Heh sorry, I thought you were being facetious with "LOL". My bad

 

And I will tell you...I originally told you to enjoy your Golf because your ultimatum themed post of threatening Honda is just plain laughable dude. That is why I "LOL"'d your post.

You honestly think Honda cares about your ultimatum? Go buy the Golf, and...

If the relationship between a certain cell phone and the radio in the car is the only reason why you don't buy a Honda vehicle then ok, buy something else that has a favorable cellphone/car radio relationship.

But, just so you know, there are so many other things to consider in a car purchase. So so many other IMPORTANT things to consider besides which phone pairs with the car radio better. Just sayin'.

So enjoy your Golf. It is a good car. I considered it before I bought my Fit but I wanted the GTI or the diesel and both were out of the price range of the Fit. The radio was an afterthought, in fact it was a bonus in my mind. I like the Fit radio because it's better than any factory radio I have ever had. I can talk on my phone through it and my Ipod plugs right into it. I'm good. YMMV

 

So I guess it was a pissing match! I knew that LOL was facetious.

And yes companies do care what people think and if you think that I am isolated case, then you have not seen the 30+ posts about Android.

To you the radio is afterthought, which is really sad. As a consumer, I do all my research before I make a major purchase. I have been considering a new car for well over a year and Honda was definitely my top choice. That is all fine and dandy that your ipod works. Now for the 75-80% of global users that use Android, that just doesn't work (well not completely).

Consumer Reports called Honda's infotainment one of the worst but you like it, so that is okay. When is the last time you had a "new" radio? Maybe Honda doesn't care what Consumer Reports thinks either. </sarcasm>

I won't lie, the Honda Fit is a great car (i have one now) and it was my first choice but the Golf is also a great car. Actually the Golf was named MotorTrend car of the year for 2015 but you are totally right, I chose it just because of the stereo, not because of the high accolades it received. Android Auto was just the tipping point.

With Android Auto I get:

1) A better GPS
2) A better app to play my songs (which will actually play songs)
3) A usable storage device for all my music and ebooks (called an Android Phone)
4) Access to other apps (such as Audible, Rocket Player, etc)



This is a FORUM, it is where people come to discuss stuff, such as their personal opinion and observations. Just because mine differs from yours, you are getting all upset and personal.

 

If the phone were all that was involved, then you wouldn't have to be here pretend begging Honda to add the car-side support for this interface by, ha, September.

No, they'll just improve the head unit to phone protocol and/or interface (i.e., use WiFi or BT instead of forcing people to plug their phones in), call it AndroidAuto2 or something, and stop supporting that lame first version they offered soooooo long--18 months--ago.

And does the fact that this is so much about money that there are three competing protocols give anybody pause about this? Are there three different competing HandsFreeProfile solutions using BT? If there had been since day one, do you think it would be as ubiquitous and hard to obsolete as it is now?

I'm not saying the Golf or AA/CP/ML are bad things. Nor am I defending Honda's slow adoption of better tech in their infotainment offerings. I'm just very leery that this works out well in the long term. If there were one consensus standardized, SAE spec or similar, defined interface for UI extension from the auto to mobile devices, I'd feel different.

 

It would not benefit Google to change the protocol that handshakes with the hardware but who knows what they will do? Common sense sometimes is not in the business world. I can see them pigeonholing someone into buying a new phone every so often to get newer features but we do that as consumers anyway.

btw the reason I said September is because that is when the 2016 Golf is coming out, sorry I should have clarified that.

If Honda was more accepting or willing to tell us which cars would have it, then that would be fine. Chevy did really good by announcing 12 different models that would feature AA and CP......which was great. VW went even one step better. They announced it for AA, CP and MirrorLink, the latter which offers even more options for users (and even Windows phone). Some, if not most Android Phones have both Mirror Link and some can do AA (only Lollipop and above for now).

Honda gave us CP and AA for the Accord. That was their whopping news. I remember when Honda was proactive and broke into the industry, now they are reactive at best. The only model they support is in competition with the Sonata (which already AA in 2015 and 2016 models).

No idea on the BT, I really don't know anything about that

 

<repeat>Not defending Honda or knocking the VW approach.</repeat>

By all means, go for the Golf. I'd be interested in one too, but it's just not a suitable car for where I live. Nearest dealer is 110 miles and two to three weeks by boat and $500/round trip and they just aren't that reliable. Oh, and any successful technological change (in this case tight integration of the car infotainment UI hardware with mobile devices) requires early adopter casualties to get sorted out. Accept that. It will be a funner ride while it lasts. Thanks in advance for taking one for the team.

