Pioneer Electronics Australia has this afternoon finally acknowledged the launch of Android Auto in Australia. They’ve announced via Facebook that they’ve updated their Australian website with a product page for at least one of the head units due to arrive here next month.
The product page is now available, with specs and more, as well as links to a number of places where you can purchase the unit, though none of the stores suggested were aware of its existence, nor the price when we contacted them. While Pioneer Electronics hasn’t announced pricing on the post, they have previously advised users on Facebook that the price will be $1,149.
The full Facebook post reads:
JUST ARRIVED!!!!! AVH-X8750BT- access & control of your smartphone in the car, like never before. Featuring both Google…
Posted by Pioneer Electronics Australia on Tuesday, March 24, 2015
To whet your appetite, here’s a demo of Android Auto on the Pioneer head unit :
Pioneer Australia has also promised that the manual for the head unit will go up on the Support Page over night, but at this stage it’s not available.
At this stage, we’re still looking at a mid-April launch according to our sources, so keep an eye out.
Hi Michael, do you know if there will be a firmware update for the X8650BT to support Android Auto? Considering they are so similar, i take it it is just a software upgrade that’s needed to support Android Auto and not any actual hardware? Thanks mate
I havn’t got the hands on experience that Michael has but I have to say that I have seen a lot of videos around YouTube that show off the experience better than the official promo video above (demos of Pioneer units at CES, etc).
When posting links in an article about a business, can they be to the actual business’s website like most people assume a hyperlink is? Not an automated search using the phrase as a tag, all four tags essentially finding the same articles? I can still type, and if I want to find other articles about Pioneer Electronics Australia, or Pioneer, or Pioneer AVH0X8750BT, or Android Auto, I can actually type that out. When I click a little blue phrase with a business name, in an article talking about how that business has updated it’s website, I usually assume that the… Read more »
Thanks for the feedback BigEars, we’ll take it under advisement. The practice of tagging is pretty well accepted as standard practice on most websites, but we are using an auto-tagger and we’ll see if we can scale it back a little.
I get that the idea is so that users can see other related articles, but yeah having a number of different tags that all basically link to the same articles is a bit ridiculous. Plus it lead to me literally going “Oh cool, a link…nope, automated search…AHA another link….nope, still an auto-search…maybe this one…nope…” my coworkers now think I’m insane cause I don’t realise I’m saying it aloud ahah
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If you’re reading anything from me, all the major links are always put the bottom as Source/Via.
Actually Dan, I understand exactly what BigEars528 was grumbling about. This consistent behaviour within all Ausdroid articles:
All the links within the article, are listed below the article as tags.
All the links within the article point to Ausdroid categories on subjects, and not to the actual offsite pages/homepages.
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Looks like a glorified GPS which plays music occasionally and costs $1200. Not this time.
For a Pioneer ad it felt more like a Google Services ad, as it was focussing solely on Google facilities which can be voice controlled.
Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Play Music, Google Hangouts as SMS, and Google Now Search.
Yeah I don’t think the video is doing it justice but also as Nicholas pointed out it would be barely legal, if at all. Still, I’ll be looking out for this in my next car.
Hey Wayno, agree, this video doesn’t do it justice. I’ve been testing this product/technology for the last four weeks at Pioneer Australia HQ and it’s definitely legal. More importantly, it provides a level of smartphone access and connectivity never seen before with Android, in the car.
That YouTube demo is so illegal in Australia 🙁
Hey Nicholas, I actually work for Pioneer Australia and this demo would be fine in Australia.