Hello everyone, last time we talked about two major factors of the price difference between infotainment systems, CPU, ROM, and RAM.

(If you are new to this topic, have a look at this link: http://blog.autopumpkin.com/how-to-tell-the-price-difference-between-car-stereos-lesson-1/ )

This time I’d like to share some basic but vital functions of an infotainment car stereo that you definitely need to understand well before you pick one.

Top 3 basic functions: GPS, Radio, Bluetooth.

Most car stereo head units have them all, but there are differences. For example, what kind of GPS system does it support, is it applicable on your phone OS? Is the navigation APPs pre-installed or not? If not, how could I download one? By WIFI? Then you need to be sure this car stereo has a built-in WIFI modem.

Radio function seems so normal, but I believe you all be troubled by poor signals, phase noise, and slow tuning. To eliminate these annoyances, confirm the tuning range and signal receiving performance will be helpful. If the infotainment system supports RDS, better for program and traffic information acquirement. Also, Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) compatibility comes handy for a well-known large radio station numbers and channel options (mono talk radio, news, weather, other music/ non-music programs) covers a broader area around the world (except North America).

Bluetooth now is not just about sharing your favorite music from your phone anymore. Hands-free calling allows you to make and receive phone calls, send and receive messages, access to your phone book. Just be sure your phone supports Bluetooth.

Forecast for lesson 3: Functions of a car stereo you need to know for your driving safety.

 

btw, PUMPKIN car stereos are great in all these functions.

1. Check on the CPU

The core of something is always a major part and the most valuable one. See the CPU of the car stereos that attracted you, is it Quad- core, Six- core, or Octa- core? Trust me, it makes a huge difference whenever you start up your infotainment system or tried to run multiple APPs at the same time. Normally, less number of cores leads to slower running speed, but there is always an exception if your in-dash media player is Quad-core’s but with surprisingly fast speed, be alarmed, the system may not be held too long before went corrupt because of the overheat CPU.

2. The storage of RAM and ROM

This is another big factor that causes the price difference. Random-access Memory (RAM ) is readable and changeable, it keeps the working data of an infotainment system and supports the running of APPs from your smart phone, which means it is the storage of RAM that controls how many APPs you can run(both front end and back end) smoothly and quickly at the same time. Bigger storage room the RAM has, faster running speed APPS will be.

Read-only memory (ROM) is also known as Flash Memory, it saves part of the storage for the running of smart phone programs and the rest for storing your videos, photos, music, etc, which can all be deleted and changed any time. Things you stored only occupy the space of ROM instead of RAM, so the storage of ROM does little influence on the running speed, the biggest influencer is RAM. ROM only matters to how many videos, music, APPs you can keep.

 

What can I say, bigger storage, better experience? But it depends on your demand.

I am planning to talk about the main functions a car head unit shall not miss the next lesson.

Or maybe you can suggest something else?

The multi-touch capacitive touch screen is used in all the smart phones, we are so used to the convenience it brings, but when it turns into a car stereo system, the convenience is gone!

Luck us, there are some companies who do care about our needs (of course for their own survival). Anyway, with this function all the dragging process becomes fun. Personally, I couldn’t stop myself from organizing APPs into folders, and the scattered pieces of icons just drive me crazy, in this situation, a multiple touch capacitive touch screen really makes the whole work a lot easier.

One more thing hits my nerve in every driving because I need to use the Google map, but I like to zoom in to see the general direction I was about to go. My last car stereo didn’t have the muti-touch function, and my fat finger just always missed the tiny little ‘-’, now I don’t even want to recall those dark memories.

My new car radio is Pumpkin’s Android 8.0, no problem raised yet.