UVO, Bluetooth and CarPlay

[GT2InSeattle]

First - please note.. I LOVE my new car.. this car is amazing..

But I'm finding the UVO system even more vexxing in some ways than the "Premium Sound System" I had in my 2012 Optima SX.

I'm hoping someone can help me with figuring out how to get UVO and CarPlay and bluetooth to all be seamless (or at least help me get Carplay out of the way).

Let me explain my frustrations/concerns/questions..

- UVO has this feature that's supposed to leave information on your phone about where you've parked.. turn off the car.. it sends it to your phone (Parking Minder). But all too often I get the message "Parking Location Not Transferred - Phone not connected to car".. It most certainly was.. because..

- CarPlay seems to require that the phone be connected physically to the car.. is that correct? I can't use CarPlay via Bluetooth? I really have no idea.. I've never had a car with CarPlay (I'm using an iPhone X).

- It seems that if I'm using CarPlay - many of what I would call the better UVO features in terms of the navigation functions, the built in voice recognition, etc are in conflict with the CarPlay equivalent functions. Specifically i used Apple maps to get directions and the maps were thrown in the background and the UVO maps came back into the foreground.. I had to bring CarPlay back up and bring maps back up to see it again.

Should I just shut off CarPlay and stick to UVO? I don't see that CarPlay is really giving me anything that UVO won't.

One last question and I think I know the answer - You can only have ONE UVO account connected to your car, correct? For example.. if my wife uses the iPhone UVO app on her iPhone and I use it on my, it has to be the same account, correct?

Thanks in advance... I did google search but really couldn't find anything that definitively helped me figure all this out.

 

[MurlinatoR]

First - please note.. I LOVE my new car.. this car is amazing..

But I'm finding the UVO system even more vexxing in some ways than the "Premium Sound System" I had in my 2012 Optima SX.

I'm hoping someone can help me with figuring out how to get UVO and CarPlay and bluetooth to all be seamless (or at least help me get Carplay out of the way).

Let me explain my frustrations/concerns/questions..

- UVO has this feature that's supposed to leave information on your phone about where you've parked.. turn off the car.. it sends it to your phone (Parking Minder). But all too often I get the message "Parking Location Not Transferred - Phone not connected to car".. It most certainly was.. because..

- CarPlay seems to require that the phone be connected physically to the car.. is that correct? I can't use CarPlay via Bluetooth? I really have no idea.. I've never had a car with CarPlay (I'm using an iPhone X).

- It seems that if I'm using CarPlay - many of what I would call the better UVO features in terms of the navigation functions, the built in voice recognition, etc are in conflict with the CarPlay equivalent functions. Specifically i used Apple maps to get directions and the maps were thrown in the background and the UVO maps came back into the foreground.. I had to bring CarPlay back up and bring maps back up to see it again.

Should I just shut off CarPlay and stick to UVO? I don't see that CarPlay is really giving me anything that UVO won't.

One last question and I think I know the answer - You can only have ONE UVO account connected to your car, correct? For example.. if my wife uses the iPhone UVO app on her iPhone and I use it on my, it has to be the same account, correct?

Thanks in advance... I did google search but really couldn't find anything that definitively helped me figure all this out.

Hey there [MENTION=1355]GT2InSeattle[/MENTION]! I'll try to help.

So, the first thing to consider is that they are two separate systems that work together. UVO is car stuff on your phone and ACP/AA is phone stuff on your car. They allow bi-directional communication. /so...

-UVO will handle things like Roadside assistance, either with or without the car, the parking minder, and since you have the factory navigation system in your car the My Car Zone features like speed/curfew/geo fence alerts. I advise my customer to use the UVO button on the screen to send the parking location to their phone because sometimes the phone will "lose" connection. Also, make sure that you leave the UVO app logged in on your phone. If you log out, it won't connect.

-You are correct. Both ACP & AA require the USB connection to function. This is for two reasons. Primarily because it's very battery hungry. The other is because it's a faster data transfer than over the air.

-When you're using ACP/AA, the voice recognition system will always function through the phone instead of the native Kia UVO system. This is because Siri and Google Assistant are many times more robust as well as the speech recognition systems are more advanced on the phones. Now, I'm not sure why the Kia nav is trumping the ACP/AA maps. That shouldn't happen. I imagine that a button was pressed that reverted the screen back to Kia.

ACP/AA give you a depth of control that UVO simply doesn't. Texting, nav, reminders, the internet... all by voice that cannot happen with UVO. I almost always use my Android Auto now.

Last but not least, account access. I honestly don't know the answer to this. I will play with my wife's UVO tonight to find out and give a report.

 

[GT2InSeattle]

This was probably one of the most succinct breakdowns that compared and contrasted the features and advantages and disadvantages I've ever read. Thank you.

The other is because it's a faster data transfer than over the air.

This made perfect sense as soon as you said it.. Bluetooth doesn't have the same Transfer rates that even USB 2.0 has.

I advise my customer to use the UVO button on the screen to send the parking location to their phone because sometimes the phone will "lose" connection.

I think what's happening there is that the UVO app is being told by the OS (iOS or Android - doesn't matter) to 'sleep' because it's not actively being used. This common with mobile applications (I used to do a lot of mobile development and still play around with it). The result is that the car thinks the phone isn't connected. It's actually incredibly frustrating when I use my iPhone X. I have to bring up the UVO app and then go to Parking Minder. I'll try your suggestion with the Star/UVO button.

I think I can answer the final question tho.

Last but not least, account access. I honestly don't know the answer to this. I will play with my wife's UVO tonight to find out and give a report.

Because of the way the Uvo experience works - you have to have one account. Because you're assigning that car to that UVO experience and also the rest of the KIA systems for scheduling service, etc. I realized this when I saw how my logins and Kia.com and MyUvo.com worked together and handed off to each other.

Thank you again..!

 

[ZorbaDog]

SIRI can be pretty stupid sometimes. I asked to play Mozart and SIRI said there was no Mozart in my systeml strange since I have four Mozart albums on itunes. Whenever I can i select my music manually rather than relying on SIRI.