Since I have a 2015 F150, I have been following the F150 thread, but thought I would share what I posted there:
Its been a long road, but I think I finally have this unit working to my liking and I’m going to give it a thumbs up.
There are some annoyances I’m still working on, but keep in mind I’m upgrading from the SYNC 2 that did not have Apple Carplay or Android Auto.
I had pretty simple requirements for the Phoenix unit, I needed a larger screen for navigation (bad eye site) and to stream music from Amazon. I have Echo’s through-out my house for automation and I subscribe to Amazon Music. With this is mind, below are my choices on how I use the system
1) Android Auto. Works very good, I can ask Google for directions or to play artist, album, song, etc. The only quirk is you must request to be played from Amazon Music: “Play Paul Simon from Amazon Music”, If you don’t, it will default to Pandora.
My gripes with AA. Not full screen, you get a screen that covers about the same area as the original Sync unit. AA wastes a lot of real estate on this big screen and it’s a shame.
Takes about 30 seconds to connect to the built-in software that controls AA once you plug your phone in to the units USB-OTG port, not a deal breaker, but it could be faster.
2) Apple CarPlay. I don’t have an Apple phone, but my wife does, and I was absolutely blown away by CarPlay on IOS 13.1.1. I didn’t get the opportunity to play around much, but Apple is taking advantage of large screen head units and it is gorgeous. If CarPlay supports Amazon Music, we will be using CarPlay on any longer trips.
3) As mentioned above, I have several Echo Devices, one being an Echo Auto. My default setup is using Waze full screen and Echo auto to stream my music of choice. The Echo auto connects to the Sync2 unit via Bluetooth and works much like any other Echo device. There are couple of problems with this setup
1) If any other menu options are chosen (referring to the units built in Icons at the top of the unit), I’m booted out Bluetooth media of Sync2 that’s running in the background streaming the Echo Auto. I then must open up the Console Icon to get back to Sync2 and choose the Bluetooth media.
2) CarPlay, AA and Echo Auto all respond to voice commands, but for some reason when I’m running Waze as a stand-alone app, the microphone will not work within Waze. I’m going to contact Phoenix to see if there is a fix.
I’m going to do a YouTube walkthrough of my setup and how other Android installed apps work with the unit (Netflix, Amazon Video, etc.) At this point I really like the unit and believe it was worth the money.
G.T.