wireless carplay

I sent an email to Alpine Electronics of America on the same subject. This was the reply I got back.

Hello Erik,

Thank you for contacting Alpine Customer Support. In response to your incident, please see the solution below.

iOS 9 releases this fall. We can assure you that Alpine and Apple have a strong relationship and will continue to work together to release products that create a great iPhone experience in the car.

Thank you

Alpine Electronics of America, Inc. Customer Support

Alpine Electronics of America, Inc.

www.alpine-usa.com

That's not a no! Actually, I'm not entirely sure what that was. Guess we'll find out in the fall.

The carstereochick posted on June 15th that Alpine will be "coming up with a solution" for the ILX-007 head unit to be able to use bluetooth for car play.

http://www.carstereochick.com/2015/06/15/wireless-carplay-coming-ilx-007/

Regards,

Rick

That's certainly good news, but I'm hoping there won't be a need to purchase a separate dongle for the bluetooth. I'd read elsewhere (and it's mentioned in the comments on carstereochick) that the ALPS UGKZ2 wireless chip that Alpine used in the iLX-007 has two antennas, one for wifi and one for bluetooth. So it's my hope that a simple firmware update will do the trick, and that it's released earlier than this fall so that iOS 9 public beta users can test it out. Also, it would be good if Pioneer does figure out a way to add wifi functionality to their existing line of CarPlay stereos, so that their current customers aren't left out in the cold.

it is strange to me that there has not been one firmware update to the alpine unit at all since its release.

I have this unit too and I'm disappointed that Wireless CarPlay doesn't work.

I tested on iOS9 and no joy but from reading later posts, unless Wireless CarPlay can run over bluetooth it doesn't look like it's going to work.

Here's what Pioneer support said a little while back:

From: do_not_reply@pioneer.eu

Subject: Solution for your ticket 4713

Date: 17 April 2015 08:08:07 BST

To:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your email, your enquiry has been registered in our system
under reference number:
Pioneer ticket ref nr: 4713

At this moment it is not foreseen to update the SPH-DA120 to allow wireless
car play.

I just updated to iOS 9 Beta and get this under the Carplay options in General settings....

Looks hopefully although i'm assuming it will require Pioneer to update the firmware too.!

There is a new firmware update for the AppRadio 4.

Installing it now.

Meanwhile Zero Alpine firmware updates at all. In almost a year.

Interesting... Let us know how you get on.!

do you by any chance know if the SPH DA 120 works ok with iOS 8.4?

Getting a bit confused by some other forums and want to buy this on 3rd August .

any help appreciated

I Bought the sph-da120 a month ago and have an iPhone6 with iOS 8.4. I've had some connectivity issues so I've updated the firmware to 1.09 and since have had major issues with CarPlay. Now, there are only 2 CarPlay icons that appear: phone and music. All other icons are missing, including Maps, Messages, Podcasts AND most importantly Siri. There is no way to navigate back to CarPlay main menu without Siri button. There are other issues with Bluetooth connectivity, but the firmware update has made CarPlay useless. I miss my CD player.

Gosh I certainly won't attempt to update firmware then.

not that helps you!

I Did buy it but have yet to connect via the HDMI to use the APPRADIO function. Have you tried that at all?

anne

hope you manage to sort it .........

An update after a month of using my sph-da120, firmware 1.09, and my iPhone 8.4.1.

When connected with wire, my experiences using CarPlay have been better than my first few days of using it with the firmware update. There are issues, but it seems rebooting my iPhone resolves them...temporarily. I'm coming to the conclusion that the issues may revolve around iOS8 and less about the head unit. The issue with missing icons still periodically plaque me after a few days of use, but rebooting the phone always resolves the issue. When it malfunctions, it appears to spread out the icons over multiple swipe screens on the head unit. (Not cool). The Siri button is also missing when that happens. So, yes... It's frustrating. But I'm working around it best I can by rebooting the phone 1-2 times per week. With that said, when it is properly working, my primary complaint with the setup overall is the lag between communicating between a button press on the head unit and the phone. This is so annoying that I'm fearful this alone could prevent CarPlay from becoming more popular. It reminds me of how slow an iPhone1 was. Something needs to be improved, and I'm wondering if it's slow hardware on the head unit.

I spoke with Pioneer customer service and he was able to reproduce the broken icon issue on the head unit within minutes. Unfortunately he told me that it is unlikely Pioneer will fix this any time soon. While I appreciated his patience with me, I was undatisfied with his answer.

As I use the system, I am reminding myself that the troubleshooting, lag, and periodic app crashes or no responses, is such a concern that the entire reason for CarPlay to exist is to make interactions with your radio, phone, texting and maps easier to use. And this just isn't the case yet. While I do love a challenge, this makes me think that this system would be hated by an average consumer who doesn't have the patience and technology savvy that I have.

Bluetooth works great! So much so that I'm finding that I don't want to plug in the wire unless I need my maps or Spotify. It is really lame that Siri button isn't available on the main menu, but I can still access Siri by pressing the phone button and pressing the voice button, and then Siri works great. Seems like a bad oversight that this wasn't engineered with this in mind. To me, the real magic of CarPlay is by using Siri during driving. This should be the main staple of CarPlay and easy to access even with Bluetooth.

I was really disappointed today that Apple didn't mention CarPlay at all during the press announcement unveiling the iPhone6s, iPad Pro, and new Apple TV. I love the idea of CarPlay, but it seems like Apple isn't fully behind it yet. I am anxiously waiting for the next iOS update to see if there are any CarPlay improvements that may help fix the issues that I am experencing.

AppRadio isn't great. I haven't used it much because it isn't as refined as CarPlay interface. The icons from 3rd party are usually ugly, and the apps aren't really that useful. I haven't yet realized the benefits of AppRadio.

Based on the adoption rate of CarPlay by car manufacturers, APPLE had better be fully behind it! And soon. Otherwise they will have a PR nightmare on their hands.

I have a series of unfortunate updates for Alpine owners. There'd been the hope that the iLX-007 would eventually be able to support wireless Carplay because of the presence of a wireless chip inside the unit. Unfortunately, a Reddit user opened up an iLX-007 he had purchased just recently, and posted the following image of what he found: http://i.imgur.com/86Ya4Sg.png. As you can see, the wireless chip that was in the initial units is no longer there, meaning at some point Alpine stopped including it in production.

At the same time, I had emailed Alpine when iOS 9 was released last week, inquiring if a firmware update from Alpine would be following to take advantage of the new wireless Carplay capabilities. The response I got back was this:

Thank you for contacting Alpine Customer Support. In response to your incident reference #, please see the solution below.

Unfortunately the unit will not support wireless Carplay, it doesn't have the ability to support BT at all.

Thank you

Alpine Electronics of America, Inc. Customer Support

Doesn't look like it's going to happen. Which means I spent $600 on a stereo that doesn't even have bluetooth capability. Which seems crappy.