Gadgetory

I'm here in the 2016 Ford Escape not to look at the car but to look at Ford's new infotainment system they call sync 3 this is the third generation of their infotainment system the home screen here shows me a map on the left side and information cards on the right audio at the top phone on the bottom plus I get a nice menu ribbon along the bottom here giving me quick access to the major functions of this system now for a challenge was to make this system more responsive than the previous one so what they've got here is actually a capacitive touchscreen plus there's a Texas Instruments OMAP 5 dual core processor behind the scenes here making this all work pretty well when I hit the map side of the screen it opens up the full map and as you can see it's pretty responsive it works really well in my destination screen I get this new search box here this is pretty cool I can enter in an address or any sort of search term and I'll actually search its own point of interest database and find what I'm looking for and the cool thing is even though this is an online search it actually includes information about a lot of locations that has stored in here plus a rating that's pretty cool now back to my home screen here if I push this apps button down here I get some app link apps that are actually integrated with the system I see glimpse Pandora and Spotify those are all actually running on my phone which is connected to the USB port in the car and they gives me some audio sources and glimpse lets me send my like current location to my friends Ford will be adding new apps to the system as they become compatible when I go to my phone screen here you can see the Siri button in the upper right-hand corner I can activate Siri through that or a long push on the voice command button on the steering wheel and that will pass through my voice commands to Siri on my phone that's plugged into the cars USB port right now but if I ask Siri for a destination especially gonna use the navigation system on the phone not the one native in here if I just give the voice command button a short press then I get my local voice commands that control this actual system here you'll be able to get sync 3 in the new Ford Escape on this 8-inch touchscreen or in the new Ford Fiesta with a 6.5 inch touchscreen or we'll be ruling the system out in other models as it updates them Ford tells me that sometime in the future that will be offering Android auto and apple carplay as part of the system although they haven't specified when fortunately if you already have the car but update it wirelessly you can connect the car to your home Wi-Fi network and port will send updates to sync and update this system so there isn't anything really revolutionary in the air nothing that catapults forward ahead of the competition but it certainly keeps them up with it it's a good system and I like what I've seen so far