Field Report: We Test Drive the Car Dock

[mwspera1]

The Droid X  can do a lot of things. But, can it do them all at once? That is the proposition behind the car dock. To me, this is the ultimate test of this multifunction device. The dock itself is just a big piece of plastic that can be suctioned to the windshield or (if you REALLY want to screw up a major piece of your car) it can be mounted to the dashboard via a glue-on disk. Simple enough. I mount my GPS devices to the far left bottom corner of the windshield (so I can actually SEE traffic ahead). My fusebox (2003 Audi A4) is just below that. So, pull a fuse and add a simple device that plugs into the fuse spot and gives you a place to slide in the fuse you took out, plus add another fuse to power the big red wire coming off of it. To this I crimp connect on a female cigarette lighter connector. Most parts from AutoZone or RadioShack. Now I have a spot to plug in the unit without running wires all over the dashboard. You can choose a fuse that is always on or only goes on with the ignition. Done? Nope. One little problem. The dock does not contain any connection to the audio out. You have to run a separate wire (UGH!) to the headphone jack. The dock does contain a little grip to hold onto the wire so it just leaves a short dangling piece of wire tethered to the unit rather than lying loose. A nice touch, but I would really rather they get it together with these Android devices and make a standard for a DOCK CONNECTOR!!! Sorry, my pet peeve with these phones.

Once mounted and wired I fire up the car and the phone. Great, the thing is charging (settings>about phone>status>battery status = Charging). I see that, because the phone is in a dock, you get a new "intro" menu instead of the home screen. It appears that the car dock and the multimedia dock have a big magnet in them that triggers some new menus in the phone when you place the phone in the dock. 6 BIG buttons. Easy to hit and giving you the right options (Calling, My Location, Music, Voice Search, Last App or programmable, and Close). You can see what it looks like without a car dock by going to the main apps page and choosing "Car Dock".  

I choose music. Again, 6 big buttons (Replay, Start/Stop, Forward, Back, Shuffle, continuous play - at least I think that is what the 2 arrows in an oval shape mean. I never use it). I fire up the stereo and notice LOTS of ignition noise. The music starts and the noise is still there... unacceptable. O.K. Back to Best Buy for a ground loop isolator. They sell these in several flavors. Try to get the one (online - e-Bay) with 3.5mm jacks to minimize the number of adapters. Search e-bay for "ground loop" and pick the 3.5mm one. About $12 - $15 shipped.  I could only get the RCA jack unit at the local Best Buy, so, back to RadioShack for a bunch of adapters to get the 3.5mm cables in and out of the thing. Once done... silence. No noise. But, you have to tinker with the music volume via the rocker switch. Thankfully, they made the dock so the switch is accessible.

O.K. now we want to go back to that big car dock menu. Home button? No, you must press the Menu switch (or pull down the menu from the status bar at the top of the screen and choose "Car Dock" from there - remember, you are multitasking now). There it is. Choose "My Location". You get the screen with a map (after you turn on the method of location - GPS, cell towers, or both) and 3 buttons on the right side (Traffic, Nav, and Google Maps). There is also a little compass button on the bottom right (locate me) and a looped around arrow on the top right (return to the car dock menu). From here you have to choose "Nav" to fire up navigation. The next screen gives you the "My location" and "Endpoint" choices. But nowhere is there "Recent" available. There is a small list icon to the right of the 2 input boxes. Tapping the icon next to the "Endpoint" box gives you the choice to go to a contact's address. Pretty cool. But, if you tap the "Endpoint" box you get the keyboard. Here is where things get a bit weird. There IS a "recent" feature, sort of, but you have to actually start typing something to get at it. Once you type any letter and wait a couple of seconds, the thing tries to match a recent address with what you are typing. Type one letter and you get a scrolling list (left and right scroll) with everything beginning with that letter. OR, you can just tap the microphone button and enter the address via voice. Once you have a destination, you can nav to it. Music playing (volume set by rocker), navigating with voice commands that (unfortunately) click off the music and then click it back on again. I would have preferred it just left the music playing and did the commands OVER the music. Maybe in the next release???? Anyway, the navigate volume is also adjustable. When you have the nav screen up, the rocker switch will adjust the nav command volume.

Great! Tooling along, music playing, navigating to a destination. But, what about when a call comes in? Well, there is good news and bad news. The unit switches over to the call screen, music stops, and turn by turn voice commands cease. That's right. You better either stop talking or pull over. You MAY be able to switch back to the Nav screen to at least SEE the turns. I did not test that yet. I'll give the group an update next week. Also, your car stereo becomes the caller's voice and the units microphone picks you up. Totally hands free. And it is pretty clear on both ends (yours and the caller's). Call ends and you MAY go back to the nav screen. If not, you must pull down the running apps from the top menu bar and choose Nav. You can also choose Car Dock and get that menu to go to the music player or go to Nav.

On one trip, it performed flawlessly. On another it was a disaster. The address it came up with was correct but the location it showed as "you have arrived" was 1/2 mile short. Same street just not there yet. When I tried to enter in my address to return home the thing rebooted. Nav got wierd on the way home and I just gave up. I'll give it a few more trip to see if it is going to work reliably. Till then, running music and making/taking calls appears to be stable.

My recommendation: practice first before you actually have to use the navigate function. It appears a little buggy. Also, carry a dedicated (Garmin) nav unit along as a spare. These devices NEED a cell signal to pull the map routes. Unlike a dedicated GPS with the maps built in, these units need coverage to pull a map. If you are navigating and lose signal, that is O.K. because (we believe) it pulled the maps for the entire route. However, if you go off the route AND lose coverage, you may be stuck. With all the memory these devices have, you should have the option to take a gig or so and keep the entire country map loaded. Next release?

In summary, the car dock and multitasking capabilities work, mostly. Like everything Android, there is a learning curve and it ain't perfect.

Good Luck,

Mike

[curtterp]

To answer some of your questions

1 - Phone Call - You can get back to Navigation simply when you are on a phone call. Just press hard button 'Back'. Sometimes you get back to the navigation sometimes not. If not, then pull down the notification menu at the top and choose navigation. Back to maps at that point. The only thing at this point is that you lose the little green light bottom left corner. That is your traffic that shows a potential traffic tie up.

2 - End point - You can use your contacts as the end points. For safety, I input places I want to go to to my contacts with their address's. That way it is much easier than to type in the address on the road. You just select contacts, then scroll up/down to the contact where you are going.

3 - You can close (put to the background actually) the car dock program by pressing close. I put an icon on the home screen for the Navigation program so I can go directly into navigation. You can also program one of the buttons for Navigation (the one called App) so you don't have to go to My Location to get to the Navigation. Saves a step or two.

4 - Yes I have had the phone reboot in the dock a couple of times (owned the phone since it came out). I had it reboot twice in one trip one day, but removed the app that I just installed the night before and had it happen maybe once since.

5 - Personally, I would rather the music cut off when voice is telling me directions, if I ran that way. I turn off the voice directions because I can see when to turn, and have become good at seeing the turn within .1 miles of the turn. If it talked over the music, you might miss voice. But that is my personal opinion

6 - I have not had the problem of the map being off. Every time it shows me at the location (with picture of the location) I have been less than 1/2 a football field from the destination.  Not minimizing your experience, I just haven't seen it happen to me.

[gerio]

Good assessment. Gee, you went to the inth degree with the 12V power, eh? I guess in a Ford pick-up truck, I wasn't too worried about the cigarette lighter-changer powering the dock... 

I didn't run into ANY of the ignition problems you did. Nor have 2 other friends that use the X with a car dock. Kinda makes you go "hmm....

But then again, car audio isn't my specialty. Pro audio (Concerts, fairs, festivals, etc) is what I do with nice, safe, and predictable 208V 3-phase electricity. Car power has always mystified me. Not how, but why...

The problem with the streets showing as you are on a call goes back to the CDMA limitation of no simultaneous voice and data service. Just 2 weeks ago, the fact that the phone's GPS relies on the data network to show the streets hit home as I was traveling through an area with next to no service. Making me wish I hadn't sold my Garmin.

Are you using a Bluetooth headset? I do, pretty much all of the time. When I don't, I find it pretty cumbersome to answer the phone when a call comes in and the phone is in the dock.

Geri O

[mwspera1]

The ignition noise was likely from the Dice interface. It plugs into the stereo external CD changer port and provides an iPhone dock connector and an 1/8" (3.5mm) aux. input. If you use one of the newer car's aux input you would probably not have any noise problems.

I fired it up again today and it worked fine with the music playing and the screen set to Google maps. A small gripe: you can zoom the view, but it redraws the streets again as razor thin lines with about 5-6 point text. WAY too small to actually read. Even in Nav mode, the streets and names are too small. This is something Garmin figured out a long time ago. You need big streets and characters to actually be able to read them in  moving car, especially if you are over 25 (old eyes).

I also noticed that the Google map page gives you a speed readout and direction (N,S,E, W) Good thing because that map is always North up. While using just the Google map and playing music with the occasional phone call the thing is pretty stable and predictable. Once you switch to Nav mode is when it seems to get flakey. All the simultaneous APS may be running into the processor and architecture limits. It is pretty cool that this thing can even pull it all off at once. I am probably one of the few who demands all this out of these units. Most people seem content to just make phone calls and listen to music via headsets.

Pro audio? I spent 12 years on the Midwest concert/club circuit in between '70 and '82 running systems and doing lighting hookups (100-200 amp 3 phase-non delta). Fun stuff. Last show was in '82 at the (then) Roseanne Horizon backing up Duran Duran with a local band called "The Kind". Small world.

Good Luck,

Mike