These exciting features include:
- Online traffic reports;
- myAudi special destinations;
- Picture book navigation using phone snaps’ GPS settings;
- Destination input through Google Maps;
- Train and flights information;
- Messaging through voice recognition;
- Map update.
However, the Map update has to be downloaded onto a removable SD card that you then insert in one of two SD slots on the car’s dashboard – one would have thought an ‘over the air’ download would be a little more 21st Century?
Back in the comfort of the Audi’s superb cabin, the SIM got returned to the slot and I loaded in my online user name and password as requested. So it was with growing excitement I attempted the Audi Connect button again only to be greeted by a screen demanding a PIN number.
Back among the MMI system’s manuals I read this should be automatically generated by the system. It wasn’t and that’s as far as I got with testing the connectivity.
A week after returning to Blighty, Audi UK tech experts finally tracked down that I’d missed a tiny black wifi button in the My Vehicles section that magically turns red with the cursor hovering over it asking you whether you want to link to the vehicle. Yes, and the PIN number is generated. Doh! Maybe I should have stuck at the Amstrad stage of computer development?
The end result is that carmakers have some way to go to get the technology as easy to use as that on smartphones and mobile devices because, at the moment, the overly complex process of setting up the connectivity is the only irritation a business user will find in the A7 Sportback ultra, which remains is a truly lovely piece of engineering.
