Gadgetory

all right it's Josh regard from Android 30 what's going on everybody I'm here with Harris here at the Android Auto section of Google i/o we got a bunch of cars behind us and I'm gonna get a quick demo of what Android auto looks like now I'm actually really excited about this because about a month or two ago I was actually planning on buying a new car I'm glad I held out because now we have Android in our cars you know and in my current car right now I use a tape deck to be able to get my music and everything like that but it looks like what we have here is almost not really of maybe maybe full integration is the wrong way to put it but we have a lot of integration between Android and the car right yes so what we have done is we have kind of started come to the realization that a lot of people using their phones in a vehicle for a lot of different things so what we wanted to do was make sure that we bring power of the phone and applications on the phone into the car so the way we have done this is with Android auto so Android auto what it does is once you kind of connect it to the vehicle it will actually project quote-unquote applications from your phone into your actual screen in the vehicle so what you get is all the applications are running on your phone you're using the network connection on your phone but have made to be ran in easier and safer we're in the vehicle while you're actually driving toward your destination so the point is you have the phone you have everything on there and actually you can use it in the safer needs you matter in the car all right cool well we're gonna go ahead and take a look at it stay tuned for the demo and let's go and do this all right and what we have in here is the Android auto actually interface so we've made the whole system actually very easy to use so the user has very simple and easy access to applications such as maps and navigation communication our music applications so for example here you're going to have Spotify as well as the bunch of other applications that we've announced earlier today such as songs a stitcher Spa Spotify Joyride podcast etc etc etc as well as Google Play Music ah the whole point is that all of these applications are very easily accessible as soon as you get into the car without having to necessarily spends too much time kind of digging for what you're looking for the other thing that we've done is kind of as soon as you plug in as you see the screen over here which is called overview and overview pulls the things such as destinations from like Google now our recent phone calls and etc and the goal is really to kind of give you the contextual information that you're looking for right away as soon as you kind of plug in so this way you can just simply for example click on the card and what it's going to do is going to load up the route in Google Maps and start navigating the voice navigation starts coming through the speakers are you commuter for a second or you start getting other information such as for example next turn lane by link a lane guidance are you going to get for example the time to destination the traffic and etc can also do other things like alternate routes so you can quickly see if there's a different way you can get there you can see traffic along the route and another thing that we kind of wanted to do was to make sure that if you're running in a different application we know people want to listen to music and other things is that they don't necessarily miss on the things that are important around navigation so in this case what you see is the heads-up notification which comes as a part of the L preview which will tell you for example the other applications things such as next up for example next turn so let's quickly stop the navigation is show a little bit of rest of the system we also talked about contextual information so under suggestions for example all the things that you've searched on the Google Maps on the web or Google Maps on mobile are going to show up in the suggestions you can quickly for example just scroll down find things that you were looking for so for example if you're navigated to very building and we're looking forward you can just one tap and you're going to get going um and this is really critical it's all about contextual information that is available to you when you need it in order to start driving there quickly um I've talked a little bit about music so maybe let's start playing the music and as you can see the music is actually playing through the radio or through the speakers in the car up the other thing to kind of keep in mind while we're doing this is that the interface itself is very easy to use the primary action is available right front and center to the user the user also has other controls to them that are available quickly such as forward backward button and they can also use steering wheel buttons for example to simply move to the next song if they choose to so again this assures that the user can focus on the primary task of driving and their hands on a steering wheel at all times you have my playlist on uh I mean if you actually like yes it's like if you were to log in you actually do get your access to your playlist and to the radio stations that you created so they just put two of my favorite songs I'm just oh nice oh I'm sorry it's like yeah I guess we agree on some so uh I mean the key of this is though that this is very very simple to use right and up if you click again you're going to kind of see all the other applications in here we were to pick your ride I don't if you listen to TED talks but for example Jory gives you access to TED talks and again interface with remains very very similar but you'll see some things that we have done to allow the actual applications to differentiate so for example Jerrod uses a blue UI accent all to kind of differentiate their app they also use different buttons for example they have functions such as you know skip 30 they also for example are using different iconography as well as the some of the lists in the menu so and all the lists are simply scrollable or you can just basic tab buttons and