The hardware is not the issue. The issue is that there are software components on both sides.

Elimination of AA v1 support from some nth generation of mobile device won't be a question of "benefiting" Google. Here's just one scenario of how this could go down:

All these competing v1 solutions don't get the traction in the marketplace the competing individual players are hoping for. Customers want this to work simpler; i.e., wireless. Most car makers push back on supporting three flavors of similar function. Car makers blame Google-Apple-Microsoft for not making the solution work simply enough. Google-Apple-Microsoft blame car makers for the long period it took to rollout to various models and all trim levels. Bugs are found in the code from Google-Apple-Microsoft and the auto makers have zero interest in pushing fixes to their cars. (Kinda like the current Google-device manufacturer-carrier chain.)

They all get wise and realize that they each can have a bigger piece of pie if they don't try so hard to have the whole pie and cut the others out. They develop an industry standard for all to use that has new features and lessons learned from the separate v1 implementations.

v1 implementations (AA/CP/ML) are too different to allow backward compatibility in the standard-conforming code. Oh, and supporting backward compatibility adds another xx,000 lines of code to support and another xx MB of code footprint in storage. Final nail: security problems with the v1 implementations come home to roost and the auto makers won't recall the cars for infotainment code updates since they aren't safety issues.

So, the only way to assure security and eliminate all those support headaches is to deprecate and then eliminate the v1 interface. Android Peppermint and iOS 12 both strip out the old code and no longer work with the v1 cars. (By then Microsoft has finally realized that nobody is going to buy their crappy phones and has given up.) And they don't care because the v1 solutions weren't all that popular anyway and, hey, they want to sell those people new cars and phones anyway.

This is how v1 solutions tend to end up. Maybe this time will be different.

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I fully agree with your logic. Wherever Google takes us you can be assured that legacy will be sacrificed, sooner than later. The Fit and all modern cars are too long lived and expensive to play into the smartphone planned obsolescence time frame 3 years. A new Fit should survive 4-5 cycles at Google's current rate.

In a couple of years I can see Honda offering a retrograde head unit replacement that can keep up with Google. The old way of keeping your head unit for the life of the car cannot continue.

 

Honda is not in the head unit business. They are in the car business. They have little enough interest in fixing bugs in infotainment products they are still installing in production cars to care about selling a new head unit for a car they already sold.

Getting something like this done right helps keep the head units technologically relevant for the life of the car. But it has to be openly standardized and defined at a low enough/simple enough level of abstract interactions between what the car has, and the device wants access to, for it to have a long technological life.

The sad thing is that the only guys who understand how to design/specify this kind of interface are the device software guys, but only the car guys want it to be truly open and care about/understand things like "life of the vehicle" technological spans. Two ships passing in the dark.

Oh, and don't forget that the auto safety regulators and the NTSB are all watching this aghast at the implications for distracted driving and safety. And they won't standby watching forever. Hard to say they don't have a point. Just because we can create a path for our mobile devices to have access, for whatever use, to the screens and buttons and sound system in the car doesn't mean we should. Imagine drivers playing candy crush on their infotainment screen from the buttons on their steering wheel. If the technologists make it possible, some people will do it. In traffic. At speed.

Why does Google want to build an autonomous car? So we'll all have that much more free time on our hands to see targeted ads they can sell.

 

I should add: part of my car electronics experience is owning a '99 Mercedes-Benz SLK230 with first gen integrated control of a phone. With precisely one model of Motorola phone that MB sold you with the package. It was my first cell phone. It worked great and it worked great with the car. The phone was analog AMPS. The whole thing ended up completely useless the day Verizon turned off analog service. I understand this early adopter nonsense. BTDT.

 

And here all I want is to ask is if OP's looking at diesel because I looked at the 2015 Golfs in early spring and couldn't find one using gas and nothing under $20K. I was steered to the Jetta for price but I'm a hatchback guy, no thanks.

 

So Dick W, we have Philly's nickers in a knot, ready for a Golf, and the two of us philosophizing about the sad state between car guys and device software guys. Is there a solution? This problem affects all cars of all makes and models, not just the Fit.

Maybe the aftermarket will solve the problem. Is it easy to replace the Honda head unit with a Pioneer or other aftermarket, and still retain all the basic functionality of the original? For example, will the backup and Lanewatch camera work with a replaced head unit?

Maybe the solution is to enjoy driving and get off your d*** phone.

