Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Four Driving Conveniences Helped Out by the Mobile Phone

Last year was the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and as you look back at the older versions you suddenly notice how technology has advanced in the past 10 years. The phone and its features improves leaps and bounds every year. Initially the gap for every new iteration was about 2 years and then more recently a new model comes out yearly. With phones being more within the reach of most consumers it's quite easy to notice the small nuances in their improvements.But with cars you it does seem a bit more subtle for the regular person. These technologies from mobile phones may not be directly lifted but you see how it helps out the modern driver and his commute and how slowly these features from the phone found its way to our cars.

Here are some improvements that have changes throughout the years that improved our driving experience.

1. The ability to connect to external music players.

This probably started out when the iPod came along where auxiliary connections were added to accommodate the old iPod. But now most modern car audio equipment come either with a usb port or a bluetooth to connect with your mobile phone for music. The younger ones will no longer remember CD changers to ensure you have a continuous music for those long out of town drives. How about casette tapes?

2. The backup camera

The days of looking at the rear of the car when backing up will soon be over. With most new cars you'll just need to look at the screen at the center of the console and see where you're backing into. With the size of the camera lens getting smaller as the technology advances so now these can be installed at the rear of the car to leave manual depth perception to an actual view with grid lines to help drivers back up into spaces. Now drives would need less skill to back up into those parking spaces.

3. Screens

Probably the biggest influence of the smartphone technology to driving is the touchscreen console and the mobile phone connection. This has opened up a lot of conveniences for the modern driver. From visual guides via the GPS to backup cameras to better infotainment systems. There are now a lot more information that can be shown for the driver. For the newer cars the screen has already changed the dashboard. You can have different dashboard layout options and for the real high-end cars it can show an image of the road via infrared cameras to give the drive better vision at night.

4. GPS / Mobile Navigation

Most top spec car models would have built in GPS system in them but for those who don't get the high end models there's always the option of using navigation apps such as Waze and Google Maps. Gone are the days where you need to ask for directions to unfamiliar places. Now you simply input in on the phone or GPS. It even provides you with the most optimal routes to avoid the traffic. With the proper internet connection it will let you know before hand when to make those turns towards where you want to go.

These are just a very small sampling of the new technology being packed in the modern automobile. Driverless cars are the target to totally alleviate the cause of most accident which human error. Because will live in digital world where we have grown accustomed to it's pace we take for granted the incremental benefits of these new technologies have brought to us.

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