ItchyTasty

If you guys aren't already, follow pei emily on youtube. Here's the latest video:

Sly_North

Actually this week, not so much. Or maybe a lot. But not on the Android GPS or his other products: as his web sites says, he's on vacation.

kajtek1

Might be that in Europe business is run with different mentality. In America there is huge competition and I heard about US salesman texting customers from family dinner table. In Europe some businesses have no competition at all and the person knows that when he doesn't answer the phone Friday afternoon, you will call him again on Monday. You might notices than not too many European businesses do have answering machines for the same reason.
For some people family life is more important than extra dollar

djrabbi

I really want this but I feel like it has too many small issues need to be fixed with all these posts. I hardly use my OEM screen now for anything but the navigation is just god awful!

Fuchstiger

Hahaha...and Carlife-Mall? Also a reseller?!
Every reseller in every forum wants to be the owner of this product. Ridiculous.
And carsara gives support...

Sly_North

My thoughts, but I was keeping it for me

Anyways, I'm wondering if one can power up these things at home and set them up before installing it in the car?
In my case, I've almost no signal in my underground parking, so I'd rather install and set up all I want at home instead of driving out and taking so much time waiting for downloads.

Skeechan

Carsara is not a manufacturer. From my understanding they are a trading company, Shenzhen Best and Love Trading Co. Ltd. and Carsara is their trademark. They represent manufacturers and market their goods along with logistics (pickup, distribution, etc). They do not appear registered in China for manufacturing. Rarely are you buying directly from a manufacturer. Far more often than not it is a trading and logistics company (wholesale distributor). That is why you find this same product in a bunch of different stores all over the world, the actual manufacturer sells its product to multiple trading companies.

Carlife Mall Tech is registered as a manufacturer as Carlife Mall Technology Co Ltd, specifically of car interface technologies, with Emily Pei the registered business manager.
The first Industrial Area, Tangwei, Bao'an, 518000, Shenzhen,China Shenzhen, Guangdong

Sure looks like Carlife would be the actual manufacturer although being Android and apparently rooted, any end user could modify and then resell it with some added/changed features.

Carlife does their own trading and marketing.

dacia

When watching the video some of the explanations are kinda difficult to understand as Carsara's support is Chinese English, Chris' is native. .
I e-mailed Carsara for price and the quote was US$650 including shipping (and PayPal fee of $20). Chris' price, without VAT but including shipping, is US$667.
So for $17 I get native English speaking support and detailed knowledge of the product which would be very important for me when trouble shooting.
Your mileage may vary.

Yeah, family IS more important than money.
For many of us.

According to Chris' website he'll be back on July 26 (European time).

Skeechan

That is exactly why I ordered from Chris as well. Same for my color cluster upgrade (on my 2011).

Sly_North

Yep. For such a minor difference I'd take it from Chris.
From what I see, I can get it for $490 including shipping + $33 of VAT. 20% cheaper becomes tangible.

ItchyTasty

Where do you see the new version for $490?

Sly_North

On AliExpress.

ItchyTasty

I could be wrong, but there have been units with 2 gigs of ram, and a newer version of android for some time now. I dont believe this one has the updates that the carelife mall one has.

Sly_North

Could be, I'm not sure: I've seen some units claiming to have a faster quad-cores CPU with Android 7 for a few months; then this one with the same 8-core CPU since 2 weeks.
And to be honest, I don't need mph and F° units, so I thing I don't need the CarelifeMall updates (unless they added something else? Is there a changelog?)

ItchyTasty

I'm hoping they do a video (or maybe Chris will) showing the changes in-depth. There's one posted now that shows the below. But a lot of it is cryptic, like "turn to start AVM." all of this needs to be clearly explained.

ItchyTasty

A better picture

Nicolas Farinas

What's his site address?

Nicolas Farinas

This exactly.... I've been ready to buy this for months... I just wanna know what all has been changed from v1 to v2

Skeechan

Chris is at CKM
ckmcardesign dot com

I see the vacation notice is gone now.

Skeechan

I think AVM is 360 degree "Around View Monitoring", a top down view of the entire car surroundings using down facing cameras front, rear and mounting on the bottom of the mirrors. I have seen videos about how to place all the cameras for the 360 top down view. eg youtube HJc8fU-bW5o

Chris The Swede

Im back...

Sly_North

I've received this unit from AliExpress. And well... It works! It needs a small adapter connecting to the USB port in the center console cubby as my GLC doesn't have a Aux input. Then all's working perfectly
​​​​​​

Nicolas Farinas

would you mind making a video going through the menus?!? I'm sure not only is, but others on the forum would love you forever. Communication ****ing sucks from this Chris guy...how many questions did we ask and all we get is one sentence that he's back? Like...wtf...seriously? Are you in the states? Install was pretty easy? Any complaints about the unit? What was the total cost.. ...did u have to pay customs? Care to provide the link from the seller you bought from?!

AfterMarket

I have posted a video of all of the "Settings", so that you can SEE all of them. I don't have the previous version, so I don't know what is new.


"Turn to start AVM" = when you use the turn signal, it will switch to the selected camera (either RCA input or Stock) while the turn signal is on. Then, switch back to your previous screen when the signal is turned off.

Mirroring works well for Android over USB, but not over WiFi
Touching the screen interacts with the Android phone, if you enable USB debugging

The device does not support Google Assistant (the app), but it has a mic that pics up pretty well for voice commands/search
e.g. "Ok Google, Play The Eagles" will launch google play music and start playing The Eagles
but "Ok Google, pause music" does nothing

Let me know if you have any questions about the settings.

Nicolas Farinas

man..you rock! Thank you so much!! I can't wait to watch the video... I'm at work and boss man is being a dick so it will be a few hours. .where did you purchase? Cost? How was the installation? Whats your initial impressions with it... steering wheel and command knob work?