I am very eager to see how AA will perform in the Accord as well as the Hyundai Sonata. I wish them the best of luck.

OT: My neighbour has a '90s BMW 7 series that came with a mobile phone. He can still call 911 with it. The original owner said the phone worked well when new, but after a couple of years the phone company disconnected his technology. The phone still powers up and the LEDs still display properly.

 

But, that phone program addresses a particular phone display and interface standard, and as soon as those change for new phone technology there is no incentive to have backwards compatibility for older auto displays. People will buy new phones without thought to how they work with their cars and by the time they realize they're up the creek it will be too late. Sure, the phone makers will say that their phones "support Android Auto," but if it supports the Mk 3 interface and you have a Mk 1 interface you'll be up the creek. I'm sure they'll put that warning somewhere in the fine print on the back of the ad.

Think of how many people bought Fits on the promise that it would support various smartphones. How much of this has come to be? Darned little, and what is working (hondalink) doesn't work very well.

No, but sometimes the technology lets you see "beyond the horizon." I use Waze and it will often change the route on the fly as traffic conditions change. With every Waze user supplying real-time data to their system it does that very well.

Yes, and now an accidental button push will have us physically delivered to the advertiser's business instead of simply taking us to a website!

Perhaps so, if the automakers will provide a stable physical interface for the aftermarket electronics. They don't have a very good track record in this area. The stereo manufacturers tried to force the vehicle makers to provide standard interfaces in the '80s and they did for a while, but the lure of tying everything into the infotainment systems proved too great for the automakers.

Not really off-topic. That phone used AMPS analog technology , which was supposed to be the ultimate fall-back for all phones and most people thought that it would be around for decades, much as analog TV was. In 2008 the cellular companies wanted to free up their 800MHz spectrum for other use so they talked the FCC into allowing the service to cease. That meant that a lot of people using OnStar and other services that relied on built-in electronics in vehicles and other long-lived systems were left with non-functional devices. This is a perfect illustration of the futility of installing rapidly-obsoleting technology into long-life devices. The people waving big checkbooks will always get what they want.

 

Back in my day people bought Hondas because they didn't break down all the time. You whippersnappers and your fancy do dads and your pudding pops

 

I would not trade my Fit, my 3rd. for a Golf, period. But it remains a fact that Honda has for years been behind the 8 ball when it comes to staying ahead of the competition, which it USED to do. They are on a par with Toyota in building granny cars. Quality Granny cars, but grannies they are. Can you name any "sporty" Honda? The Si is not sporty compared to what is out there. You hear about the Euro version of the Civic Si "coming" but has anyone seen one?

 

No the LOL was not facetious. You gave HONDA, one of the biggest manufacturers of fine cars in the world an ultimatum. I found that funny. I found it funny because of a few reasons. One of which, who cares about which phone has more play in the car than the other. Dam there are so many posts on this forum about this phone and that phone. That is a miniscule aspect of the car. My opinion of this car (the Fit) is different than yours.

Also, as mentioned, the Golf is a good car. That is what I said. I wish I could have afforded the GTI or diesel because that is the car I would have bought. And NOT because of the capabilities of the radio. No, it is a blast to drive the GTI. The diesel? For the mileage. And it's no slouch either. But with all things considered, and I mean all things, the Fit is the best value of a car out there.

And just because you can only get blue tooth hook up on your phone, is not a legit reason to justify an ultimatum to Honda. Your ultimatum is laughable dude. Honda knows there are other phones out there.

Honda realizes the capabilities of their system. They weighed the options and decided on a plan. It has obviously worked out for them as this car is very popular despite the lack of the radios capabilities. The radio is one tiny part of the complete picture. It's really sort of ignorant to think Honda doesn't know their business.

 

Exactly! Bingo! We have a winner!

 

I bought my first in '89 because it was a blast to drive. Civic 3 door.

 

Sorry didn't read the whole thread, but the 2016 Accord does come with Apple Car Play AND Android Auto. As an Android user myself with a '15 Fit, I hope it can be updated.

 

That is what I am hoping for as well. The hardware isn't that different, is it?

 

Ha! My first was a '91 Civic 3 door base model with an MT. I loved that car. It was like a motorcycle with four wheels. Had to adjust the valves, etc. I kick myself for not keeping that car because I have no doubt it would still be running perfectly today. I sold it with 140,000 on the clock and the guy that bought it wired up a bunch of accessories poorly and the car caught on fire and burnt to the ground.