
Early observations on using Android Auto At first look I'm quite impressed as it really simplifies the interface for use while driving. Large text with essential options and no clutter. Apps such as Player FM will just show a widget with next or previous podcast buttons, and pause and play. If you click to the player you can swipe right to get just jump forward and back buttons (I would have also liked a "mark as played" button but I get it has to stay real simple). On starting the car, the app started automatically (as I set it to start when my car's Bluetooth connected) and it immediately offered one or two commonly used navigation destinations. Once you start off, the overlay buttons at the bottom of the screen stay there so there is no fiddling around trying to find things - they take you directly to Auto home screen, navigation, phone, and podcast / music player. When started you will also see the top status bar is hidden so there are no distractions while driving (if you pull down twice you can still get to it). When an SMS text message comes in I could single press to have it read the message to me, or I could single press to send my pre-saved auto reply. Something else I started using a lot today (because it was an easy to press and self-muted the music) was the microphone button - I used it a few times to ask for a reminder to be set for specific times with a description. So one was to remember at 11am to call the furniture shop about the tumble dryer, and another was a reminder for Friday morning to follow something up at work. Each one was 100% accurately recorded with correct times. I'm going to be using this so much more as it is just ready to use and I love the auto muting of the radio. If I can't record a reminder though in a few seconds, I forget about it. I guess this comes from Google Now so time I learnht a few more useful audio commands! Android Auto deliberately seems to… http://bit.ly/2eSw9Wx
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