I currently have a 6s but want to upgrade to an XR but one thing has me concerned. One of my vehicles has an aftermarket GPS head unit with bluetooth but does not have a steering wheel button to activate hands free calling. With my 6s I can just grab the phone, unlock with touch ID, then hold the home button down to activate hands free voice commands, all without taking my eyes off the road or other hand off the wheel. How can we do similar with an XR? I don't want to have to take sunglasses off and look at the phone to open it... too distracting. Entering a PIN is even worse. Is there a way to just hold a button down to activate hands free calling without opening the phone?
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iPhone XR Driving with Face ID
- Thread starter raylo32
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My XS Max recognizes my face even with dark sunglasses on. My only issue with it is sometimes I have to move it closer to my face or aimed in my face direction. For example when it’s laying on a desk or table when I could just reach to my previous iPhones and touch the home button. In my vehicles the iPhone is always in a holder and sometimes I have to move my face closer to it. If the glasses are a concern you could set up the second Face ID with your glasses on. I don’t have an answer to your last question about holding a button down, maybe you could set up a shortcut and use Siri.
a) What your are describing for your 6s is not hands free.
b) You can use “Hey Siri” without unlocking phone. That’s the only true hands free.
c) You can press the side button to start Siri without unlocking.
d) FaceID does unlock for me without a problem even with sunglasses on.
e) I have my phone on a dashboard mount. Unlocking with FaceID to me is faster and less distracting then with TouchID.
Good point. I was one of the landscape mode users. With the XS Max I indeed switched the orientation to Portrait orientation.
I've had a lot of issues getting Face ID to work in my car. I leave my phone in a holder at about arms length, depending on the conditions (sun in face or on the phone for example) it struggles to read it, much of the time I end up having to put the passcode in which is unfortunate. My 8 Plus was much easier because I could feel for the home button and use it that way, it was also safer because I didn't have to stare at it.
Is there a quick shortcut to turn this off and on? If not it would be a PITA to do every time.
You can leave a GPS app open and running. Your iPhone won't go to sleep if Waze is actively running.
That's fine, but it's probably easier to open a GPS app and leave it on instead of finding and toggling the auto-lock function.
It doesn't have to be a gps/mapping app either. You could open youtube and leave it open. The point is that you want to keep the phone from auto-locking so that you can easily invoke Siri or whatever.
Any new iPhone today will allow you to do this simply by saying "Hey Siri" - For basics like placing phone calls, reading and responding to texts and playing music, you shouldn't need to touch (or look at) the phone at all. Hope this helps.
iOS 13 will include a feature set that allows you to by-pass the auto-lock by designating trusted connections. Until then this definitely is something I've been struggling with myself as well.
Yes, I saw that in an earlier reply. But wish we could change the wake phrase/words to something custom. Not liking the "hey, Siri" thing.
Apple Watch with OS5 doesn't require "Hey, Siri". This is what I use in the car. Raise my watch with "Call ...". It will transfer automatically to the active Bluetooth connected to the phone, mostly I use an AirPod or at times car Bluetooth.
I belive this is only for the Watch 3 and later. My watch 2 does not support this.
Nice!!!
Well, cool then. I had a lot of trouble getting directions from my iPhone while driving until I realized I could just use Face ID to unlock the iPhone and don't need to swipe up too to get to the Home screen. The only thing I didn't like about this is that I had to take my eyes off the road to quickly look at the iPhone before it would unlock. So I went into Settings --> Face ID & Passcode --> and turned off "Require Attention for Face ID." Now I just need to remember to hold up my iPhone to my face before I ask Siri for directions. It is still a hassle but not where near as big a hassle as it was before. It is still dangerous if I happen to drop the iPhone while fumbling for it while keeping my eyes on the road, but a holder might help. That's my next thing.
