In-car computers and navigation systems are becoming very popular these days. Lately you may have heard of Microsoft’s Sync system brand of in-car computer. Ray Doan and I took a look at this system at the New York Auto Show. Here’s a video of how it works.
Now, there are two versions of the Sync system; one with a touch screen and one without. The one you see in the video is a touch screen enabled system. We’ll show you the non-touchscreen version in another post.
One issue with this system is that since the touchscreen is also used with a voice-controlled GPS navigation system (which is not well integrated with Sync), you have to start from the main menu via the voice commands every time. Ideally if you were already in the media playing mode, you should only have to say “Play Artist Toby Keith”. Unfortunately, you have to specify which device the command is for before you can do that.
The Sync system does seem to work very well with mobile phones however. It connects via Bluetooth and can access your address book as well as text messages and call history. When a text message is received, the car will notify you and it will read the message to you with text-to-speech. It’s funny, how it expands text messaging lingo and says “laughing out loud” when reading “LOL” or “winking smiley face” when reading: 😉 You can also respond to text messages with pre-made responses. There is no dictation capability.
Originally published on Pocketnow on March 24, 2008. More Smartphone News articles from the Pocketnow archive.