Toyota's wireless carplay lets you switch in the Settings very quickly (10-15 seconds to get there). So they're not universally bad at least.

10-15 seconds is an eternity. I can switch the bluetooth phone connected in a 10 year old car in 10-15 seconds.

Eh, I frequently switch. I just do it while I wait for the AC to kick in, not a huge deal.

I have a much older car from 2007 so no Android Auto or Apple Carplay for me but I thought I was supposed to sit there after I start my car for at least half a minute?

Maybe not needed for newer cars?

I start the car and wait for the dashcam to chime. I start driving once it chimes. I have an older Aukey, not hard wired, so it takes about half a minute for it to chime which I thought was perfect timing.

Assuming temps over -20°C and a car newer than 30 years, I think you’re fine to drive away as soon as the engine is stable after starting. That’s probably well under 5 seconds and, unless you’re trying to do an old LeMans race start, isn’t something that I’d consciously wait for.

The CarTalk brothers agree: don’t wait, just drive.

10-15 seconds is an eternity. I can switch mine in about 1-2 seconds. Any reason why you seem to be slow?

1-2 seconds is an eternity. I can switch mine in about 0-1 seconds. Any reason why you seem to be slow?

Because it's an old Kia and there's three menus to click thorough and one confirmation screen. I'd guess 15 is a little long, but on average it takes at least 10 seconds.

Right, this is my main problem with Bluetooth too. It’s much better if you can just plug a cable into the phone you want to use and have it just work (and keep the phone charged too).

You can’t quite do that with any car I’ve been in. CarPlay is close; it would be great if that became an open standard with standard connectors.

I really liked wireless CarPlay when testing the Enyaq and wondered about the multi user situation. Already today Bluetooth always seems to get exactly the wrong phone. In our current setup we just have a phone holder with plug in which we shove the phone. Then it is done. It takes longer to pull the phone out of the pocket than to connect it.

The only downside to CarPlay is that the battery stays at 100% charge. I wish I could limit that to 80%. Especially if we take long drives this degrades the battery unnecessarily.

Care to elaborate? Are phones not supposed to be charged to 100%?

The batteries used in phones degrade quickest below 20% and above 80% of charge. This is already at room temperature. When the batteries or phone is hot the degradation at those state of charge (SoC) is even worse. In the car when using CarPlay the phone can get really warm, especially if it is in the sunlight which tends to happen easily. When left in the shade it gets hot due to restricted airflow.

Therefore I would like to limit the SoC on my phone to not excessively degrade the battery. I very rarely, if ever, need more than 80% of the design capacity of my iPhone anyway. So I prefer it to last longer.

Aren't there some internal safeguards already in place to prevent overcharging?

100% isn't over-charging. It's just not the GP's preferred spot on the battery energy (hours of charge) vs battery lifetime (days/years) curve for daily use.

I do wish phones would provide more control here. I would also take 80% charge many (but not all) days in exchange for my battery life after a year staying higher.

lmgtfy: Its the extremes (0% and 100%) that degrades LiIon the quickest, if you want the longest life ideally you'd keep it 30-70% the whole time, ymmv (and also thresholds).

And it is a pity manufacturers don't support you in doing stop-charging-at-x if you wanted, e.g. a simple thing for software to do, but impossible without rooting on Android.

ASUS Zenphone has a setting that lets you set a charging limit at 80, 90, or 100%.

Samsung S22 Ultra (at least) has a 'Protect Battery' setting which limits charge to 85% .

Its been a feature since at least the S9. Source: Had to 'fix' my girlfriend's phone only charging to 85%. Was a mystery how that setting got randomly enabled, really.

I can't recall for certain if my old S7 had that option but I don't think it did.

You're mistaken. Most Androids today have that charge limit function natively.

BTW, on long drives, do take care to not let the phone heat up. That’s way, way worse than letting the battery sit at 100%.

I have it turned on and it helps when charging during the night. It will charge until 80% and then charge until 100% for just in time when it thinks I need it.

But then when I get in my car it will just stay charged at 100% all the time.

> The only downside to CarPlay is that the battery stays at 100% charge. I wish I could limit that to 80%. Especially if we take long drives this degrades the battery unnecessarily.

I think that fast charging is just as bad, if not worse.

Yes. Indeed. That is why I don’t use it. It is something I can control externally by using different chargers. I can’t control how far it charges.

My wife and I share a VW Tiguan and this is a constant annoyance. To switch devices you have to go out of CarPlay -> Settings -> Swipe left to the second screen of controls -> Mobile Device Settings -> Select device.

And since the device it initially chooses to connect to sometimes takes 30 seconds or so to be fully connected (during which time you can't make any selections in this menu), you have to sit and wait until it connects the device you don't want to be connected before you can switch to the one you do want. And then you wait about 30 seconds for the correct device to connect.

Pretty sure mine has a setting where you can prefer which phone is selected when connected.

We've done this in numerous rental cars. Many variations of the same problem -- it picks the phone it picks. We've had to resort to deleting one phone from the car (and the phone's bluetooth) to get it back on the other phone.

It's inconceivable how the pairings are so bad and there isn't just a button for each phone connected that just works. Even when switching does work, all it takes is one blip and it hops over the other phone.

Again, this is on multiple cars on long road trips where we have at least two people to work on it and literally hours to figure it out. We generally settle on a single phone per car now, because it just isn't worth it.