how are the head units at this point (late 2018)?

jred721

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I have a phone dedicated to the car just to stay in carplay as much as possible, but even there there is the issue of it failing to connect to carplay.
I brought down how often that happens with a cable change and not using the icloud music library, which means no local playlists, which is a pain.

So many little unpolished things.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that Honda only used this system for a few years before dumping it for a new one entirely.
Guess im just lucky then, I used to have a lot of connectivity issues but the moment I switched to the OEM apple lightning cable all my problems stopped. I do have an issue now and then with apps like spotify just giving me a blank screen, but I just unplug and replug and it does the trick. I honestly think if Honda gave the infotainment systems better internals, half the problems that people have would be gone.
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Billy4202

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I've had fewer issues over time. It's a little slow, but bare in mind that it's running on 7+ year-old Android software. Stability and day-to-day usability are fine.
 

lightthief

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I've had fewer issues over time. It's a little slow, but bare in mind that it's running on 7+ year-old Android software. Stability and day-to-day usability are fine.
So the 7 year old thing.
Cars are on a 5 year cycle.
So they settle on a platform to build from 5 years before launch, and then use that platform throughout the revisions until the next generation.

In an of itself the platform being old shouldn’t prevent the infotainment from delivering on the functions its setting out to deliver.
If anything the inverse should be true.
The bugs should be know.
The code should be stable.

The problem is that what they built here isn’t finished. Why is there an add apps button, but never any apps to add? At least take the time to remove it.

They patched the glaring issues here, locked down some security holes that let people do some hacks, and started with a completely new code base for the insight, accord, and crv, even though physically their infotainments are practically the same. There you finally see the features that have been on other cars in the same category for 5 years. I joined this fourm to see how Honda was going to handle these issues specifically. If they’d commit resources to delivering or just punt.
They very firmly punted, but at least they’ve
fixed thier mistakes. it’s just a shame the car that made them won’t see those fixes for at least another year.

ok. i’ll stop ranting.
fave car i’ve ever had for this infotainment system sticks in my craw.
if they offered an update, even at a dumb price, i’d pay.
 
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Rickmeister 48

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I've had a 17, and an 18 now. Overall, the 18 system SEEMS SO FAR, to be a hair slower, but more stable. I had so many issues with the 17, but they didn't show up till about six months in.
Once in a great while, it seems like I have to touch something a few times to get it to respond.
My one biggest complaint and its only been happening lately, but it did it on both cars, I can't seem to pick up high def radio at all anymore and with Sirius xm, it will just cut out completely a lot, and never did that before. So that may not even be the head unit, but the broadcasting signal.
 
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Superfly

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I just picked up a late 2018 CTR (August manufacturing date) the other night to replace my totaled 2018 CTR (May manufacturing date) and noticed that the infotainment system is less laggy.
 
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carrsteven

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If they would upgrade the HU to 2GB ram over the 1GB it has, it would greatly improve the stability and speed of the HU. Android is a resource hog, it always has been. Phones that ran android 7 years ago, had the SAME issues with stability and speed. They fixed that by increasing the ram in next generation of the phones. Didn't matter about bug fixes because it wasn't specifically the software that was having an issue, it was the software running out of resources that caused the issue.

It also doesn't help that EVERYTHING the head unit does, is run inside one app. The radio is built into the launcher, all of the interfacing with the car is built into the launcher, etc. It's just bad programming design to force the launcher app to be a one size fits all app. If it had been the launcher with the functions separate from it, IE. Separate radio app, separate car interface app, then the head unit would run a lot faster because these could be launched on-the-fly instead of all at once. Also, the 'pretty' honda logo at boot (there are 2, the white android bootlogo, and the gradient app bootlogo) is actually a time waster 'video' for the launcher app. It's an entirely unnecessary bootlogo since android is already booted up and just sitting in standby. The app itself is killed when the radio enters standby just to force the user to push the 'OK' button for the umpteenth time. (We understood the first time we saw it, can we get a checkbox for don't show again please?!)
 
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CivicBuff

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My late build 2018 does not require that I press OK on start up. It will disappear on it's own after about 5 seconds. Is this different on earlier models?
 

lightthief

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My late build 2018 does not require that I press OK on start up. It will disappear on it's own after about 5 seconds. Is this different on earlier models?
No that is the same.
Some people dislike even that wait.
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