I’ve a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn’t use a touch screen. It’s all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what’s up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn’t bounce when I went to tap a “button” and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they’re concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It’s really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I’ve seen.
I’ve been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I’m afraid whatever I land on won’t integrate that push wheel control well, because it’s just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don’t know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn’t really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires.
The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I’m not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn’t worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yea, I’m just also generally really disinterested in OEM software, and on principal I believe I should have exclusive rights to my own data and the data of the things I own. It still enrages me that in order to pull data about the car systems that are normally accessible through the headunit, I basically have to decrypt binary signals from the canbus myself, since they intentionally do not make those codes available.
TL:DR, i’ve made my life so much harder with my principles, but I am who I am
I’ve a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn’t use a touch screen. It’s all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what’s up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn’t bounce when I went to tap a “button” and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they’re concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It’s really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I’ve seen.
I’ve been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I’m afraid whatever I land on won’t integrate that push wheel control well, because it’s just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don’t know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn’t really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires. The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I’m not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn’t worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yea, I’m just also generally really disinterested in OEM software, and on principal I believe I should have exclusive rights to my own data and the data of the things I own. It still enrages me that in order to pull data about the car systems that are normally accessible through the headunit, I basically have to decrypt binary signals from the canbus myself, since they intentionally do not make those codes available.
TL:DR, i’ve made my life so much harder with my principles, but I am who I am