again lists are very easy to use in the car so this is one of the reasons what we were going for this quickly just looking at for example Spotify again kind of going to see that you see functionality change a little bit again very simple but interface stays the same so all of these applications are downloaded from google play store and they're all already installed on your phone so all they have been done is enabled for Android auto what this means is you don't have to keep in downloading any other application than you would normally the apps get updated to store they're on your phone you plug in and everything works the way you would expect it normally exactly so the last thing that I haven't talked too much about is for example our voice controls and voice controls a critical part of driving because with voice controls you can control the system and focus your eyes on the road so for example if I just wanted to navigate somewhere again all I have to do is press the steering wheel button and the mic in the car is going to actually pick up everything so navigate to Alamo Square again Maps loads up the route starts and we start basically navigating there if you wanted to play a song for example all you have to do is say play music play music and the voice commands we're going to actually allow also third-party app so it's not that you can just invoke google play music but you can also invoke third-party applications on this is this one of your favorite songs as well I want my players to nice so I mean if you wanted to call somebody it's a simple task of just simply saying call Sally and again what you're going to see is it just starts calling Sally and again the phone calls just starts coming through and things get going so we're not gonna call Sally I've been calling her too much today ah but I mean again idea is that really everything is contextual available to you you can access it through voice you can have easy access to all the functionality right in the front and the voice is not just about controlling the system it's access to your full Google I would say power backhand so if I just want to check out what's the weather here all I have to do is ask what is the weather here it knows that here it knows that here is actually San Francisco this is where we are and he knows actually how to answer it I can also check out what's my next appointment what's my next appointment so yes lunchtime at noon so again it's like that we really made sure that user can access anything and everything that they want via voice so that way they can actually focus on their eyes on the road and their hands on a steering wheel and the primary task of driving so in this case we're using USB and there's a Android auto protocol that's running over USB to basically do the display so what you have is you have the video basically piping from the phone to the primary screen as well as audio and then the touch controls are fundamentally coming back as well as the audio from the microphone okay all right so thank you for that demo it looks really great and Android ala looks like it's going to be a great addition to a bunch of cars but here are my questions we have four different cars here and obviously these are going to be I guess newer models of these particular vehicles over the next year so we're going to see a lot of new cars that have this functionality in them is it is it a API put on top of what the car would already have installed in well with its own - yes so we're not changing the original functionality that's coming with a vehicle there's the only small library that's being added on top of the existing head-unit software that's allowing it to communicate on the phone so the beauty of the system is really that you're able to bring your phone and everything is running off of your phone and the small library is there just to basically kind of push the video the messaging etc through while everything is on your phone okay and of course it's an application that you would put on the phone so any Android phone would be able to do this kind of functionality so I mean we're definitely shooting more toward than your phone's primarily because of various things coming out of part of the owl and everything else that's coming forward so ah but it's coming as because we have to change few things in the Android itself actually to make this work it's the actual Android update so they would have to upgrade actually to L and then it would kind of start getting the functionality Oh - L yeah that makes sense yeah as far as the third-party applications go we saw a lot of media typed but are there going to be any third-party applications like say textually based or anything any other third parties are going to be creating their apparatus is for Android auto so originally we're just focusing on media and text messaging because those are the two kind of big pieces that people want in the vehicles but we're always open to a lot of different ideas we feel that in the vehicle there's a lot of new applications that can be developed so it really comes down to what do users want are what is safer in the vehicle than it would be to use in their phone and kind of what is the automotive industry as a whole is actually looking forward to implementing the vehicles okay my final question is with these cars coming out that will have this functionality it would be possible because look for example when I was looking to buy my car I wanted the Mazda 3 the new one but obviously if I go for the current model it won't have Android auto is it possible to retrofit cars do you know if that would be a possibility or dvd we're working obviously if you've seen a lot of the lists on the list yesterday represented of all the different partners that we're working with some of these partners are also working on the aftermarket units ah it's TBD we're working with everybody and yeah stay tuned all right sounds good all right well Harris I thank you very much no problem yes there's a great demo all right keep it tuned to Android authority that was Android auto for all of you guys stay tuned for all of the best coverage here at Android com of Google IO