My take on Android Auto (I’m sure everyone wants to hear)
pros:
free to choose the maps app you want (OsmAnd, Organic Maps, Google Maps or anything)
stream music for the app you want
decent voice control for maps and spotify
decent integration with some EV charging apps, you can find and initiate chargers from the dashboard
you can write your own Android Auto apps
cons:
Android Auto app is very invasive, polluting phone with stupid notifications
the standard is shit. Android Auto doesn’t work work with Android Go phones but it’s not specified anywhere in the documentation, wireless Android Auto only works with latest android but it’s also not specified anywhere
it’s controlled by Google and there are no alternative implementations
My solution so far is to use cheap, secondary phone for AA (which was hard to find because of the stupid limitations). If someone would create a open AA client not controlled by Google I would put it on my primary phone. AA should now work with Graphene OS so I may try to set it up in separate profile some day.
On my GrapheneOS phone I have AA set up in a work profile that is paused 90% of the time. It works without any issues. Or at least no more issues than AA ever had.
I used to champion AA because every car just had that shitty apple connection.
Now at least we have AA. But it took so long, that google went from a good company to just as evil as Apple, so we have two asshole giants to chose from.
We need a Linux open source alternative for phones… But I’ve been told it’ll never happen because the hardware is locked down and too different to be able to run custom roms…
For usability the solution is using some custom ROM like Graphene OS or iode. They support AA now.
For privacy the solution is to use a very old car with no infotainment. Modern cars have telemetry and always on connectivity you can’t control. Even Linux phones will not help with that. We would need open source cars which will never happen.
My take on Android Auto (I’m sure everyone wants to hear)
pros:
cons:
My solution so far is to use cheap, secondary phone for AA (which was hard to find because of the stupid limitations). If someone would create a open AA client not controlled by Google I would put it on my primary phone. AA should now work with Graphene OS so I may try to set it up in separate profile some day.
On my GrapheneOS phone I have AA set up in a work profile that is paused 90% of the time. It works without any issues. Or at least no more issues than AA ever had.
I used to champion AA because every car just had that shitty apple connection.
Now at least we have AA. But it took so long, that google went from a good company to just as evil as Apple, so we have two asshole giants to chose from.
We need a Linux open source alternative for phones… But I’ve been told it’ll never happen because the hardware is locked down and too different to be able to run custom roms…
I don’t know what the solution is
For usability the solution is using some custom ROM like Graphene OS or iode. They support AA now.
For privacy the solution is to use a very old car with no infotainment. Modern cars have telemetry and always on connectivity you can’t control. Even Linux phones will not help with that. We would need open source cars which will never happen.
:'(