase their shift and focus on their fitness devices such as the Forerunner, Fenix or Edge series.
 
Android Auto gets more colorful in time for the holidays

Android Auto 13.4 is a new update that's now rolling out to all users, and it comes with a rather obvious UI change.

It seems like Google has added Material You accent colors to Android Auto with this release. Thus, new colorful accents will show up throughout the Android Auto UI, matching the color accents on your phone, which are automatically generated from your wallpaper.

So, expect system elements like buttons, toggles, and the background colors of cards and menus to all now match the color palette you have on your smartphone, as seen in the before and after images above. These are most obvious in places like the Settings menu and in notifications (as shown below).


 
Weird take.

So one or two companies make goods car software….now everyone should suffer **** software in everything else rather than use AA/AP.

The whole reason they exist is because car companies are so bad at this.
Yap, not to mention car software/hardware gets out-dated very fast and in a few years the screens will start to lag, Now with Apple car play its the phones hardware being used mostly which keeps user experience up to date. It just works.
 
The Tesla navigation experience is still worse that Carplay. It isn't bad, but the speed limits are wrong a significant amount of time. I think the self driving part will not be able to work without Tesla having their own accurate maps that is probably Rivian and Tesla is leaning that way.

Anyway, the Tesla experience (as far as I have tested) is good enough that I don't miss CarPlay necessarily but I don't think it is as good in that regard. The other things Tesla brings to the table also makes up for it. The other cars I have driven Apple CarPlay was a much bigger win over the alternative in the car.
 
Android Auto to soon make its way to motorcycles

After Android Authority did some digging in the new version of Android Auto, more specifically version 13.5.150204, they found several hints of Google preparing to accommodate motorcycles as well.

As of now, Android Auto is available only on specific car brands, but that's likely to change. In Android Auto's settings, the word "car(s)" is replaced with "vehicle(s)", but aside from that subtle hint, they also found an in-app icon of the Indian brand TVS motors. This brand specializes in manufacturing motorcycles, scooters and mopeds. Some other new icons have also made an appearance such as Lucid, Geely, Leap Motor.

Additionally, the report suggests there will be added support for higher-resolution screens like 2560 x 1440p and 3840 x 2160p. Right now, Android Auto supports only 1920 x 1080 screens.



1736388684617.png
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X