When researching family cars recently, I literally avoided the Honda CR-V just because the AC was controlled via the touch screen.
There's a "Climate" button, which brings up a screen on the display where you can turn the aircon on/off, up/down, etc. It's just horrendous. Give me my dials.
My worst gripe - which all modern cars have - is the aggressive bluetooth auto-connect. If my wife takes the car, it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing. If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them. I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts (no pun intended).
The other day, I was taking a call on my iPhone, over the earpiece, in my office suite's lobby.
The connection was rock solid, and then out of nowhere the audio just disappeared, without warning … but the call didn't drop. A few seconds later it returned. The person on the other end said they heard what sounded like a child for a second. I was perplexed.
Fast forward a week, and this happens again. I look at the call screen, and notice that the audio is being routed to Bluetooth? Opening it, it says I'm connected to my car. Not possible: I'm here, in my office, took a bus in.
I look up, baffled, and happen to see my wife drive by, 40 feet away, through a concrete wall and some glass.
I don't think my iPhone has this, but my 2018 Škoda has this. There are exactly these two checkboxes, they say something like "phone" and "audio" and they do exactly that. And this isn't even when pairing, you can bring up the menu anytime and just enable or disable each functionality. I usually drive, so we connect my girlfriend's phone to "audio" so she can be the DJ while I leave my phone connected to "phone" so I can take calls.
(My car as a speakerphone works beautifully. It's not even about the speakerphone, more about the good microphone, the ability to call someone, adjust the volume and then hang up without having to take your hands off the wheel.)
Bluetooth on iOS is a mess. If you are paired but not connected to a device, all you can do is forget it.
If you are paired and connected, you can:
* Change the name of the device as it appears on your phone
* If it's an audio device change its function (for example "car stereo", so iPhone will not automatically decrease volume if you put the volume to max which it will do for "headphones", as you probably control volume from the car stereo itself)
Is this not a thing? My phone has the option to disable phone calls but leave audio enabled. Also my car now asks before transferring a call in progress from the phone to the car instead of doing it automatically when it's in range.
All Android phones have exactly that selection when connecting to a BT speaker. It explicitly says if you're connected for audio and/or speech and you can set your preferences.
I actually take calls over car audio frequently. But only when I am inside the car, obviously. When car's Bluetooth tries to take over from the garage while I'm inside the house, that's hugely annoying.
And it's funny how quite a few times people don't realise how their conversation is perfectly audible (and even quite intelligible) outside of the vehicle due to some combination of either bad soundproofing/speaker placement and/or excessive interior volume levels.
My phone connection is screwed up in my 2012 Honda Civic so all the caller hears is a high pitched screeching sound. I have not found a way to turn off calls on the Honda system or on my iPhone and it's so frustrating! Especially when calling out because you can't switch to using the phone's speakers/mic until the call has been answered. This means there is always a 10-20 second bit of time where I have to shout my apologies until I can get it changed. Or I have to turn bluetooth off entirely and it takes a minute to get it connected again after my phone call.
I had a similar problem borrowing my wife's NC headphones. Months later I discovered Sennheiser BTD 600 which is basically an audio-only BT dongle (so it shows up as a USB headset). Now whoever wants to use the headphones just plugs in the dongle (it has both USB-A and USB-C). Works without a fuss.
Ironically, perhaps, the car everyone must be complaining about in this thread introduced call transfer controls that avoids just this. Through an OTA update.
Yes, it's Tesla.
If you're already on a call when the car connects to the phone, you must press an on screen button to transfer the call to the car audio.
(Bloody brilliant, if you ask me; and also something that couldn't be introduced to existing cars post release that were buttons only. I was quite anti-screen before I got mine, but now that I've gotten firmly used to it - and seeing enhancements every few months, I'm quite happy. I would like more generic mappable buttons on the steering wheel, but it's not a deal breaker).
I was sort of in the anti-touchscreen camp too, but the early 2020 Tesla has just the right controls on the wheel and stocks that I don’t mind the screen. And, also, the big screen for maps and backup cameras is really nice.
The automatic (#1) steering wheel heater would help you with that, it's the one feature I didn't know how much I needed. And that's just from Melbourne, Aus, where it gets down to about -1c to 2-3c (30-37f) at the most. :-)
I don't find myself needing to dig into any menus whilst driving. I use voice control to change music etc, and I tend to enter my nav at the beginning of my trips. You can still control volume and pause with steering wheel buttons.
I'd like call answering and hang-up buttons as well for the steering wheel.
As a Fanatec Podium owner/sim-racer I'm used to having more physical buttons and there's definitely room for more underneath + on the back. I would like some for immediately folding mirrors and a few other functions.
#1) Automation of steering wheel warmer was a recent OTA; previously it was manual.
> In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limited to 2.5 milliwatts, giving it a very short range of up to 10 metres (33 ft).
But that's not really how radiation works. You can transmit more by using more power, sure. The louder you shout, the easier it is for people to hear you.
You can also receive more by having a bigger antenna. The harder you listen, the more you can hear, regardless of limits on source volume.
So the easiest way to explain this would be to guess that the cars are using bigger Bluetooth antennae than usual.
Antennas are not amplifiers. As long as the antenna is correctly tuned to the impedance of the transmitter output stage, it will radiate most of the power of the transmitter, but cannot exceed 100% (it is a passive element, and exceeding 100% would break the laws of conservation of energy). In this case the size of the antenna does not affect the total power emitted and there will be no range gains from using a bigger antenna.
What the antenna size/shape can affect is the directionality of the beam. By emitting the same power directionally, you can increase the range in some directions at the expense of reducing the range in all other directions. But the total power would be still the same.
Also the reception gain is actually the same thing as emission gain. You cannot make a passive antenna that has better reception without making it more directional, which means worse reception from some other directions. You cannot improve reception from all directions by making a bigger antenna.
Of course a bigger antenna can pick up more power. Just imagine placing two antennas instead of one. Each one receives a certain amount of power. Two will receive the sum of that power.
That doesn't work that way. If you sum the signals from two antennas, those signals would differ in phase depending on the direction of the incoming wave. For some directions they will add up, for others they will cancel out. That would change the directionality of such antenna system, which is exactly what I have written above - you gain somewhere, but lose elsewhere. Antenna gain is a function of only its directionality. A theoretical, ideally symmetric antenna has gain 0 dBi, regardless of its size.
But then it is no longer a passive element. Sure, you can use N antennas connected to some electronics that adjust the phases dynamically so they always add up. This is what modern "beam-forming" wifi routers do these days to improve range.
Bigger antennas can positively pick up more signal. The Mars rovers do not have megawatt radio transmitters, instead we use enormous antennas on Earth.
We use antennas which are incredibly directional for Mars rovers. Compare a regular lightbulb vs a flashlight with a lens. Total light emitted might not be that different, but the intensity at the same distance (or how far the light reaches) is because the beam is focused. That works the same with receiving signal: a giant dish will focus the signal to a central point, and a Yagi-Uda antenna will use a similar phenomenom to focus the signal on a dipole.
Ofcourse car bluetooth presumably has an antenna that radiates roughly sphere-like, it wouldn’t make sense to pick up signals on the right of the car with a dish or something.
To that end, bigger antenna doesn’t do a whole lot to boost signal. There might be other factors at play increasing the reception though, such as signal polarity and whether the length of the antenna matches the frequency in a correct way (or is some multiplier of it). For Bluetooth that’d be roughly 13cm or 6.5 or so.
Because it wouldn't be as directional as a big dish. The relative size of the dish vs wavelength plays a factor here. If you make a dish thats the size of the wavelength it wouldn't even work as a dish, it would receive the signal from all angles. This is also why high gain antennas for higher frequencies can be much smaller than for e.g long waves.
It works two ways: one is that you can go lower in frequency (e.g. bigger wavelength) if your dish is bigger, the other is that you just capture more of the signal. If you take light as a metaphor, a bigger lens will just provide more 'signal' at the focal point.
Bluetooth from an regulations point of view has the same power limits as wifi (it's in the same 2.4 Ghz ISM band). In practice Bluetooth devices are small which limits both antenna size and desired power consumption so they tend to operate at a shorter range. If one end is a car, which has none of these limits, and the other end is a phone with a reasonably well designed antenna, you can get decent range.
