#“Parrot ASTEROID \u0096 I want something even simpler again”
One of the best tech purchases I made over the past few years was a Lidl Bluetooth car stereo. My old built-in Ford RDS6000 no longer played CDs and never had a line-in so it had to go.
The Lidl (and Aldi equivalent) units are fantastic. They have line-in, USB, SD Card, CD Player, Radio, A2DP Bluetooth and a hands-free kit. All for about €80.
But I was thinking a few months back that the Germans (and thousands of Chinese manufacturers) could build something better and cheaper.
The thing is, I have never used the CD player in that head-unit. I either plug in a USB stick with music, an SD card with music, or, most commonly, I pair my Android phone using Bluetooth and stream all my music and podcasts from that.
The CD player adds unnecessary weight, cost and complexity. What we need are better Bluetooth controls on these head-units. My wife's one can instruct my phone to go up and down a track but mine can't. I don't want a touch screen like the Parrot above, I want maybe 5 or 6 giant chunky buttons and/or a dial and I want the display to tell me the folder/artist/album/song being played on Bluetooth.
Basically something like that Sony Ericsson LiveView but on a much bigger scale with the usual speaker connections etc at the back. I just find that messing with a touch-screen phone to change tracks/albums etc is a nightmare/dangerous when you are driving.
p.s. I recently discovered that my HTC Desire (and I'm sure many other phones) can pair separately for media and calls. So I have media going to the car stereo but I have calls going to a bog-standard Plantronics headset. I just find that those I am talking to get better sound quality with the Plantronics. The phone is smart enough to mute media when a call is in progress.