Toyota’s Entune is another mediocre product I never found the motivation to review. Available in a variety of vehicles the last few years, Entune rounds out Toyota’s Navigation and Bluetooth capabilities with a few apps… that receive their data via your cellphone’s connection. It’s not that it’s horrible, but the experience is quite limited compared to any modern smartphone and held back by a resistive touch screen that is occasionally blown out by the sun (in my 2012 Prius). Not to mention, in my usage, iPhone and Android owners have very different experiences and I don’t trust the weather app as it’s often one day off (photographed today, above).
Toyota’s original plan had been to provide Entune apps free for the first three years and then hit motivated customers with a $5/month subscription or TBD annual fee. However, for presumably competitive reasons, Toyota has just decided to waive any further payments. Via the email blast:
We hope you are enjoying your Toyota and your Toyota Entune® App Suite service. Entune App Suite was designed to make your driving experience more enjoyable by providing in-vehicle access to popular mobile applications like BingTM, Pandora® and iHeartRadio.
We are pleased that so many of our valued customers are enjoying Entune App Suite. As a result, Toyota is proud to announce that Entune App Suite service is now included with your vehicle, at no additional or annual charge, compliments of Toyota. Please note that expiration dates identified on some websites and printed materials have yet to be updated. Be assured, your service will not be affected.
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Yeah, Entune in my 2013 Prius is pretty cumbersome, unreliable & pointless. It seems like more marketing fluff then helpful tech. If you have a smartphone, why not just use it to get your info? Correct me if I'm wrong but the Entune touch interface won't work if the car is in motion, so even a front passenger would not be able to pull up directions, traffic or weather using it? A good idea in theory, but poorly executed in reality and not even worth using at free.
Some things are locked down while in motion. The weather app, for example, is not but entering an address into the Nav/GPS is -- and you got it exactly right, we were out of town last weekend and my wife couldn't enter the next stop on our itinerary while I was driving. At every stop light we added one more element - like street number or city. Was ridic. :) But other than that, the nav isn't bad and I sometimes just keep the map up as I'm driving for context. Voice dialing, via iPhone linkage versus Android, was pretty decent as has been streaming Slacker from smartphone-to-car.
So my Galaxy S4 does "Screen Mirroring". Are there any car makers out there considering a feature like this? Just let me mirror my cell phone onto a bigger screen. I don't need a $1500 GPS with software that's outdated in two years and map upgrades that cost $100 a year. I much rather use Waze on my cellphone displayed on a nice 7"-10" display. I guess the profit margin would be much lower but the usability would be great and always updated.