Gadgetory

cassette decks and CDs those were so easy in your car option one of those and you knew you were good to go at least through the end of the Clinton administration but today's car tech comes and goes a lot faster in fact you may have never gotten around to having rear seat entertainment a hard drive in your car or satellite radio and they're already heading toward Lane I'm Bryan Cooley with the top five in car technologies that should be future proof in your next car number 5 USB hotspot support this is a little odd but your passengers do expect to have their tablets and laptops online these days when riding in your car studiously ignoring you make it easy on them with a car that supports USB wireless modems this is mostly a Ford thing at this point and increasingly your passengers devices have their own connectivity but I like the general idea of at least one USB port that can work with and understand a wireless adapter for whatever comes next number four SD card navigation when your cards nav system is based on an SD card instead of one of those dorky old DVDs or a hard to update hard drive you can download and install updates without a trip to the dealer even add factory navigation after you've bought the car by just popping in one of these cards this idea is spreading but so far mostly a Nissan and Ford thing number three is the aux jack yeah it's hardly tech at this point but the lowly aux jack is still a thing of simple beauty it works with every portable ever made requires no fancy cable or setup and typically sounds great the downside is it's dumb as a post it doesn't know when to mute doesn't charge your device and doesn't show anything on the screen number two is USB ports for your media like on your computer USB is becoming the god connector in cars plug in a thumb drive or your smart phone or an iPad and reveal its musical guts while also charging it and even controlling it from the car the downside is the sometimes erratic interface and file and codec support depending on what your car maker chooses to recognize it's a little wild out there before I get you to the number one future-proof tech out there right now for your car let me give you a glimpse of what could trump these all something called mirrorlink it's just coming on the market in 2013 and it turns your phone into the brains and the media for your entire car from navigation to calling to music to whatever apps you have on there that are approved the screen on the dash just becomes a dumb display everything is powered by the phone and since the phone does so many things so well perhaps better than your car this idea makes sense here's the caveat car makers are still a little bit wary of it because it means one less area where they can make their car unique but it's worth watching okay our number one technology to future-proof your car is Bluetooth in two flavors calling and streaming calling is quickly becoming more important than radio Bluetooth hands-free is almost universal in cars today with the exception of a couple of really cheap cars that don't include it and a couple of really pricey German cars that have the gall to charge extra for it fast behind Bluetooth calling is bluetooth streaming which doesn't care if you have an Android iPhone or Blackberry device the music just plays in stereo no cables the downside of all Bluetooth tech is that being Wireless you won't be charging while you drive and some streaming systems don't show you any information about what's being played just some dumb splash screen which is infuriating for more car tech top fives like this go to see net on cars.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching you