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Adding android auto

8K views 21 replies 12 participants last post by  Frostie36 
#1 ·
Hi all, I'm new to the forum having recently acquired a 2016 astra sri nav.

My car has apple car play but not android auto, is it possible to add android auto? I've had a quick search but couldn't find a definitive answer.

Cheers.
 
#4 ·
Yes, if you have a 2016 with Navi 900 and no AA, then you need to get it updated.
 
#5 ·
adam83 said:
danh23 said:
I think Vauxhall need to update your radio to add android auto I think that's what have said on here
Ok thanks, I'll try my local dealer and see what they say.
Where are you based? I tried so many dealers before they knew how to do it. The first 2016 production does need to be update. They do not have a fixed price for this either so there is a bit of room for negotiation.

St Albans managed to do mine in about 3 hours.
 
#6 ·
Nofear said:
adam83 said:
danh23 said:
I think Vauxhall need to update your radio to add android auto I think that's what have said on here
Ok thanks, I'll try my local dealer and see what they say.
Where are you based? I tried so many dealers before they knew how to do it. The first 2016 production does need to be update. They do not have a fixed price for this either so there is a bit of room for negotiation.

St Albans managed to do mine in about 3 hours.
East Yorkshire, theres a few vauxhall garages close by so I'll ring round and see what they say.
 
#8 ·
Have a look at this post, https://www.astrakforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=705&start=30#p6501 print it out and take with you to the dealer.
I did it about 2 years ago, it was the first one the dealer did, I got lucky as they didn't know what to charge for it, there was a 35euro charge I believe for the software license, so he just asked for £35
 
#9 ·
meeko said:
Have a look at this post, https://www.astrakforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=705&start=30#p6501 print it out and take with you to the dealer.
I did it about 2 years ago, it was the first one the dealer did, I got lucky as they didn't know what to charge for it, there was a 35euro charge I believe for the software license, so he just asked for £35
I paid for some labor and also the £35 for the software.

It REALLY baffles me that Vauxhall would sell me a radio with software bugs (This was the reason i wanted an upgrade) and then charge me for the software to fix it.

I understand that they need to be paid to put it in the car, but paying for bug fixed software is really bad.

I wonder how long Samsung would last as a phone manufacturer, if they would charge you for bugfixed software for their phones.
 
#10 ·
Samsung just sell you phones that grind to a halt after a year so you buy the next one!

I remember seeing the original specs for the radios and that the 7" non-Nav had Android Auto and Apple Carplay and the 8" Nav only had Carplay.
One thing I got the dealer to do was to update my 2016 SRi Nav to have Android Auto as part of the deal when I bought the car.

To be honest, these latest touch screen 'infotainment' systems seem to have a lot of bugs, just random niggly things but stuff that didn't plague the old push button CD30MP3 units.
 
#11 ·
nsanderson said:
Samsung just sell you phones that grind to a halt after a year so you buy the next one!

I remember seeing the original specs for the radios and that the 7" non-Nav had Android Auto and Apple Carplay and the 8" Nav only had Carplay.
One thing I got the dealer to do was to update my 2016 SRi Nav to have Android Auto as part of the deal when I bought the car.

To be honest, these latest touch screen 'infotainment' systems seem to have a lot of bugs, just random niggly things but stuff that didn't plague the old push button CD30MP3 units.
I remember updating the firmware on my DVD90 back in the day, this was done via a CD, that was obviously useable MANY times.

The R4.0 and the Navi 900 are standard hardware boxes produced by LG for a lot of different car manufacturers. See it as buying a general purpose computer with processing power, and operating system and some hardware features.

One of those features is Wifi....Basically those 2 units have wifi capability, so it would be fully possible to make the car radio update itself whenever connected to wifi just like your mobile phone, Vauxhall just chose to not include that in the firmware.

From what i have heard the first firmwares for the R4.0 had a wifi menu in the secret menu, later firmwares had a visible wifi menu (That did nothing but connect to your wifi) and the latest firmware had all wifi menu's removed.

Vauxhall purposefully chose to NOT enable the OverTheAir update feature, but instead made it a 2 step process that NEEDED the car to go to vauxhall for updating.

