I have the Alpine iLX-107 in my wife's car. It is awesome, and Wireless CarPlay is what all CarPlay should be!
What puzzles me here is that the Alpine unit with wireless CarPlay has been out a year, has a capacitive touch screen, and cost around $700. Pioneer's equivalent is starting around $1,200, and boasts a bunch of technology that is completely obviated by CarPlay (SD, CD/DVD, SiriusXM). How many people are going to see $500 in value from the inclusion of the old tech?
I looked at the Alpine receiver and the Pioneer has a few things going for it that are pertinent. A 13-band equalizer is a big one. I'm pretty picky about the frequency response and my Pioneer 4100NEX is the first head unit I've had that gave me the sound quality I've always wanted. Also, SiriusXM is not completely obviated: if you're in the boonies with no cell service, you can still get satellite radio.
I fully expect these head units to support rear camera video. My 4100NEX does. In fact, it has two video inputs.
ILX 107 doesn't have HD radio. If you want HD radio, you have to look to a different unit. Alpine is like this - they focus on one thing they want to accomplish, make it awesome, and leave out all the other things they could include. The 107 doesn't have android auto, it's a straight Apple only unit. If you want the Android auto variant, you give up wireless CarPlay.
If many brands cars have built-in support for Wifi, Bluetooth and USB Carplay than why holding back supporting wireless carplay ?
Good question. I have wired CarPlay (also Android Auto) and build-in wireless charger. How much sense does that make? I expect it's just the car maker being cheap (GM in my case). Don't get me wrong, I love CP, but even plugged in CP is a bit dodgy, maybe they thought wireless would be unusable.
Everything is built to a cost. Wireless is another cost, and it wasn't really ready until January of last year. Car upgrade cycles are measured in multiples-of-years, so I would expect a wait before wireless CarPlay makes it into OEM. Remember, GM buys their radios from ACDelco (yes, they own them) but they also purchase from Alpine and others for the OEM systems... which are made to look like GM. Blaupunkt builds for Ford, etc. It's all about what GM is looking for in bids from the radio makers.
Apple CarPlay so needs to go wireless especially with many cars now offering wireless charging but it needs to be a Bluetooth or a software solution not new hardware for the cars as the chance of upgrading a new car hardware is doesn’t happen until you buy a new car. Ive just bought a car with wireless charging and the though of having to plug my iphone in every time I want to use AppleCar play puts me off wanting to use it.
Maybe Apple could release a wireless dongle for wired CarPlay head units? Apple likes dongles.
Actually, why hasn’t someone simply done that?
There -is- a chinese dongle that claims to add wired CarPlay to any android based headunit. We have yet to try testing it. Unfortunately, even though the android head units are likely touchscreen, the dongle provides a 5-way dpad, and you cursor around the CarPlay interface, pressing a button to select items. If you -could- make a dongle for wired carplay to make it wireless, it wouldn't be doing what wireless carplay is doing - you wouldn't get the battery icon on screen, you'd essentially be making wireless USB, which has been around for about ten years, but isn't great.
Sounds almost like wireless mirroring in reality. You *can* wirelessly mirror iOS 11 directly on the touchscreen with last year’s 9 series kenwoods with a software patch (look up the carbon car systems’ YouTube page), so I imagine you can do that with the new ones. Would not be good for warranty of course.
Apple CarPlay so needs to go wireless especially with many cars now offering wireless charging but it needs to be a Bluetooth or a software solution not new hardware for the cars as the chance of upgrading a new car hardware is doesn’t happen until you buy a new car. Ive just bought a car with wireless charging and the though of having to plug my iphone in every time I want to use AppleCar play puts me off wanting to use it.
Maybe Apple could release a wireless dongle for wired CarPlay head units? Apple likes dongles.
Actually, why hasn’t someone simply done that?
There -is- a chinese dongle that claims to add wired CarPlay to any android based headunit. We have yet to try testing it. Unfortunately, even though the android head units are likely touchscreen, the dongle provides a 5-way dpad, and you cursor around the CarPlay interface, pressing a button to select items. If you -could- make a dongle for wired carplay to make it wireless, it wouldn't be doing what wireless carplay is doing - you wouldn't get the battery icon on screen, you'd essentially be making wireless USB, which has been around for about ten years, but isn't great.
Sounds almost like wireless mirroring in reality. You *can* wirelessly mirror iOS 11 directly on the touchscreen with last year’s 9 series kenwoods with a software patch (look up the carbon car systems’ YouTube page), so I imagine you can do that with the new ones. Would not be good for warranty of course.
That's nearly what it is. CarPlay is a secondary display (wired or wireless) with touch input and audio routing. It happens to be a 'special' display to the OS that shows the CarPlay interface. That's kind of it.
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