I've activated my free 30 day/1GB hotspot trial yesterday. I'm an AT&T customer and I could add it to my Mobile Share plan for $10/month. I'm considering it in order to use the car's external antenna for the phone's data traffic while in the car, but I'm trying to figure out if there's any other functionality in conjunction with the Mercedes Me Connect app that becomes possible if the phone is connected to the car's Wi-Fi. So far it seems all you get with it is the Wi-Fi hotspot for up to 8 devices and the Mercedes Apps seem to need it. Last time I tried the Mercedes Apps (Weather, Internet Radio...) they didn't work and it said something about a data subscription required, but now that I have the hotspot activated, they work, so it looks like they use the hotspot connection as well. Does anybody keep their phone connected to the car's Wi-Fi? Am I missing anything? I'm specifically asking about 2019+ since the online platform etc. is new and somewhat different.

 

I don't quite follow what are the benefits of the Mercedes in-car Wi-Fi hotspot other than the hotspot functionality itself and the Mercedes apps you mention? I have free hotspot on my (and my spouse's) phone's data plan and have 10GB per phone, which is more than sufficient for my use. Do you find any value with these apps?

Not the same, but I have found the Mercedes Me Connect online services to be fairly poor in terms of reliability. They have also cut down the number of services available with a revamp of their portal and apps few months ago. They used to allow controlling Geo-fencing using the app, but you can now only do that using the online portal in the browser now. The geo-fencing alerts also are delayed by few hours at times.

For the free period, the services are not bad but I doubt I would pay or subscribe to any of the Mercedes online services since their quality and reliability have not been up to the standard you would normally expect of online services these days.

 

Yeah, that's basically my dilemma. The benefit I'm seeing is better data reception in areas with low signal, because the hotspot cellular antenna is external to the vehicle. But that alone isn't really worth it, so I was wondering what else I might be missing. No, I don't see much value in the Mercedes Apps. In my previous cars, there was additional functionality between the Infotainment system and the corresponding phone app if the phone was connected to the car via Wi-Fi. As far as the Mercedes Me Connect services go, they've been working fairly well for me. I don't use the Geofencing service, so I can't comment on that, but I regularly send navigation destinations from my phone to the car's nav and occasionally use the online search feature in the car to find a destination. Traffic works pretty well, too. I have the map up on the center screen most of the time at a 2 mile scale so I can see the traffic in my area at a glance and it rerouted me nicely around some major congestion today. I also like the security alerts that notify me when I forget to lock the car and I can lock it remotely and it's nice to see where my car is at any given time, especially when it's in for service. They do seem to be getting more stable. I think the new platform wasn't quite ready when the 2019s started to roll off the production line, and they've been catching up with fixing all the issues.

 

Ah, the external antenna helping with the reception might be a factor to consider in poor reception areas. You might want to try it a few months if you make trips through such areas often to see if it makes a difference.

Yes, when the Mercedes Me Connect app works it's great however when it doesn't it's not that useful. I used to use the app more often in the first few months when I got my car and now use it much less. I still get notifications for engine turned on/off, windows down, etc. which work most of the time. Geofencing is useful to get a notification when your car enters/leaves a geo perimeter you set up. I have two set up - one for Home and other for Work, two common locations my car is parked during the majority of the day. If it works, you get the notification within seconds your car exits the perimeter. Last two weeks it's been delayed by 4-6 hours at times.

I also used Geofencing when I gave my car with the detailers for Xpel/tinting and once with my dealership for service.

The online portal allows you to configure a Geofencing perimeter in various shapes, multiple perimeters, alert destinations (text, email, etc.) - all useful features IMO. The main issue I have is reliability of these notifications.

Here is a screenshot showing an example of a geofencing perimeter with customizable polygon shape.




The other constant complaint I have is lack of consistency between the desktop portal in browser vs the one in the app. Some features are only available in one and not the other.

 

Yes, I understand what the Geofencing does, I just haven't found a use for it yet. I'm the only driver so I don't need to alert myself when I leave home . I also work from home, so the car is mostly in my garage during the week. Haven't felt a need to put a geofence around the dealership so far. My car was in for 3 weeks recently to get the side sills fixed. I'll have to take it back on Tuesday, because the passenger side wasn't done properly. It did have to go to the body shop for that, but there was no joy riding involved and no unexplained miles incurred. It was enough to see if the car was still at the body shop or back at the dealership.

They recently seemed to have an outage around the notifications. I didn't get security alerts anymore at one point and I emailed them. They never actually responded, but it started working again shortly after. They do appear to be updating and upgrading the portal. It probably makes more sense for the geofencing to be done in the portal, rather than on the small phone screen.

 

If you have a cloud capable Dashcam, you can have it upload automatically online and store backups there

If your dashcam also has impact/motion sensor detection, you can get alerts to your phone too

 

Yes with multiple people driving the car, and also given the car thefts in general (and also the possible joyrides when I leave the car at shops), personally I find Geofencing to be a great feature along with Speed alerts, and in fact the only features that I primarily use.

In fact I'm not a big user of remote locking/unlocking/starting etc. since I prefer doing all these from the car and make sure to always check this before exiting the car. Security, tracking and theft detection are things that I usually look forward with these online services. It's funny that there ain't good consumer-level aftermarket solution for these that is affordable. Most good ones have high subscription charges (and I'm not a fan of subscriptions in general). Given I'm a software engineer and have good expertise with embedded devices, I'm actually exploring building my own DIY solution (dashcams, Arduino, GPS module, data card, custom cloud backend for storing events/logs, and few other pieces) for this with minimal to no extra monthly costs. Let's see how that goes.