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The home screens of Android Auto and CarPlay. One is a notification dashboard, the other is an a app icon grid.
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The voice command UI for both platforms. There's never any text, just a voice response.
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CarPlay doesn't have an ongoing notification system, so for Maps it sticks an icon in the top right while navigating, for music there's a "Now Playing" icon that jumps to the current app. Android Auto just displays notifications on the dashboard.
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Incoming notifications both pop up in exactly the same way.
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Google Maps vs Apple Maps! This is the two of them while navigating.
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While not navigating, you get a standard map. Google Maps supports pinch-zoom and Apple Maps doesn't, so CarPlay has zoom icons.
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If you want to type in a destination, both have keyboards that will show up when the car is parked.
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The "Now Playing" screens for Google Play Music and Apple Music.
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Apple Music has a big advantage here because you can actually browse your local music collection. Google Play Music only lets you look at the queue and playlists.
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Both platforms allow for audio apps. CarPlay apps just end up on app grid pages, while Android Auto shows a list of music apps after a second press on the music button.
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Messages for each platform. CarPlay has a dedicated app icon for messages, while Google only uses notifications. Neither platform ever displays text.
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The phone apps for both platforms have similar functionality, but Apple's app uses tabs at the top.
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Android Auto hides all the functionality behind the hamburger menu.
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Both have dial pads, too.
Under the hood, CarPlay and Android Auto seem pretty similar. They're both "casted" interfaces that process and render a computing environment on a smartphone and then send that interface to the car display, basically using it as an external touchscreen monitor. The interfaces are wildly different though, with CarPlay sticking with the tried-and-true grid of apps, while Android Auto displays a notification dashboard and uses a tabbed interface. After having just looked at CarPlay and reviewing Android Auto last year, we figured a quick comparison was in order.
The first picture in the gallery covers the biggest differences between these two systems. CarPlay and Android Auto take completely different approaches to the system UI and home screen design, and this affects the entire way you use the device.
CarPlay's original name of "iOS in the car" pretty much nails Apple's goal here. CarPlay is basically the iOS smartphone/tablet interface enlarged 400 percent and simplified for car usage. The biggest change is the status bar, which morphed into a side-mounted bar showing the time, connectivity, and the on-screen home button. The icons are the star of the show here—they're big, bright, obvious, and easy to hit.
Other than the name, Android Auto doesn't take much from its smartphone heritage. Android's bottom system bar, which normally only houses the back, home, and recent navigation buttons, is now a tabbed interface for the various sections of Android Auto. Rather than the paradigm of apps with icons that whisk you away to a new location in the software, Android Auto is broken up into five sections. Apps can take over some of those sections.
With no app grid on Android Auto, the screen (accessed by the circle button) is a dashboard of what's going on right now. Imagine Android's notification panel as a home screen and you get the general idea. You see the music that's currently playing, navigation directions, suggested navigation locations, recent calls and messages, and even weather information.CarPlay has no "ongoing notification" system to let you know about currently playing music or the upcoming navigation directions, so it handles both issues in two different ways. For music, there's a dedicated icon on the home screen called "Now Playing" which takes you whatever app is currently playing music. If you're currently navigating in Apple Maps, an icon will pop up on status bar on the left side of the screen.
Android Auto's bottom bar is always on the screen, which makes navigating the system a snap. You can usually get from any major section to any other major section with a single tap. CarPlay's attachment to the smartphone model means switching tasks takes an extra step—you have to first press the home button to see the list of app icons, then you press an app icon. Once you fill up the main screen with apps (out of the box there is one free slot), CarPlay's home screen will paginate, so sometimes you end up with a third step of swiping through pages. Third party apps get sorted alphabetically and can't be customized, so it's a real bummer if your favorite app ends up on page two or three.Apple Music is much better on CarPlay than Google Play Music is on Android Auto. CarPlay gives you full access to your music collection, allowing you to browse by song, artist, album, playlist, or whatever else you want. It's a full featured music interface. Google Play Music restricts you to seeing playlists and the queue—you can't browse your music collection. Play Music is the only one that lets you play or pause music from the home screen though, which is nice.
Third-party apps are available on both platforms, but both Google and Apple make it very clear that third-parties are "guests" and not allowed to take over too much of the interface. Both vendors lock down the phone and map apps to their own solutions, and both let third parties make audio apps. Google takes the added step of letting app developers plug into the voice system for text messages.
Calling CarPlay and Android Auto "competitors" doesn't really sound right, as it's rare to have the luxury of choice here. Everyone is locked into their own ecosystem—you'll need an Android phone for Android Auto and an iPhone for CarPlay—and only certain cars support certain interfaces. They're both trying to accomplish the same thing, and both do a great job of bringing a familiar, good looking interface to your car dashboard. Both are definitely 1.0 products though, and each could use improvement. Watching them grow and react to each other in the future should be a blast.
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