Pioneer Unveils New Aftermarket CarPlay Receivers, Including First Single-DIN Model For Older Vehicles

[Krevnik]

That's interesting. I'll have to contact Pioneer to confirm.

The reason I was curious is that I've test driven a lot of cars recently. Surprisingly, very few have an adequate place to stow a smartphone! To use CarPlay, you have to connect with a USB cord. The place where you rest the phone would normally compromise the phone's GPS performance. Yet Apple Maps worked as expected.

Well, if the car doesn't have the receiver for GPS, it will use the Phone's GPS. So it's mostly seamless unless the head unit has bugs and happens to pass the bad data onto the iPhone. And I'm honestly surprised how good the phone GPS accuracy has gotten lately. The difference between the iPhone 4 and 7 has been obvious to me. I don't miss having the GPS antenna with the Sony AX100. The iPhone 7 I use has no problems getting a lock quickly enough while it sits in a cup holder.

 

[Juicy Box]

For a while is relative. Every year that ticks by is one close to the end of a profitable aftermarket for Car Audio/Infotainment.

This assumes that aftermarket head units won't evolve with the changes of technology in newer cars, which is not the case.

Plus, older non-tech-heavy cars will be around for a few more decades. My 2015 Mazda has an aftermarket headunit, and I am sure that there will be plenty of them around in the 2020's and 2030's that could make use of an aftermarket solution.

 

[TurboPGT!]

This assumes that aftermarket head units won't evolve with the changes of technology in newer cars, which is not the case.

Plus, older non-tech-heavy cars will be around for a few more decades. My 2015 Mazda has an aftermarket headunit, and I am sure that there will be plenty of them around in the 2020's and 2030's that could make use of an aftermarket solution.

When car manufacturers continue to build in irreplaceable proprietary systems, you bet that is the case.

 

[QuarterSwede]

The problem is that the details of exactly what flows over USB between the phone and the head unit isn't well documented. Apple seems to only share it with the OEMs working on head units. A lot of what I know about what does go over the wire was figured out via experimentation.

After getting a chance to mess with multiple head units that implement CarPlay, I can definitely tell that GPS, mic, and touch are fed into the iPhone. So good mic functionality in the head unit is also important. The NEX 8000 was usable, but not nearly as good as the newer Sony AX100 I now have.

Makes sense. On the mic, it's extremely annoying that there isn't any good mics to choose from with the small jack they use on these headunit's. The mics themselves are the issue. The headunit is almost certainly capable of higher quality input from that jack.

 

[Juicy Box]

When car manufacturers continue to build in irreplaceable proprietary systems, you bet that is the case.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are adapters being made that enable some cars to maintain the features of the proprietary systems.

These adapters maintain factory amps, steering wheel controls, telematics like OnStar and BlueLink, factory usb ports/ AUX jacks, back up cameras, bluetooth /BT mics, climate controls, factory front and rear displays, and I am sure other features I that I can't remember.

To be fair, these adapters are not for every vehicle, and sometimes it takes a few years for these adapters to be made, but between all the older cars on the road, and the growing number of adapters to retain factory features, I think companies like Alpine and Pioneer won't have to shut their doors anytime soon.

 

[Krevnik]

Makes sense. On the mic, it's extremely annoying that there isn't any good mics to choose from with the small jack they use on these headunit's. The mics themselves are the issue. The headunit is almost certainly capable of higher quality input from that jack.

I mostly agree. Although I noticed much more lag with the NEX, which mostly makes sense if the head unit is processing the audio. That can be bad for the quality of the audio, especially if the head unit is trying to optimize for telephony and winds up removing the parts of the sound wave that helps Siri make heads or tails of specific words.