What's the next step for mobile phone and car integration? One option is Nokia's Terminal Mode technology, which proposes an industry standard for the integration of mobile phones (and their applications) into the car environment. Nokia has developed Terminal Mode in conjunction with CE4A (Consumer Electronics for Automotive) and recently held the Terminal Mode Summit at their Espoo offices in Finland. This gives us a good opportunity to review what Terminal Mode is about and what progress has been made to date. Read on....
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Very interesting. The success of this would obviously depend on the willingness of every manufacturer will to adapt to a common standard. Hope that happens.
Ever see or use "Remote Professional" from Mobileways.de? The version I am using doesn't support Audio transport, but just about everything else does work. It is fast and robust, especially in USB mode. I was thinking of using a spare tablet I have to basically run Maps in full screen in the car, attached to a dash mount.
As I've contemplated moving to Android, however, I ask myself if it really makes any sense to buy another piece of hardware for the car when the phone itself does everything perfectly as it is--transmits audio to the main receiver, the screen is perfectly sized, and I can use voice commands to do nearly everything on the screen handsfree. Obviously, there is a touch interface as well.
As with the Nokia Car Kit CK-200, I am not impressed by this "development". It feels like a moneygrab that is not compelling in any way at all.
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/12/bmw-to-support-new-ipod-out-feature-in-ios-4/
I don't see BMW changing now and no doubt everyone else will follow suit soon enough and probably before Terminal Mode even gets off the drawing board.
As ridiculous as it seems we may be choosing cars in future according to which brand of phone we use! Ridiculous; unless Europe sensibly wades in like they've done with USB chargers: yay for Europe!!
@Zaqfalcon, I don't think BMW will refuse to adapt to this since the article does mention that BMW is part of the consortium of automobile manufacturers that are participating in the evolution of this. For all you know, the apple example could be on these lines as well.
@Zaqfalcon: the one thing here to remember is that Apple's iPod out is only for remote "iPod" control of the iTouch or iPhone. Where Terminal Mode provides access to all the advertised applications on the phone to the head unit. I'm not yet convinced that TM is the way to go, but it has some interesting possibilities.
http://thenokiablog.com/2010/07/23/meego-genivi-alliance/
So, there goes the argument about Nokia not figuring out Meego's role in this space! This is getting as silly as when Nintendo kept saying NDS was not replacing GBA! Stop developing internal conflict, Nokia!!
-Gene