My Previous car was a Skoda Kodiaq Edition which came with CarPlay as part of the package. I got really used to using CarPlay for music and navigation and, for 3.5 years, I had faultless operation between my phone and the car. So, I shelled out for the infotainment upgrade for CarPlay when I ordered this Volvo, expecting to replicate that experience. I had high expectations moving from Skoda to Volvo but this aspect has been frustrating and disappointing.
- The XC40 has a large portrait oriented screen and CarPlay is displayed in landscape orientation. That's fine. It is what it is. But why put the CarPlay display - with its music controls and visual navigation prompts - right at the bottom of the infotainment display, as far away from the windscreen, where the driver's attention is supposed to be, as possible? It's not like anyone is using any of the redundant infotainment buttons taking up all the screen space above it, while using CarPlay for music and navigation. It just seems like a nuts design choice for a brand built on safety.
- I'm also a regular user of alarms on my iPhone and, when an alarm goes off while CarPlay is in use, a banner pops up on the display to ‘stop’ or ‘snooze’, except, more often than not, the banner is positioned so low on the CarPlay display that the buttons on the pop-up are cut off, below the physical edge of the screen. The resulting faffing to stop or snooze an alarm, caused by this, is also dangerous as it takes the driver’s attention away from the road. I assume there is a bit of wonky coding in the CarPlay integration there, possibly related to how CarPlay is displayed on the larger, portrait oriented screen.
- Lastly, Apple CarPlay audio can sometimes cause a conflict with the Volvo infotainment system. This manifests as CarPlay occasionally crashing when trying to play music via CarPlay and then either continuing to crash each time CarPlay is reconnected and then music selected, or the car refuses to recognize the iPhone’s CarPlay connection at all. The problem can be solved (through trial and error) by either turning the engine off and opening/closing the door (not always successful) or manually selecting a radio station in the infotainment system and then reconnecting the iPhone CarPlay connection. I have highlighted this last problem with the garage and asked them to make any software updates but the problem still persists.