I use (wired) Android Auto with a Samsung phone. It is generally rock solid now - software updates must have cured the connection hiccups I had a year ago when the car was new. I had far more issues with AA on a GM vehicle I rented while on a business trip last week.

 

I find wireless CarPlay via the carlinkit unit to be more reliable than the wired connection (wired via USB C, wireless CarPlay adapter using USB A). No real reason why it should be any different, both are ultimately wired connections from the vehicle's perspective, but it is. Fewer dropouts. Maybe iOS15 will bring some improvements.

 

Pulled the trigger and purchased the "carlinkit " from Ama$on, and installed last week. Plugged into the right USB-A media port, went through the easy setup, updated its firmware through the iPhone and all good! Updated iPhone to iOS15 last night and the interface changes for CarpPlay all working seamlessly with the unit, no firmware update apparently needed. In fact, I think it seems to be connecting a little faster. I have no regrets with this purchase, and its so nice to leave phone in pocket and enjoy fully wireless CarPlay!

The only annoyance was when filling up at a gas station, the phone stayed connected to the unit (until the battery time-out), and got a call that went inside the car. But if that's the only trade-off, I can just unplug the unit if I'm nearby taking phone calls. Oh and I do notice a very short pause or millisecond disconnect and then re-connect when the auto start/stop kicks in at a stop-light. Obviously could be prevented by disabling auto start/stop, but its not that big of a deal.

 

I use AA and wire it in and no problem. I believe that we can easily get wireless AA and Carplay with a simple update and we may already have it behind the scenes. Last week when I got into the Defender, the AA icon was already showing up on the screen. I tried clicking on it to launch it but it did not work. I then plugged in my phone. The reason I think we will get it at some point is PIVI Pro is already wired for Wi-FI and AA runs off of WI-FI. All they have to do is flip a switch that allows third-party apps to have access to the Wi-Fi.

Side note, if I am not traveling and needing Waze or Google Maps, I now just use Pivi Pro with the existing Spotify app. Everything sounds better versus the wire connection.

 

@drcoop - You may have just QA'd everyone's problem. Perhaps the Auto Stop/start is doing the same to everyone and they haven't put the two together. Definitely sounds like a logical point of everyone else's disconnects. Now to await that next OTA patch....

 

Some other observations - wonder if anyone else has seen the same:

• When your camera views are active, for example when you reverse, CarPlay will dropout at the point when the camera view exits and PiviPro would try to return control to CarPlay
• When your phone is connected to both cellular and wifi, for example when you are just leaving home, CarPlay will sometimes dropout right when the phone loses the Wifi connection

I've seen these behaviors with both wired and wireless CarPlay (via Carlinkit). Dropouts are actually more common with wired rather than wireless.

Upgrading to iOS15 didn't really make much difference (in terms of dropouts, CarPlay in general is better as things like Maps are much better in iOS15)

Of note: Since switching to an iPhone13 Pro Max yesterday, I've not had a single dropout. Maybe there's some change on the phone side that is helping.