t3hub3rk1tten
Senior Member
- Thread starter
- #1
I haven't posted much recently as I was a bit tired of the negativity on the forums. I wanted to share my setup I've been working on though:
I was originally using Bluetooth from my Nexus 6P to play music. I ran into the stuttering issue a lot. It seems to be a problem with I/O to the WiFi and Bluetooth chip. Didn't have the problem with AA, but I didn't want to plug my phone in every time I drove. I drive short distances and I got the Touring because of the "easiness." Touch the door to open, push the button to start, don't bother with wipers, don't bother with AC, etc. I just won't plug in, unless to charge.
For various reasons, I have an extra iPhone 6 16GB and Nexus 5 32GB. So I have tried using both as permanent AA/CarPlay devices. I leave them plugged in the car, usually tucked away under the center console. I don't interact with them while driving except if something goes wrong. It works very well, for both devices. Now I'm using the Nexus 5 and Android Auto exclusively.
I use Hangouts for 99% of my messaging and Spotify for all my music. I also use Google Voice for all my calls, so I can route incoming calls to any phone number I want and make outgoing calls appear to be from my regular number. I also have a WiFi router in my garage.
iPhone 6 and CarPlay
The iPhone was wiped, and I installed Spotify and downloaded all the music I need. Spotify was set to offline. I also set it up to use my phone's WiFi hotspot and the garage WiFi. Few extra apps.
CarPlay is disappointing. For one thing, it's just plain ugly. The interface looks like a tech demo. Icons on a black background. Just not visually appealing, not really playful or sexy. CarPlay also lacks in the easiness factor. Half the time when I started the car, it would jump to the Spotify app. The other half, I would be sitting at the home screen and have to swipe to the second page to get to Spotify (can't rearrange apps), then tap on Spotify. Most of the time the music started playing. CarPlay is really solid to connect when the car starts, never had a problem.
Playing music in Spotify is basically a black screen (with very blacked-out background art you can't make out). In Spotify, you can't do anything except back, play/pause, next. You can pick out playlists and stuff to play from but you can't add something to your songs, make a new station, you can't even turn on Shuffle or Repeat. Spotify was buggy, when I would tell it to shuffle play a playlist, it would play the playlist and not shuffle. Also, randomly the app would forget that I had music downloaded. It would say I'm offline, but all the songs would disappear. As soon as I connected it to WiFi, they appeared and I could go offline. That's Spotify's fault, this may differ depending on your app.
Hangouts doesn't support CarPlay, which is disappointing. I still had my regular phone to use at traffic lights, but it just wasn't as seamless.
Having Siri available was great. I used Apple Maps a few times with no problems. Didn't encounter any problems with battery life while car was off, as I drive every day. Even short drives were enough to charge to 100%. Unfortunately there is no way to automate things on iOS, so even when the car is off the iPhone would stay connected to wifi. I'm not sure how long that would work idle but I don't think it would be more than a few days. Turned off all push notifications and background services.
Nexus 5 and Android Auto
Installed Spotify and downloaded all music. Nexus is running CyanogenMod 13. At first I was worried, because when I used my Nexus 5 the AA interface was kind of sluggish. However, when AA is all the phone is doing, it runs really well.
Android Auto is nice. The interface is really well done, playful, and easy to use. It switches between different themes for day and night. An easiness boost for Android is that every time it starts up, it takes you to the home screen which is basically Google Now. There, things like Spotify show up as well as shortcuts to navigate to work or home, or if you for example have an appointment on your calendar it will offer to navigate you there. Otherwise it will show things like weather. Usually Spotify will start playing immediately. Incoming Hangouts messages show up, and if you tap them they get read out. When using Spotify, I have access to normal options, like turning on and off shuffle, adding songs to "my songs", etc.
