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I've been beta testing this on my Ford Focus with Android Auto. It's a nice system, but it does make me wish that they made a screenless little android auto dev

I've been beta testing this on my Ford Focus with Android Auto. It's a nice system, but it does make me wish that they made a screenless little android auto device I can leave in the glove box so that I don't have to go through the hassle of plugging my phone all the time and going through the whole dance. I tend to need to charge my phone anyway but for short trips sometimes I don't even bother launching AA, which is a shame. Waze has been pretty good though and it works well in the AA environment, which is purposely limited so you can't get into to much of a distracting flow.

djrogers 9y ago
Curious - what is the 'dance' that's required beyond just plugging the phone in? Seems that needing to do anything more than that is bad design on either Android's part or Ford's.
- jcastro 9y ago
  It is a combination of bad design by both parties and initial setup hassle. I'll try to document what it's like to leave my driveway. After the initial setup, bluetooth pairing, making it a trusted device, etc. - Start car. - I can't plug the phone in right away, because it will miss some kind of internal step, I have to wait for Ford Sync to finish "booting", then plug in my phone and stow it the box where my USB plug is. - Android Auto then launches, unless another app on your phone is prompting you, at which point nothing will happen, you have to dig the phone back out to find out what happened. - AA launches, click mic button on wheel (it's a hw equivalent of ok google): "Play Metallica." Always launch music first because if I launch nav first and then want to play music, it will switch off the map and show you the music controls, which I only want when I'm not navigating. But if you launch them in the right order you'll get nice music notifications on the map. - Click mic button on wheel: "Navigate to whereever", unless of course I don't know where I am going, but if I was clever enough to put the address in my gcal it will already show up on my auto's screen, this is my favorite feature of AA. If I don't know where I am going I need to look it up on my phone, so dig it out, and then the AA app fullscreens a splash screen on the phone, so I need to drag down the notification bar, unfullscreen it, use my phone, relaunch AA again (or just unplug the phone and plug it back in) then stow the phone. - If I put the car in reverse before this the rear backup camera turns on so I can't access the UI at all, so I might have to do steps some of the steps again depending on when I put the car in reverse and if the car was listening. - Car now moves away from house and kicks over from Wifi to LTE and most of the time this works, but occasionally the music will just stop playing so I have to click on the "play" button again the UI. If I'm unlucky Ford Sync will notice that something stopped playing so it will automatically put on the next music source, FM radio. Now there's no way for me to get back into Android Auto without unplugging the phone and plugging it back in. Sometimes(?) there's an android auto icon that shows up in Sync that lets me back in but I haven't determined why sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't. It's not a bad system, it's just still 1.0ish; once you're past all this crap and on the road it's really nice to have all my music and maps available, and of course having the google assistant is much nicer than I anticipated, so I can do things like "good morning" via a voice command and it will play my daily summary.
  - codebook 9y ago
    Maybe it's not due to AA but Ford Sync. As far as I know, I only needs to connect my phone using USB regardless of whether the car is powered up or not.
    - guu 9y ago
      I agree, it is probably the OEM implementation. I have used both Carplay and Android Auto with an aftermarket Pioneer head unit and the phone can be plugged in before the car is turned on.
  - Zhenya 9y ago
    Which phone are you using?
    - jcastro 9y ago
      Moto G5 Plus.
  - canistr 9y ago
    I can echo a similar scenario as above. While plugging in my phone to Android Auto is easy, there is still the time required to allow your phone to transition from WiFi to LTE, back-up-camera enabled when backing out of your garage, and opening up the Android Auto menu (but first I have to tap home and go into it). Overall, in a driving commute of about 25 minutes I have to spend the first 2-4 minutes effectively waiting to configure Android Auto and for it to kick in with the proper signal and menus. It's a hassle for everyday commuting when the purpose of AA is to simplify a lot of the work. The menu systems are also a bit of a pain to navigate for podcasts. So I end up organizing my music/podcasts before I get in the car.
    - ben1040 9y ago
      >While plugging in my phone to Android Auto is easy, there is still the time required to allow your phone to transition from WiFi to LTE Tip: open the Android Auto app on your phone while you're unplugged, go to the settings menu, and choose the "Limit WiFi" option. This way it'll just outright disable WiFi when Android Auto is engaged, so you don't have to wait for it to realize you've driven away from your network.
Orangeair 9y ago
What exactly do you mean by "the whole dance"? I've found Android Auto to be pretty simple to use. There's just one short USB cord I plug in right next to my shifter and I'm done. Everything comes up automatically. This is on a VW Golf, so maybe it's simpler than it is for you in the Focus? Most of the problems I've had have been software bugs. Like this morning when I attempted to send a Hangouts message. The assistant voice made it sound like it worked, but nothing every actually sent. Anyway, I'm not sure a screenless device is really what you want. Most of the appeal of AA is that it uses your regular phone, so it can use your data, read and send message, make calls, etc. Disclaimer: Google employee
- jcastro 9y ago
  I left more specific feedback in another part of this thread. With regard to the screenless device, I do like having my phone be the centralized device of the entire thing, I just would like to make it a more permanent part of the car so I can just hop in and drive. I am debating trying a spare SIM and an old device and just leaving it in there plugged all the time, but that just introduces an entirely different set of problems.