The actual firmware update is just files on a USB thumbdrive. You insert it into the USB socket and turn the ignition to power the radio. It will then detect that update files is on the USB drive and does the update......IF they had made these files available online for anyone to update, that would have been fine with me...This is how many of the first generation of flat screen tv's were updated (As they had no wifi).

But after the update, you must connect vauxhall programming hardware to the car and do the variant coding for the car. If you have updated and not variant coded, the radio will show a chevrolet logo when booting up, the screen will be upside down and the controls will look totally different as it will be for some chevrolet model.

The chevrolet interface does have wifi connectivity menu's and even a "Check for new firmware" menu.....(This does say "Latest firmware installed"even though what i had at that time was not the newest version available...At least for the Vauxhall Astra K).

I am guessing that they might be at a point where they have to do the wifi updates for the french infotainment systems that will be used in the 2020 onwards models of the astra K, as "You have to take the car to the garage and pay for firmware upgrades" probably will not sit well with new car owners.

My guess is that there are 2 reasons they have wanted to do the upgrades in the garages.

1. Extra money...People are forced to pay up if they want dumb bugs fixed.

2. A lot of features in cars today, are controlled by the infotainment system and making upgrading possible via wifi, would possibly open up a new attack vector for "hackers" to be able to send modified firmware files to the radio, that had some of the features they want you to pay for, enabled. (In this context "hackers" should not be seen as someone that wants to control your car, but just someone that wants to have software features they did not pay for, enabled.....Sort of like software pirates hack software to enable software they have not paid for)
 
#12 ·
astraowner said:
It REALLY baffles me that Vauxhall would sell me a radio with software bugs (This was the reason i wanted an upgrade) and then charge me for the software to fix it.
It's not a bug it just wasn't ready for the car launch. They wouldn't hold the entire line being launched just because one software function is not 100% ready.
 
#13 ·
teneke said:
astraowner said:
It REALLY baffles me that Vauxhall would sell me a radio with software bugs (This was the reason i wanted an upgrade) and then charge me for the software to fix it.
It's not a bug it just wasn't ready for the car launch. They wouldn't hold the entire line being launched just because one software function is not 100% ready.
Well for the R4.0 there were lots of bugs.

Radio channel names disappearing, android auto just giving you a black screen 9 times out of 10, no ability to control phone, radio and navigation volumes seperately just to mention a few.
 
#16 ·
astraowner said:
Well for the R4.0 there were lots of bugs.

Radio channel names disappearing, android auto just giving you a black screen 9 times out of 10, no ability to control phone, radio and navigation volumes seperately just to mention a few.
My car suffered from these bugs, and it was updated under warranty, for free because of them. There wasn't even a discussion about paying something, they just reserved a time for me and said that they'd ofcourse fix it right away.

I bought my car used when it's was about 15 months, so it was still under the 2 year standard warranty.
 
#17 ·
kjns said:
astraowner said:
Well for the R4.0 there were lots of bugs.

Radio channel names disappearing, android auto just giving you a black screen 9 times out of 10, no ability to control phone, radio and navigation volumes seperately just to mention a few.
My car suffered from these bugs, and it was updated under warranty, for free because of them. There wasn't even a discussion about paying something, they just reserved a time for me and said that they'd ofcourse fix it right away.

I bought my car used when it's was about 15 months, so it was still under the 2 year standard warranty.
I bought mine when it was 2½ years old and here we also only have 2 year warranty, so i had to pay for it sadly.
 
#20 ·
Elite_Witton said:
I just called my local dealer and they have quoted me £167.04 to update the software 😨
I paid the equivalent of £140 for getting my radio updated.

About £50 of those was for the software.
 
#22 ·
nsanderson said:
Samsung just sell you phones that grind to a halt after a year so you buy the next one!
Really, wonder why my Galaxy s4 is still going strong after 6 years, my S7 edge after 3 years, oh and the S2 I gave to my dad is still going after what, 8 years, guess I got lucky eh, 3 times although your right in that I did buy the next one although I skipped the S5 & S6 & haven't bothered with the s8, 9 or 10 lol

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