The one sore mark is that the Civic head unit connecting with Android Auto isn't perfect. The HU is Android, and it has to start up when you start the car. The boot sequence is pretty short, but it's still there with the Honda logo and all that. To let you use the rear view camera (RVC) faster, there's a special mode called EarlyRVC that gets ready in less than a second from start of the HU. While the system is booting in the background, this barebones interface lets you use the rear camera. You may have noticed this mode, because if you change the HVAC it doesn't show up on screen. There is a bug where if you use this mode really soon after the car starts, it can sometimes cause the connection to fail with the phone. It will usually show up as "Loading..." on the screen and never finish. To connect, you have to replug the USB for the phone.
This sucks, but it's super easy to avoid. If you wait about 4 or 5 seconds from the car starting to put it in reverse, it doesn't happen. Start the car and then put your seat belt on, for example, and you should have no problem. Or, instead of opening your garage, getting in car, and starting, you could get in car, start it, and then use your remote to open the garage. This is kinda lame, but it's so easy to avoid I now don't ever encounter it.
The best thing about Android is the ability to use Tasker. For those unfamiliar, Tasker lets you create actions that run on your phone in response to conditions and events. These tasks can do just about anything you can do on your phone, change settings, send texts, etc. So I set up a task that when the phone is disconnected from power (car turns off) it activates airplane mode, turns off every auto sync and background service, and makes the screen turn off super fast. When it's connected to power, it reverses all that. Android's battery life when you're in airplane mode with everything turned off is insane. It will last for weeks.
One thing I tried at first was using Bluetooth tethering with my main phone. I always have BT on my main phone on, so this would have been a nice way to have the car phone have internet. While it worked and the car phone had internet, it was very slow. Google Voice Search barely worked. Using my phone's hotspot worked though. I also tried using VoIP, using my phone's hotspot. Don't even try it, the built in AA dialer doesn't want to use anything but cellular.
Bluetooth and calls
One downside to this. You can't use AA or CarPlay and your phone's bluetooth at the same time. So you won't receive calls. And because the phone doesn't have service, you can't make calls outbound. For some people, maybe this isn't a big deal. For me, it was, I like to call my parents to catch up when I'm making longer drives.
My solution was simple: get a prepaid SIM for the phone! A lot of people don't know this, but prepaid phone plans are dirt cheap. They may be slow, or have limitations on minutes, but as long as they have a few minutes and a few MBs, they should work. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/nocontract and https://bestmvno.com/cheapest-cell-phone-plans/
After a lot of consideration, I got the T-Mobile $30 plan. It's not the cheapest, but for a little more I get 100 minutes, 5GB LTE data (unlimited throttled after). T-Mobile doesn't count music streaming against your data, so I can stream nonstop with this thing in my car without using that data. If you already have a family plan with a carrier, you may actually get a good deal on an extra line. My regular phone plan is paid for by my work, so I couldn't do that.
Because I use Google Voice, when I get a call, it also rings the car phone's number. Also because I use Google Voice, when I make calls outbound, they show up as coming from my Google number, even when I'm using the car phone. This was the big reason I chose AA over CarPlay. On the iPhone, you can't make outbound calls with the regular dialer, you have to use Google's app. On Android, any call you make goes out using Google Voice.
I also have Tasker set up so that when it's connected, it turns on a WiFi hotspot. So now I have a hotspot in my car that turns on automatically with 5GB of data. Not too shabby, lets my girlfriend use her iPad in the passenger seat. If I need a hotspot, I can grab the phone out of the car and bring it. The battery will last for almost a full day and I don't worry about my main phone dying.
Conclusion
That's a lot more text than I expected to write.
tl;dr I hop in my car, and Android Auto starts up right away. All my Google Now stuff are there for quick navigation. I can use Google Voice Search all the time with my phone in my pocket. Spotify streams music. I have a hotspot in the car. I rarely even see the normal interface (which I do like). It works very well.
If you're thinking of doing this, I highly recommend you buy a used Nexus 5. Get a really cheap one with scratches on the screen and stuff like this one, you won't be looking at it. Prices look to be around $100 or less. Don't go buying the absolute cheapest Chinese Android phone, as it may not work with AA. I also recommend only using a Nexus, because it's better supported by Google.