I turn it off on my phone. Don't know if there's a setting in the car. I'm sure you can rip out some Bluetooth receiver in the car if you're really determined
And mine won't even hold a steady connection from a few feet away! Not without having to "turn it off - and turn it on again", at least once every few days.
My Mazda CX-5 has buttons for A/C control but I'm still annoyed because my '99 Civic had knobs which are infinitely better. One for temp, one for fan. That's all I need. Don't want no stinking buttons for fan intensity in a row of 100 other buttons.
My old cx-5 has knobs, I love them, but the rest of the system sucks (notably, if you allow the car to download your contacts it will take several minutes at each start to allow you to play audio)
This! My car automatically syncs my contacts (which I have never used) once it connects my Phone, instead of,like, playing the radio, allowing me to call, or show me the goddamn GPS route.
This is why I always turn off Bluetooth when watching porn, otherwise my phone auto-connects to my wife’s Mini Cooper when she drives into the garage. DAMN YOU AUTO-CONNECT!!
I believe it's controlled from the phone side of things.
I'll listen to some music, watch a video, whatever on my phone. I'll pause it, turn off my bluetooth headphones.
Then some time much later, I'll get a phone call, turn my headphones on. When the call ends, suddenly what I had been playing starts playing again through my headphones. It's been a wide variety of apps, not one single thing: podcasts, youtube videos, videos on webpages, google music, spotify.
The pseudocode I had in my head was the phone subsystem had something like:
What’s hilarious is the $10 Bluetooth retrofit I got on Amazon in my 2011 car doesn’t even do this. It just works as a Bluetooth speaker but doesn’t start playing and connects only when I turn on the car. Simple and easy to use.
I think this is the majority of the problem(s) with bluetooth, bad defaults.
In cars, second issue is no button to switch on/off, instead either the overly complex pairing process or the overly aggressive one.
In phones, its non standard playback - I'm in the camp that audio should pause/resume for calls, and calls should always be routed through the phone you use.
If you get a call while on the road either it should do nothing (no connect to car or auto route) or it should be hands free, per phone preference (no fiddling with settings in the car dash, period). This mostly works with some setups, but there's no easy config option and phones don't all have easily customized UIs. Your phone should probably be in charge of the volume too - some car I have gotten into try to rupture my eardrums, others seem to be on whisperquiet and need considerable cranking. Oh, and there should be a BT device priority, there usually isn't and sometimes my headphones get usurped by the car.
My solution so far if I want BT is just to use headphones, and unpair all devices from the dash. I would use in car BT more if they worked in a reliably similar fashion.
A standardized "ask the user" protocol might help some. I don't think Apple or Android play are valid alternatives, though - there are legit use cases for BT interactions that don't involve phones at all, making over complex top heavy proprietary protocols the norm just destandardizes things more, it doesn't make them better.
I don't know how to do this, but drivers should never have access to phone calls. You are driving and should not have that distraction. I've never seen someone drive safely and talk on the phone at the same time. Many say they are safe while in the phone, but independent observation says they are not.
Ironic, I'm /completely/ the opposite. My radio cannot connect and start playing music fast enough.
The radio stations in my area are all total and utter shit, and I'd rather listen to white noise while I wait for the BT to connect and start playing my music. I find it difficult to even listen to a radio station for a minute these days. It's now permanently set to a dead frequency.
My old car had an aftermarket head unit that would stay on the BT mode when I start the car, not making a sound while it's connecting. Current car always defaults to FM, and only when it's connected then I can go to the BT source option and get music from my phone. It's horrible!
I like to listen to podcasts or audiobooks while I drive. Usually I do this through Bluetooth.
Occasionally I want to use Android Auto so that the maps will show up on the car's screen. I have to plug in my phone through USB to make this happen. The audiobook will now play over the USB connection.
When I disconnect from USB or when I turn off the car, it switches from my audibook to SiriusXM ads. At twice the volume. It's incredibly obnoxious.
