Kenwood said its car radios offer more voice controlled features than Apple CarPlay.
That’s not to say Kenwood won’t offer CarPlay in the future. It is examining CarPlay but won’t sell radios that work with Apple’s new in-car system this year. For now, Kenwood says many of its radios offer more versatility than Car Play, supporting more apps as well as more smartphones.
For example, Google Maps is the singular most popular navigation app on iTunes, but CarPlay doesn’t work with it, supporting only Apple Maps. CarPlay also does not work with Waze, a popular traffic app.
“The biggest advantage Kenwood offers over prepackaged voice control/ display solutions is choice,” said Kenwood Senior Marketing Manager Scott Caswell.
Also Kenwood receivers work with Android phones and older iPhones, while CarPlay works only with iPhone 5 models. Kenwood uses a pass through on 8 receivers to integrate with Siri voice control, and it also works with Google voice and S-Voice control for Android and Samsung phones. Users get voice control over placing calls, messaging, maps and music, the same features as CarPlay.
Apple calls CarPlay, “the best iPhone experience on four wheels.” It’s user interface is expected to be very simple to use and easily recognizable to an iPhone owner, which is its main advantage. It’s disadvantage is that it is currently limited to working with certain apps and it is limited to the iPhone 5 at present.
Kenwood videos on its voice features are available here (for iPhone control): http://youtu.be/m208RIq3px0 and here (for Android control) http://youtu.be/8XRASQMkYOw
The company has also joined the Android Auto alliance, in support of Google’s version of CarPlay for Android phones, but is is offering no time frame for delivering Android Auto compatible radios.
The first CarPlay radios are expected any time now from Pioneer through a firmware update that will make 5 of its radios CarPlay compatible. Also Alpine is expected to offer a CarPlay aftermarket radio in early fall.
Source: Kenwood
So if Ford says they make a better SUV than BMW because they have Sync and a hands-free powered lift gate, does anyone really believe that? More features should never be confused with better performance.
Well said!