Photo: Apple
Apple’s CarPlay can run with a wired or wireless connection, and it requires an iPhone to be paired with the car’s head unit to power the whole thing.
And while you can obviously use it with just an iPhone connected to the car, a much better experience can actually be obtained with two different iPhones.
While this may sound awkward at first, the second iPhone would be used specifically for CarPlay, which means you can leave the device in your car all the time and then provide it with Internet access with a hotspot created on your main iPhone.
With this configuration, you can technically obtain wireless CarPlay without your head unit supporting it, so even if you must use a wired connection, this approach makes it possible to keep your main iPhone in your pocket and still have navigation and media apps on your car’s head unit.
It goes without saying that such a setup adds a little bit of extra convenience to the whole thing, but this is also the purpose of wireless CarPlay in the first place.
Of course, there are drawbacks, and one of them is having a secondary iPhone that you can use exclusively for powering CarPlay. An old iPhone, however, doesn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks, and if you have one around, it basically doesn’t cost anything.
If it’s always connected to your car, it never runs out of battery, albeit you might want to check it every now and then given the possible overheating that it could experience. Other than that, this is pretty much the best way to mimic wireless CarPlay without a head unit upgrade.
Needless to say, there are other ways to get enhanced convenience with CarPlay, such as a wireless adapter or a dedicated mount mount to easily plug in your iPhone, but if you have an old iPhone that nobody uses, powering CarPlay is the best thing it could do.
While this may sound awkward at first, the second iPhone would be used specifically for CarPlay, which means you can leave the device in your car all the time and then provide it with Internet access with a hotspot created on your main iPhone.
With this configuration, you can technically obtain wireless CarPlay without your head unit supporting it, so even if you must use a wired connection, this approach makes it possible to keep your main iPhone in your pocket and still have navigation and media apps on your car’s head unit.
It goes without saying that such a setup adds a little bit of extra convenience to the whole thing, but this is also the purpose of wireless CarPlay in the first place.
Of course, there are drawbacks, and one of them is having a secondary iPhone that you can use exclusively for powering CarPlay. An old iPhone, however, doesn’t cost more than a couple hundred bucks, and if you have one around, it basically doesn’t cost anything.
If it’s always connected to your car, it never runs out of battery, albeit you might want to check it every now and then given the possible overheating that it could experience. Other than that, this is pretty much the best way to mimic wireless CarPlay without a head unit upgrade.
Needless to say, there are other ways to get enhanced convenience with CarPlay, such as a wireless adapter or a dedicated mount mount to easily plug in your iPhone, but if you have an old iPhone that nobody uses, powering CarPlay is the best thing it could do.
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