For my car, I solved the radio issue by plugging in a headphone plug (no cable attached) into the aux input. The car prioritizes android auto/BT->aux input->XM/FM, so by having this plugged in the radio never plays automatically. It just starts on aux (no sound), then switches to Android Auto once it's connected.
My 'solution' is: _Maximum_ 1 (one, one!) Bluetooth 'master' (e.g. phone) device per 'slave device' (e.g. headphones, speaker). That means, if your friend asks if they can connect to your speaker the answer is "Sorry, no.". If you want to use headphones on your laptop and your phone, you need to buy two headphones, etc.
For really problematic appliances, like cars, I just deactivate Bluetooth. Not worth the pain. For audio in the car, I use a portable speaker. :shrug:
[1] Proof: Many people can't even pronounce it
[2] I've bought two, different, new 3k bucks computers that never got the Bluetooth work with anything (yes, they run Windows).
[3] I have a 200 bucks Victron SmartShunt in my van to monitor my battery. Can't connect to it anymore with any device (yes, its Bluetooth). Will have to buy an expensive external display (at least that exists) and crawl on the floor to read it.
You read my rant this far? Congrats. Have a nice day :-)
It's all in the implementation (which is not to say that the standard isn't contributing to poor implementations).
If you believe hassle-free multi-device Bluetooth is a pipe dream, you have not been experiencing the magic of a ZMK firmware keyboard roaming between devices with high reliability and practically no delay.
(Less blissful and smooth if you want to pair a Windows dual-boot system as a single device tho :p)
I'm willing to accept climate controls within a touch interface so long as the "auto" mode is as competent as the auto mode in my 2013 BMW 1-series. I set it to 22°C at medium intensity. It's rare that I ever have to touch the climate controls, and exceedingly rare that I need to touch the climate controls while in motion. The only manual intervention I perform toggling "max AC" for a few minutes on an especially hot day — and that's pressed while not in motion.
I've used "auto" modes in many cars and they're often rubbish. For example blasting unpleasant hot air in your face if you ask for 22°C and it's 21°C outside. Whereas the "stratification" feature of BMW climate control means the upper vents will never blow hot air in your face unless you override it.
I've had an external heater heating the inside of my car and the engine for 2 hours. Then I start the car with AC set to 22C and instantly I'm blasted with -20C air from the outside.
Why?
The Toyota Prius was the first car I owned that actually waited for the air to be the correct temperature before opening the ducts. The same worked in the summer, if the car was already cooler than the outside air, it wouldn't do anything until the AC had enough time to cool.
FWIW - just bought a 23 CRV for my wife because of the abundance of analog controls. Not sure what on screen display you were seeing, we use the knobs exclusively.
> Plus, while there is a climate button and fan speed button, as well as dials for the temperature settings, you still have to go through the screen to control whether the air conditioner is on or off, and also which ventilation is active. Odd.
I have a 2016 Civic, it's almost identical to the video. All I can say is this is such a non-issue: The "auto" mode they implemented works really well.
I use the temperature knob pretty much exclusively. If it's hot, the A/C comes on. If it's cold, it doesn't. If the windshield needs defrosting, you press that button and.. it defrosts, then press "auto" to get back. I've literally never manually changed the A/C setting, and once or maybe twice in 5 years of ownership have I manually adjusted vents.
The (physical) recirculate button is occasionally useful to manually if you're driving through dust/smoke/smell. But I'll also note the use of this with A/C is automatic: if it's really hot out or you turn the temp down really low, it'll automatically turn on recirculate (so it's cooling the already-cool inside air), but if it's able to use outside fresh air it'll do that instead. This is another thing that Just Works and I basically don't have to think about.
Remote start is similarly smart: When it's cold out, it turns on the defrost and heats the seats up. When it's hot, it runs the A/C. Either way when you get in it's usually already comfortable and it resumes whatever mode and temperature it was set to last time you drove -- and on only a mildly warm day, that might mean A/C isn't on. Manual control of A/C is just something you never need to do.
Sorry, but Honda absolutely nailed it on their climate control.
The lack of a physical volume knob, on the other hand...
"and once or maybe twice in 5 years of ownership have I manually adjusted vents."
I'm going to guess you daily drive mostly and don't pickup many groceries then, and probably don't have a wife/kids.
