The most practical way to use your mobile when you are in the car is via an infotainment system and if your phone is Android and you have a compatible vehicle, then we are talking about Android Auto: a suitable interface, a socket in hand simpler and essentially, the best navigation, music, audio and messaging applications. Of course, it should be remembered that Android Auto is not independent and remains a projection of your phone.
This point is important because if our mobile phone has a rather low data rate, Android Auto will use it to offer us the requested content and, if we take long trips or do it frequently, then Google’s infotainment system may be a dragon mega.
If you’ve ever wondered How much data does Android Auto use and what are the worst compatible apps? From the point of view of the consumption of your tariff, in this article you can dispel doubts.
Before we begin, a little explanation of how Android Auto works
In the introduction we gave you some clues to solve this mystery: The applications that spend the most will be those that also consume megabytes when used with our phone and that are also compatible. This last point is important, because for example Google does not allow you to watch YouTube (even if there is a trick to do it) or Netflix (yes, there is also a way to do it, but it is laborious).
In a few words: Android Auto by itself does not spend dataIn fact, you can use it in airplane mode without problem (obviously, with cable), but it is the applications that you open on your mobile (i.e. via Android Auto) that determine the amount of data and here the margin is wide, both by the type of applications, their management and even the cache they have stored.
The problem is that you are using an app through Android Auto spend the same amount of mobile data as if you were using the app directly on your phone. From there, it’s time to take a quick overview of compatible applications.
These are the activities in Android Auto that use the most mobile data
Considering the above, the first thing that comes to mind is streaming video playback. Remember that Google announced a few months ago the official arrival of YouTube videos (even if there is a trick to do it now), as well as compatibility with Prime Video. As an indication and although it depends on the quality, taking as a reference a YouTube video of a modest quality of 480p (neither the quality nor the diagonal of the screen merits extending much further) means a little more than half a gigabyte (562 MB). In the case of Prime Video, at 480p we will spend 800 MB per hour.
From now on, in practice, the arrival of YouTube and Prime Video will be gradual, in fact for the moment it is exclusive to Android integrated in the car Google Built in in certain Renault, Polestar and Volvo cars. On the other hand, and although you have installed YouTube on your Android Auto to try more than anything, in my daily life the use has been marginal. It’s a matter of practicality and safety not to watch videos with the car running and I’m not inside the cabin without driving long enough to enjoy it. In a few words, It’s unusual for us to watch videos while driving.
Having clarified this point, the next category of applications that uses the most data is listening stream music. The data consumed, as in the previous case, will also depend on the quality settings that we have configured.
So, you just need to know how much data each of the main music platforms consumes. Taking Spotify as an example, we find four different configurations:
- Low quality: 24 kbps.
- Normal quality: 96 kbps.
- High quality: 160 kbps.
- Extreme quality: 320 kbps.
Approximately, in one hour with Spotify We will dedicate 10 MB, 43 MB, 72 MB and 144 MB respectively to these four configurations. In the case of Amazon Music and its three modes (auto, standard and data backup), if we opt for the most ambitious version of 256 kbps, in one hour we will consume 115.2 MB.
The other category to consider regarding data consumption is navigation applications. When you drive, the navigation app you use downloads more and more maps and updated with real-time information (if you have this feature). From there, the amount of data will depend on where you’re driving.
In 2020, the OCU carried out a study on the data consumption of the main free navigation applications including Google Maps, Waze, Magic and the paid TomTom application on iOS and Android. Focus on the Google operating system and for a 12 km journey, TomTom was the one that consumed the least with 0.31 MB, followed by Waze (1.43 MB), Google Maps (4.53 MB) and finally Magic (6.8 MB). However, this is a guideline and the figures may be higher depending on the area.
In this sense and taking into account the frequency of use of browsers and music streaming, to control mobile data consumption It is advisable to download the content before traveling and configure the respective applications for low quality playback.
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In Xataka Android | Android Auto, detailed guide: what it is, how it works, how to connect your mobile and the best thing you can do