Update 9/1/2016 (~6 months)
Don't really have much to say, my Nexus has been working great. Highly recommend it still!
I was originally using Bluetooth from my Nexus 6P to play music. I ran into the stuttering issue a lot. It seems to be a problem with I/O to the WiFi and Bluetooth chip. Didn't have the problem with AA, but I didn't want to plug my phone in every time I drove. I drive short distances and I got the Touring because of the "easiness." Touch the door to open, push the button to start, don't bother with wipers, don't bother with AC, etc. I just won't plug in, unless to charge.
For various reasons, I have an extra iPhone 6 16GB and Nexus 5 32GB. So I have tried using both as permanent AA/CarPlay devices. I leave them plugged in the car, usually tucked away under the center console. I don't interact with them while driving except if something goes wrong. It works very well, for both devices. Now I'm using the Nexus 5 and Android Auto exclusively.
I use Hangouts for 99% of my messaging and Spotify for all my music. I also use Google Voice for all my calls, so I can route incoming calls to any phone number I want and make outgoing calls appear to be from my regular number. I also have a WiFi router in my garage.
iPhone 6 and CarPlay
The iPhone was wiped, and I installed Spotify and downloaded all the music I need. Spotify was set to offline. I also set it up to use my phone's WiFi hotspot and the garage WiFi. Few extra apps.
CarPlay is disappointing. For one thing, it's just plain ugly. The interface looks like a tech demo. Icons on a black background. Just not visually appealing, not really playful or sexy. CarPlay also lacks in the easiness factor. Half the time when I started the car, it would jump to the Spotify app. The other half, I would be sitting at the home screen and have to swipe to the second page to get to Spotify (can't rearrange apps), then tap on Spotify. Most of the time the music started playing. CarPlay is really solid to connect when the car starts, never had a problem.
Playing music in Spotify is basically a black screen (with very blacked-out background art you can't make out). In Spotify, you can't do anything except back, play/pause, next. You can pick out playlists and stuff to play from but you can't add something to your songs, make a new station, you can't even turn on Shuffle or Repeat. Spotify was buggy, when I would tell it to shuffle play a playlist, it would play the playlist and not shuffle. Also, randomly the app would forget that I had music downloaded. It would say I'm offline, but all the songs would disappear. As soon as I connected it to WiFi, they appeared and I could go offline. That's Spotify's fault, this may differ depending on your app.
Hangouts doesn't support CarPlay, which is disappointing. I still had my regular phone to use at traffic lights, but it just wasn't as seamless.
Having Siri available was great. I used Apple Maps a few times with no problems. Didn't encounter any problems with battery life while car was off, as I drive every day. Even short drives were enough to charge to 100%. Unfortunately there is no way to automate things on iOS, so even when the car is off the iPhone would stay connected to wifi. I'm not sure how long that would work idle but I don't think it would be more than a few days. Turned off all push notifications and background services.
Nexus 5 and Android Auto
Installed Spotify and downloaded all music. Nexus is running CyanogenMod 13. At first I was worried, because when I used my Nexus 5 the AA interface was kind of sluggish. However, when AA is all the phone is doing, it runs really well.
Android Auto is nice. The interface is really well done, playful, and easy to use. It switches between different themes for day and night. An easiness boost for Android is that every time it starts up, it takes you to the home screen which is basically Google Now. There, things like Spotify show up as well as shortcuts to navigate to work or home, or if you for example have an appointment on your calendar it will offer to navigate you there. Otherwise it will show things like weather. Usually Spotify will start playing immediately. Incoming Hangouts messages show up, and if you tap them they get read out. When using Spotify, I have access to normal options, like turning on and off shuffle, adding songs to "my songs", etc.
The one sore mark is that the Civic head unit connecting with Android Auto isn't perfect. The HU is Android, and it has to start up when you start the car. The boot sequence is pretty short, but it's still there with the Honda logo and all that. To let you use the rear view camera (RVC) faster, there's a special mode called EarlyRVC that gets ready in less than a second from start of the HU. While the system is booting in the background, this barebones interface lets you use the rear camera. You may have noticed this mode, because if you change the HVAC it doesn't show up on screen. There is a bug where if you use this mode really soon after the car starts, it can sometimes cause the connection to fail with the phone. It will usually show up as "Loading..." on the screen and never finish. To connect, you have to replug the USB for the phone.
