The only industry that's changing faster than the automotive technology industry is the cell phone industry, particularly the world of smartphones. Vehicles change interfaces every 3-5 years with a couple new features sprinkled in occasionally, smartphones get new operating systems and new flagship devices every 6-9 months. Just blink and you'll miss 10 innovations in technology; it feels like the only constant is change.
So when it comes to your vehicle, infotainment systems are being optimized as fast as possible to make the latest and greatest smartphones compatible. This allows for amazing innovations in technology, such as Siri hands free, Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and apps that provide remote key fob functionality. Much of this kind of technology was just reserved for syndicated episodes of Star Trek just 20 years ago, and now we all have it in at our fingertips. I submit to you with absolutely no irony, this is a really cool time to be alive.However, these advancements do come at something of a cost; older phones, particularly non-smartphones (flip phones or slider phones) tend to be less compatible as time goes on. Often times older phones will connect with a Bluetooth connection, but they'll fail to transfer the phone's contact list, or disconnect and reconnect intermittently. Some older phones will work without any issues at all, and others won't connect at all in the first place.
With the rise of smartphones, (as I predicted) manufactures are making fewer and fewer vehicles with built in navigation systems, because we can "project" the maps from our smartphones on screen. CD players are disappearing because manufactures are hearing people would rather stream music from our phones than listen to physical discs. And now automakers are considering letting companies like Google be the only operating system in the vehicle.
If you love this kind of stuff like I do, then this is all really exciting. If you aren't crazy about technology and still have a non-smartphone, you probably see the writing on the wall. Truth of the matter is you're letting a lot of really expensive features go unused by not using a smartphone in your vehicle. But the beauty of this situation is that YOU get to decided how connected you want to be, and how much you want to let technology in the vehicle with you.
If you want to scale back and only use the technology that you have to, we Technology Specialist can show you how to do that. If you want you use every last feature and make sure you're using every last bell and whistle you paid for, we can help you with that too. It's your car, you get to decide, and your choice of phone goes a long way in that decision.
