this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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I've a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn't use a touch screen. It's all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what's up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn't bounce when I went to tap a "button" and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they're concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It's really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
Yeah, I do enjoy jumping into my wife's Mazda every now and then, for just this reason. Touch screens requires too much attention be diverted away from the critical task of driving, as people need to look at the screen for the purpose of aiming a finger at a control on it.
The steering wheel controls for my Ford's Sync are good for volume, music back/forward, and phone calls, but that's it. It's the reason I still need to use a voice assistant while driving. I really hate using the touch screen except at the start or end of journey.
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I've seen.
I've been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I'm afraid whatever I land on won't integrate that push wheel control well, because it's just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don't know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn't really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires. The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I'm not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn't worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yea, I'm just also generally really disinterested in OEM software, and on principal I believe I should have exclusive rights to my own data and the data of the things I own. It still enrages me that in order to pull data about the car systems that are normally accessible through the headunit, I basically have to decrypt binary signals from the canbus myself, since they intentionally do not make those codes available.
TL:DR, i've made my life so much harder with my principles, but I am who I am