Comment by kelnos

Comment by kelnos 7 days ago

10 replies

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I kinda just don't get wireless CarPlay/Android Auto at all. If I'm going to connect my phone to my car wirelessly for that, it's gonna drain the battery. So I'm going to plug it in so it can charge. So... now it's wired, so why do I need wireless?

I guess if you have a wireless charging pad in your car, then that's a little bit more convenient. But the big inconvenience for me is just to have to take it out of my pocket in the first place, not to plug it into the car. (And my car does have wireless charging, but my phone rarely seems to sit on it stably enough for it to charge all that well.)

To get fully back on topic: sure, a wireless dongle could exfil data, but unclear what data is all that valuable. The car (and thus the dongle) just gets video and audio streams, not the actual textual content of your text messages, for example. Sure, it could try to OCR the video and/or do voice recognition on the audio, but those are fairly computationally expensive. And sending all that video to a remote server would be... a lot.

snapetom 7 days ago

For Lightning at least, it was touchy as hell. It required a really good constant connection, or you'd constantly disconnect to the base car OS and reconnect to CarPlay. My wife and I had a handful of cables, even quality ones like Anker and Belkin, that were no longer good enough for CarPlay, but worked perfectly fine for regular charging.

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watermelon0 7 days ago

I practically always use it wirelessly, because it's just so convenient to place it in the phone compartment, and not have to deal with the charging cable hanging around.

I generally don't have any issues with charging, so phone either stays at the same battery level, or charges a bit (depending on how long I drive).

The only downside is that phone heats up due to the usage of CarPlay as well as due to the wireless charging, which triggers heavy throttling of iOS, and I assume this is not ideal for the phone/battery as well.

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pritambarhate 6 days ago

I have wireless CarPlay in my car and I don't care about plugging it in for short rides. It's convenient that I don't have to plug it in every time I am on a 20-30 min ride just to get directions. It's a very useful feature. Not a deal breaker but a very good nice to have.

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teo_zero 7 days ago

> I kinda just don't get wireless CarPlay/Android Auto at all. If I'm going to connect my phone to my car wirelessly for that, it's gonna drain the battery. So I'm going to plug it in so it can charge. So... now it's wired, so why do I need wireless?

For short trips. Like the two many of us do every single working day.

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  • kelnos 7 days ago

    "Short" is perhaps relative. I know many people with hour+ commutes; they'll be wanting to plug in, presumably.

    I guess I'm also just a low-key battery-life stresser. If I have the opportunity to plug in outside the home, with a charging cable readily in front of, me, I'm gonna do it... just in case.

    I dunno, I still don't get it. Wireless anything is always going to be significantly less reliable than wired, and I've heard enough stories of wireless CarPlay/AA flaking out (with dongles and built-in setups) to turn me off on it.

    Wireless is incredibly convenient when you don't have a wire and a port nearby, but that will essentially never be that case while you're in the car.

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smackeyacky 6 days ago

For quick trips where you don’t want to screw with cables, or where you don’t want to override your passenger doing the connect. I like wireless for CarPlay eve though my phone isn’t hard plugged into the head unit bit is still charging from the car. So for me a cigar lighter power plug is still better for charging the phone even though I have CarPlay wireless active

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Fr0styMatt88 7 days ago

I immediately thought of the magnetic charging as well before getting to your second paragraph.

One other concern I’d have with wired charging in the car long-term is wear and tear on the USB port and the cable over time (also considering the cable is likely being left in a sometimes very hot car).

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  • kelnos 7 days ago

    I leave the cable always plugged in on the car side, so I'm not worried about that port failing. I'm just not that worried about the port on the phone, though.

    And if the cable dies, they're simple and cheap to replace.

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lttlrck 6 days ago

Do you feel the same way about WiFi? The big hassle is getting the laptop out of the bag, not plugging in the Ethernet cable?

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