Blasting heat is usefull when e.g. you don't have windows, blasting cold is usefull when you have raw meat in the back and you don't feel like freezing too.
Or, you drive with someone with larger/smaller body mass or metabolism, you want to blast cold air, they want to be warm (adding/removing layers is not always an option).
There are numerous ways auto mode falls apart here, there are probably others I am not thinking of...I do know that when I take cars that have an auto mode in them it can be nice, but I usually get annoyed with them because something (blast of air, heat through the windshield) messes it up and I just want "cool" or "hot" air not to fiddle with bad UIs on dimly lit displays I can't see in the glare from the snow/blue sky to figure out the "right" temp to reconfigure too...
The "dual climate" does work decently well, though we don't actually use it that often. Seat warmers do a better job if you're actually cold (and my wife usually puts hers way higher than mine).
> Blasting heat is usefull when e.g. you don't have windows, blasting cold is usefull when you have raw meat in the back and you don't feel like freezing too.
You can still "blast" heat or cool: by turning the temperature way up or down it goes to "MAX" (I don't recall exactly, but something like below 16 or above 25C) and the fan will also run at full speed.
I'm not sure how manually "blasting cold" to keep raw meat in the back cold also doesn't freeze you in the front, or what that has to do with auto mode, but we typically don't have groceries in the car for more than about 20 minutes and don't worry about it. I know people who have a much longer trip to get groceries and they use a plug-in cooler; that seems like a more sensible option.
> auto mode [...] messes it up and I just want "cool" or "hot" air not to fiddle with bad UIs on dimly lit displays I can't see in the glare from the snow/blue sky to figure out the "right" temp to reconfigure too...
Just not reality, in my experience. Auto mode just works. I've been in other cars where it's bad so I understand where you're coming from. I adjust a couple degrees up or down, usually based on what we're wearing, and that's it -- and no need to use display or touchscreen for this.
On the display: About the only time it's hard to read is if there's direct sunlight coming through a non-tinted window. I usually drive with polarized sunglasses and then it's basically never an issue at all.
> I'm not sure how manually "blasting cold" to keep raw meat in the back cold also doesn't freeze you in the front, or what that has to do with auto mode, but we typically don't have groceries in the car for more than about 20 minutes and don't worry about it. I know people who have a much longer trip to get groceries and they use a plug-in cooler; that seems like a more sensible option.
Ofc you can have a cooler, but that eats up space, and not all grocery trips are planned. Re 20 min - sounds like you are lucky - if you get into a traffic jam you might get stuck.
How it helps - not a universal feature but you can often adjust heat/cool for back/front, I've also seen it where each seat gets their own climate control knobs.
Regarding MAX - that's nice, but that's not auto, which was my point.
And yeah glasses definitely help - I love my transitions for that reason. But display tech matters here - glossy vs matted, and in my experience glossy holds up a bit better under sun while matted holds up better to e.g. night city driving. Backlights are important too - but again to my point this is all overcomplicated and a knob is just easier/cheaper/less prone to breakage.
It's nice you have an auto mode that 'works great' but as you admit there are a fair number of cars where that's just not true. I suspect in part that's because this is a difficult problem, that is partly self mfg. And I don't think most people at dealerships have time to test it to the degree you seem to have (although you didn't mention how it handles in open air, i.e. with sunroof or retractable hood) - a knob is something I can test in 5 min and know it "just works".
You might want to look at tasker to have it enable Bluetooth when you're not at home or something similar.
Also, on most cars you can change the priority of phones, moving yours down would help.
There is a magic solution. It's called "Ask the user". All these companies think they know what's best for users, with their minimal settings, AI, and auto-magic this-that. Just ask.
"Hey, last time you drove in me you were listening to music via bluetooth. I found the following _two_ devices that I can connect to. Whuch one do you want?"
Perfect solution for the touch screen. Show a bunch of fat icons for all the found and paired devices. Usually it'll be 2-3 devices. Make it easy to tap your option as you are getting settled in the car.