djrogers 9y ago

Curious - what is the 'dance' that's required beyond just plugging the phone in? Seems that needing to do anything more than that is bad design on either Android's part or Ford's.

jcastro 9y ago
It is a combination of bad design by both parties and initial setup hassle. I'll try to document what it's like to leave my driveway. After the initial setup, bluetooth pairing, making it a trusted device, etc. - Start car. - I can't plug the phone in right away, because it will miss some kind of internal step, I have to wait for Ford Sync to finish "booting", then plug in my phone and stow it the box where my USB plug is. - Android Auto then launches, unless another app on your phone is prompting you, at which point nothing will happen, you have to dig the phone back out to find out what happened. - AA launches, click mic button on wheel (it's a hw equivalent of ok google): "Play Metallica." Always launch music first because if I launch nav first and then want to play music, it will switch off the map and show you the music controls, which I only want when I'm not navigating. But if you launch them in the right order you'll get nice music notifications on the map. - Click mic button on wheel: "Navigate to whereever", unless of course I don't know where I am going, but if I was clever enough to put the address in my gcal it will already show up on my auto's screen, this is my favorite feature of AA. If I don't know where I am going I need to look it up on my phone, so dig it out, and then the AA app fullscreens a splash screen on the phone, so I need to drag down the notification bar, unfullscreen it, use my phone, relaunch AA again (or just unplug the phone and plug it back in) then stow the phone. - If I put the car in reverse before this the rear backup camera turns on so I can't access the UI at all, so I might have to do steps some of the steps again depending on when I put the car in reverse and if the car was listening. - Car now moves away from house and kicks over from Wifi to LTE and most of the time this works, but occasionally the music will just stop playing so I have to click on the "play" button again the UI. If I'm unlucky Ford Sync will notice that something stopped playing so it will automatically put on the next music source, FM radio. Now there's no way for me to get back into Android Auto without unplugging the phone and plugging it back in. Sometimes(?) there's an android auto icon that shows up in Sync that lets me back in but I haven't determined why sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't. It's not a bad system, it's just still 1.0ish; once you're past all this crap and on the road it's really nice to have all my music and maps available, and of course having the google assistant is much nicer than I anticipated, so I can do things like "good morning" via a voice command and it will play my daily summary.
- codebook 9y ago
  Maybe it's not due to AA but Ford Sync. As far as I know, I only needs to connect my phone using USB regardless of whether the car is powered up or not.
  - guu 9y ago
    I agree, it is probably the OEM implementation. I have used both Carplay and Android Auto with an aftermarket Pioneer head unit and the phone can be plugged in before the car is turned on.
- Zhenya 9y ago
  Which phone are you using?
  - jcastro 9y ago
    Moto G5 Plus.
- canistr 9y ago
  I can echo a similar scenario as above. While plugging in my phone to Android Auto is easy, there is still the time required to allow your phone to transition from WiFi to LTE, back-up-camera enabled when backing out of your garage, and opening up the Android Auto menu (but first I have to tap home and go into it). Overall, in a driving commute of about 25 minutes I have to spend the first 2-4 minutes effectively waiting to configure Android Auto and for it to kick in with the proper signal and menus. It's a hassle for everyday commuting when the purpose of AA is to simplify a lot of the work. The menu systems are also a bit of a pain to navigate for podcasts. So I end up organizing my music/podcasts before I get in the car.
  - ben1040 9y ago
    >While plugging in my phone to Android Auto is easy, there is still the time required to allow your phone to transition from WiFi to LTE Tip: open the Android Auto app on your phone while you're unplugged, go to the settings menu, and choose the "Limit WiFi" option. This way it'll just outright disable WiFi when Android Auto is engaged, so you don't have to wait for it to realize you've driven away from your network.

Orangeair 9y ago

What exactly do you mean by "the whole dance"? I've found Android Auto to be pretty simple to use. There's just one short USB cord I plug in right next to my shifter and I'm done. Everything comes up automatically. This is on a VW Golf, so maybe it's simpler than it is for you in the Focus? Most of the problems I've had have been software bugs. Like this morning when I attempted to send a Hangouts message. The assistant voice made it sound like it worked, but nothing every actually sent. Anyway, I'm not sure a screenless device is really what you want. Most of the appeal of AA is that it uses your regular phone, so it can use your data, read and send message, make calls, etc. Disclaimer: Google employee

jcastro 9y ago
I left more specific feedback in another part of this thread. With regard to the screenless device, I do like having my phone be the centralized device of the entire thing, I just would like to make it a more permanent part of the car so I can just hop in and drive. I am debating trying a spare SIM and an old device and just leaving it in there plugged all the time, but that just introduces an entirely different set of problems.