The HTC One comes with an app called car mode. This is more than an app, it is a simple launcher to use whilst driving. Everything is big, big words and icons. Bluetooth is switched on automatically, in fact even music can if you desire. Screen brightness is at max too. You also get a number of voice options, but the choice is nowhere near as extensive as Siri or S Voice, but what you get does work really well. I have set up my car mode home screens as follows.
If you need access to another app you will have to either exit car mode or add it to the launcher. Navigation is one of the options. Tap on this icon and you are presented with a number of options. All work well using either Google Navigation or Maps. The only option that is rather odd is the Previous option.
This seems to find random places, or towns. I found it was really only useful for finding towns or cities, but in all honesty it was best to avoid altogether and go straight to Google Navigation for searching. The other navigation option icons use google maps and work correctly. So if you want a restaurant, it pulls up all restaurants nearby in google maps. From maps you can navigate accordingly.
The music player options are also enlarged. See screen shots below.
The enlarged icons and text make it easy to select the music you would like. And when you have selected an album etc the music player controls are super sized on the screen. Next up is the People icon. This reveals three larger icons , favourites , frequent, and all people as shown below.
Remember that whilst in car mode tapping the home button brings you back to the first car mode home screen. To exit car mode from here, you have to either press the back key twice, or use the exit icon. Car mode has a number of settings and options, selected from within the app from auto launch with car dock, auto play music, auto connect to Bluetooth devices, options for voice call accessories and Audio out, beats on/off, read out notification , notification preview on or off.
So if you have read out and preview notifications turned on if a text message arrives, it will display new message from your contact, and ask it you want it read out or call contact. If you say read out, the text message is displayed on the screen large and clear and the phone reads the message out. You can now call or dismiss but not use voice to type reply. The other voice options using the voice icons are call contact, play music, radio on or off or listen to. And that’s it. It is certainly no Siri match or even S Voice, but it does work very well.
A little point to remember that with car mode activated, GPS running, Bluetooth on and more, the phone charges extremely slowly.
Tomorrow I will describe how it works with the HTC Car stereo clip A100.
