Google is accelerating with Android Auto – Deeper integration in the car and on mobile

Android Auto relies heavily on Google Maps for navigation and also makes it possible to integrate music apps, for example, via various APIs. In addition, it can handle phone calls and read out incoming notifications. Support for Auto is now gradually built into new cars, but because people use a car for many years, it will take some time before it is widespread.

So at I/O this year, Google announced a new feature, one that makes you wonder why it wasn’t possible from the start; later this year, the Android Auto interface will also be able to run on your phone or tablet as an app. This is not very innovative; there are several manufacturers that have included apps in the past that showed a simple interface for driving. Because the Android Auto app for your phone relies on the existing Android Auto APIs and systems, it goes a lot further than those kinds of apps and there is already good support from other services.

When you start the app, you will first see an overview screen with frequently visited destinations, or upcoming destinations from your calendar. You can also see the weather forecast, missed calls and recent messages that have arrived. You can start navigation via Google Maps via voice recognition or the touchscreen. Maps itself looks much the same as on the phone, but with slightly fewer buttons and information on the screen, and the buttons that are shown are larger, so they’re easier to touch.

Android Auto is especially useful if you want to switch between different applications while driving. If you have to use the normal Android interface to do that, you have to deal with tiny buttons and you have to look closely at the screen when you do it, which can be dangerous while driving. Because the most common scenarios, such as calling and listening to music, are baked into Auto, you can stay within the app and don’t have to switch. In addition, within the Auto environment you will see a navigation bar at the bottom with a back and home button, just like on an Android phone without hardware buttons below the screen. This bar only works within Auto and allows you to easily return to the home screen at any time.

The app version of Auto that we were able to test during I/O looked quite complete and given that almost all functionality had already been developed for the dashboard variant, that is not surprising. The app should be released later this year and is a nice extra for anyone who already uses their phone to navigate in the car.

Android takes over the whole car

In addition to this simple variant of Auto, Google also showed an extremely extensive version, in a modified Maserati Quattroporte. This was equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon soc and showed the interface on a large 4k screen that was mounted vertically in the dashboard. The installation was strongly reminiscent of the well-known screen from Tesla cars. Unlike the first version of Auto, where everything runs on a phone and is displayed on the car screen, this version ran completely on the car hardware.

This opens the doors to new possibilities compared to the first Auto implementation, as it turned out during a demonstration we received from the Dutchman Stef van Grieken, who works on Android Auto at Google. Not only could it control things within Android, such as navigation and music, but all of the car’s systems, such as climate control, skylight controls, seat heating and vibration, were integrated into the Android interface. The software that controls the actual driving of the car is completely separate from this. This is a real-time operating system that works separately so that the driving functionality of the car can never be disrupted.

The idea behind this implementation of Android Auto is clear; just as smartphone manufacturers are running Android on their hardware, the hope is that car manufacturers will use Android for everything that can be controlled in the car, from the air conditioning to the radio. And maybe even more, because the Maserati prototype had a wide screen behind the wheel with, among other things, the speedometer, which was also controlled by Android. If you receive a call, you will see this here, so that you do not have to look at the screen in the middle, and here you will also see the following instruction, for example, when you are navigating. According to van Grieken, you could control additional screens, for example in the back of the headrests.

Multiple apps side by side

The interface relies heavily on a new feature in the upcoming Android N: the ability to have multiple apps on the screen at the same time. The screen in the Quattroporte was divided into three horizontal strips and an app was running on each strip. At the bottom the app for controlling car functionality, in the middle Maps and at the top an app that adapts to the middle activity.

The demonstration we received looked sleek and the system seemed to work simply and intuitively. Whether it’s also when you’re racing on the highway at full speed, or even worse, driving in a busy city center, is still the question. We are also not entirely convinced that huge screens in cars are a good development; as beautiful as the implementation is, it remains a visual interface that grabs your attention, when you should really be focused on driving. In addition, it is always covered in fingerprints and you cannot blindly operate a touchscreen, while you can do so with physical buttons.

According to Van Grieken, Google is aware of this and tries to minimize distractions and minimize the amount of time you spend looking at the screen. It does this by making the Android interface less busy than on smartphones and enticing users to do as much as possible with voice control so they can keep their eyes on the road. This is also literally tested during the development of Auto, by equipping test drivers with a kind of helmet in which cameras record what they are looking at. In addition, you can use the buttons on the steering wheel for many functions, just as it is now the case in many cars.