This sucks, but it's super easy to avoid. If you wait about 4 or 5 seconds from the car starting to put it in reverse, it doesn't happen. Start the car and then put your seat belt on, for example, and you should have no problem. Or, instead of opening your garage, getting in car, and starting, you could get in car, start it, and then use your remote to open the garage. This is kinda lame, but it's so easy to avoid I now don't ever encounter it.
The best thing about Android is the ability to use Tasker. For those unfamiliar, Tasker lets you create actions that run on your phone in response to conditions and events. These tasks can do just about anything you can do on your phone, change settings, send texts, etc. So I set up a task that when the phone is disconnected from power (car turns off) it activates airplane mode, turns off every auto sync and background service, and makes the screen turn off super fast. When it's connected to power, it reverses all that. Android's battery life when you're in airplane mode with everything turned off is insane. It will last for weeks.
One thing I tried at first was using Bluetooth tethering with my main phone. I always have BT on my main phone on, so this would have been a nice way to have the car phone have internet. While it worked and the car phone had internet, it was very slow. Google Voice Search barely worked. Using my phone's hotspot worked though. I also tried using VoIP, using my phone's hotspot. Don't even try it, the built in AA dialer doesn't want to use anything but cellular.
Bluetooth and calls
One downside to this. You can't use AA or CarPlay and your phone's bluetooth at the same time. So you won't receive calls. And because the phone doesn't have service, you can't make calls outbound. For some people, maybe this isn't a big deal. For me, it was, I like to call my parents to catch up when I'm making longer drives.
My solution was simple: get a prepaid SIM for the phone! A lot of people don't know this, but prepaid phone plans are dirt cheap. They may be slow, or have limitations on minutes, but as long as they have a few minutes and a few MBs, they should work. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/nocontract and https://bestmvno.com/cheapest-cell-phone-plans/
After a lot of consideration, I got the T-Mobile $30 plan. It's not the cheapest, but for a little more I get 100 minutes, 5GB LTE data (unlimited throttled after). T-Mobile doesn't count music streaming against your data, so I can stream nonstop with this thing in my car without using that data. If you already have a family plan with a carrier, you may actually get a good deal on an extra line. My regular phone plan is paid for by my work, so I couldn't do that.
Because I use Google Voice, when I get a call, it also rings the car phone's number. Also because I use Google Voice, when I make calls outbound, they show up as coming from my Google number, even when I'm using the car phone. This was the big reason I chose AA over CarPlay. On the iPhone, you can't make outbound calls with the regular dialer, you have to use Google's app. On Android, any call you make goes out using Google Voice.
I also have Tasker set up so that when it's connected, it turns on a WiFi hotspot. So now I have a hotspot in my car that turns on automatically with 5GB of data. Not too shabby, lets my girlfriend use her iPad in the passenger seat. If I need a hotspot, I can grab the phone out of the car and bring it. The battery will last for almost a full day and I don't worry about my main phone dying.
Conclusion
That's a lot more text than I expected to write.
tl;dr I hop in my car, and Android Auto starts up right away. All my Google Now stuff are there for quick navigation. I can use Google Voice Search all the time with my phone in my pocket. Spotify streams music. I have a hotspot in the car. I rarely even see the normal interface (which I do like). It works very well.
If you're thinking of doing this, I highly recommend you buy a used Nexus 5. Get a really cheap one with scratches on the screen and stuff like this one, you won't be looking at it. Prices look to be around $100 or less. Don't go buying the absolute cheapest Chinese Android phone, as it may not work with AA. I also recommend only using a Nexus, because it's better supported by Google.
Update 9/1/2016 (~6 months)
Don't really have much to say, my Nexus has been working great. Highly recommend it still!
Sponsored
Last edited: