Hi, could you please make a short video od the features? I'm interested in Android Auto. Can you control it only using steering wheel? Does it use the car microphone? Does it affect the original MMI system on background when you use the buttons? Is the 3G Basic screen resolution enough?
Thank you very much
For the most part this system is great but its not perfect.
From the perspective of it fitted to a MMI 3G Low/basic, its pretty good.
Pros.
System is controlled via the MMI controls. You enter the system via the media button when aux is selected, so it won't be selecting stuff in the background. Rotary dial for to move around the interface click it in to select, back button for back, left and right track skip buttons work as they should for Spotify, ect. Steering wheel controls work as expected, left wheel for moving round the screen click in to select, voice control button activates Google assistant. There is no back button on the steering wheel, so will still need to use mmi controller.
The fact that this system is not designed for these inputs means its not perfect but I'm impressed with what they have managed to achieve.
Bare in mind that Android Auto is designed to work from your voice, so you can keep your eyes on the road, navigation or finding a song on Spotify is best done with your voice.
You can easily add a reverse camera and a front camera. Rear camera works with dynamic trajectory lines.
The unit itself is plug and play with no wire cutting and fits in neatly behind the aircon controls.
Uses original car microphone.
Its pretty wife friendly.
Brings an old system bag up to date.
Cons. Some only relevant to the 3G basic
On the low resolution screen of the 3G basic, the maps lack definition, best run the map in dark mode.
The system cuts a few lines off the top of the screen, you can see the time or signal icon (AA isn't designed to run this low res, so doesn't scale 100%) that being said, it's good enough.
Reverse camera has a bit of flicker, same problem as above, worked fine with high res screen, I can live with it and so can the wife, so it can't be that bad.
The graphic for front and rear parking sensors doesn't seem to work with 3G basic/low or 3G high but I'm pretty sure it does with 3G+.
Wireless AA seems to be a bit hit or miss.
Cost of the system and its many copies can vary from vendor to vendor and so can their support.
On balance I think it's a worth while upgrade for an aging system but don't expect it to be as good as a manufacturers intergrated system that they would of spent alot of time and money on R&D to get it working just right. Same goes for the very similar systems offered by some UK sellers, as I'm sure they worked hard with the Chinese vendors to build a custom firmware that works a bit better and being UK based would be able to offer better support for their buyers but ultimately that costs money so you end up paying more, it really comes down to cost vs convenience
