Why are many cars’ screens slow and laggy when a $400 phone can have a smooth performance?
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I am going to go against the grain: Better tech is new, until the next generation. A reliable and scalable tech is harder to do. So in order to save costs for you and themselfs the car companies will gfo with reliable and tested true tech until such time as the stuff available becomes cheap and reliable enough, or its so much better it needs to be implemented.
I will give the example of cruise control. Now it will recognise speed signs as well as other cars, before it just set a throttle by wire at a set speed and leave it there.
Touch screens were bad, now they are good. Whilst it took a while to get the good screens into cars. Many of these cars will last 10+ years. We went from lcd to oled foldables in 10 years…. Its all well and good to say, just keep up with the times, but reality is that some tech fads come and go. But cars need to for the most part, be able to provide the same experience for most of their lifetime.
And like others have said this is also partly because it takes a few years and a few models to make back the costs of investing into changing all the manufacturing for some new part.
Car screens are literally just the cheapest tablets that money can buy.
Unless you are in an expensive and new car, they’ll be shit by default.
Another thing to consider is that car screens/computers are built for reliability in heat, cold, bouncing down the road and still working in 10 years. Those are all design trade offs that I’m willing to make
Apple CarPlay (and I think android) allow the manufacturer to just display a video stream from the phone and not try to be a super computer, just be a dumb screen (like a TV nowadays). I use external boxes (PS5, Switch, AppleTV) plugged into the TV and the TV just displays what the powerful external box wants it to. This is what CarPlay does for your infotainment, and you can upgrade your phone every couple years for a faster and better experience and not worry about the car’s built in system being slow/laggy/old.
I used to work at a semiconductor plant largely focused on automotive customers. They bought the older chips because they were reliable and output was consistent. They also audited us and our processes rigorously.
Basically, putting a chip anywhere near a multi-ton death machine is a risky thing. I’d rather them be safe (and slow) than sorry.
So, if you have a tesla it is not. Even my mcu 2 now 5 year model 3 lr is smooth and performant when interacting with it. It is a 1920×1200 15” lg display panel mated to the mci 2 computer with is an intel atom e8000 which it fast per say but it’s apparently adequate.
Most car makers don’t give a hoot about the infotainment system and outsource it to the lowest OEM. Because it’s proprietary garbage, there’s little competition and they have no incentive to modernize quickly.
The car makers are at odds with the consumer: car makers want everything integrated and proprietary so that if something breaks, you have to go to a service center. Consumers want user serviceable, easily replaceable, inexpensive, modern equipment.
The best solution would be to have one tightly integrated system for crucial controls such as lights, ventilation, etc. A second infotainment system could be as simple as an Android tablet bolted into the dash. Far cheaper, but it doesn’t lock in the customer. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay try to bridge that by making the car’s built-in screen a “dumb” display controlled by the customer’s phone/tablet. But as expected the experience sucks because they don’t have any incentive to make that work well.
I wish car manufacturer would stop installing their proprietary infotainment systems, and instead simply partner up with Apple or Android to spec out and provide a good system. Bur gotta control their Stull and sell head unit for extra $1500 at a manufacture cost of $100 for them. It’s all about the profit margin, not your functional concenience.
Answer: The screen on the car isn’t the make-or-break feature for most buyers, so the company can cheap out in that area more easily. They outsource development of those to the lowest bidder and use the cheapest hardware they think they can get away with.
Phone manufacturers do that too, but they can’t get away with as much because the screen’s responsiveness is one of the biggest decision points for consumers.
Try an aftermarket android stereo, the difference is insane.
I never liked touchscreen stereos because of how bad they are normally until I tried a pioneer stereo, the difference is night and day.
Yalls cars have screens!?
I’m still cranking my window up and down
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