You know I tried to think of a legit case where screens are better - if I could get engine details that'd be rad but not actually that useful, weather might be nice as well but actually no while I'm driving I'd prefer just to ask my car or phone to tell me, maps are nice but really that can be done better by a GPS box with updatable maps/software (I own a car that has a nav system built in that is now non functional due to age, plus while it worked it was wildly out of date), rear view camera is nice but actually you could put that in the back or on the vehicle ceiling, it's safer to turn around and actually look, movies and games are not safe, and everything else is just text e.g. audio info, but you could get away with a couple of those old scrolling tickers.
I think you are right, we should be demanding cars with zero or very little dash at all.
Then I need to take my phone out of my pocket, find somewhere to put it where I can fiddle with the screen and change tracks while driving. Not ideal...
I have a wireless CarPlay dongle. If you don’t do anything it connects to the last used device if it can find it in 15 seconds or so. Otherwise it connects to any remembered device, and you can pick which one if you have one to prioritize.
The other day my mom was at our house, parked next to me. She got in her car to leave at the same time I did. I pulled out my phone and put on some music - noting that it was weird that I needed to do anything at all, typically it just resumes playing as soon as it connects to Bluetooth.
But I didn't get any audio. That's weird. Until she drove away and the music started playing through my phone's speaker a few seconds later, and I realized that it connected to the wrong head unit.
Buy two of the same headphone, watch it not work because the software differentiates on the label not the MAC, and never asks you or auto labels the one you connected to...
Not a BT problem so much as a bad software pattern. I solve this by naming my devices uniquely.
> it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing
If it's an iPhone you could use automations (Shortcuts app which is preinstalled) to auto-pause music whenever it connects to bluetooth and launches CarPlay. I have done it and works like charm.
> If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them.
Man the bluetooth protocol really is something. Never connects when you want it to, won't pair or unpair, but when you don't want to use it it'll force a connect.
And the thing is practically wifi, I am always at a loss as to how did they manage to mess it up so badly.
> I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts
Does this actually happen even if you're using bluetooth headphones? Or just wired headphones.
Because if it's bluetooth headphones that's pretty surprising.
If you mean you're using wired headphones, I realize this is obvious, but you can just turn bluetooth off on your phone when you're not using it. Arguably, you should, since bluetooth drains the battery for no reason and leads to more electronmagnetic 'noise' in the house (interfering with other bluetooth devices) as well as draining the battery on your phone, and possibly having negative effects on your health if you talk while holding your phone to your head
Ironically, the last time my family purchased a "newer" car (2015), we avoided the Ford Flex and instead purchased a Honda Pilot because the Pilot didn't have a touchscreen for anything. We currently have a 2022 Nissan Altima as a rental (one of the kids totaled the beater 2004 Subaru Forester), and while climate controls still use buttons and knobs, everything else is controlled via a tablet-like touchscreen. I hate it.
The sibling comments here are hilarious, but I actually prefer the Bluetooth auto-connect. "When it works" it's even better than a headphone jack. There is definitely more room for customization of the nuance, though. I could easily see a per-device setting on the phone to allow it to pair automatically or manually.
Extending this topic, I've also had my phone calls hijacked by my wife who has just started the engine and is about to drive out. Happened to her when I took the car too. It brings a great deal of confusion as to wtf happened to our phone calls.
I always wondered why they couldn't prioritize devices close to the system over others
All I want on my phone is the ability to NOT auto-connect to Bluetooth devices that are in range. It infuriates me. It should be a simple binary toggle for each device, and yet it doesn't exist. At least not on Android. How does this not exist yet? It should have been part of the original spec decades ago.
And this is why open ecosystems are better for the customer. If the software in the car was more open - even just as much as android - someone would write an app for that.
I hate the touchscreen on my HRV. Thankfully I almost never use it and most controls are buttons and dials but I agree it would be a deal breaker if everything was touch based.
There's a "Climate" button, which brings up a screen on the display where you can turn the aircon on/off, up/down, etc. It's just horrendous. Give me my dials.
My worst gripe - which all modern cars have - is the aggressive bluetooth auto-connect. If my wife takes the car, it will automatically connect to my phone in the house and start playing whatever was last playing. If I'm using headphones, it will just pinch the audio from them. I cannot disable this. Drives me absolutely nuts (no pun intended).