Cell phones and cars existed long before Android and Android Auto existed, and then the way to interconnect them was to pair them with Bluetooth to play music and make calls and nothing else. Then came a standard that aimed to revolutionize the connectivity of the mobile with the car, but which nowadays it didn’t work: MirrorLink.
MirrorLink arrived before anyone else and had the support of Android heavyweights like Samsung, Sony, HTC, Huawei or LG, but it proved once again that arriving before or not is a guarantee of being the first few. years later. Android Auto has crushed you and here is his story.
Birth of MirrorLink
MirrorLink began as an experiment by Nokia, codenamed NoBounds, to stream mobile content to high-resolution external displays at 30 frames per second, using USB or Wi-Fi, with the ability to connect a mouse or keyboard. In a way it’s the equivalent of the PC Mode that several mobiles have todaybut we are talking about 2008.
MirrorLink was born as a standard to project the mobile screen and be able to control it with a keyboard and mouse, similar to Samsung Dex
Cell phones at the time lacked power, so early tests were done with a Nokia N810 running Linux, and the demos caused a stir at the time, catching the attention of the CE4A automobile association. Nokia and the CE4A joined forces and from the NoBounds demo was born in 2010 Terminal Mode, a two-way communication standard between the car and the mobile.
Terminal Mode Operation Diagram
The idea is almost obvious today, but at the time it was revolutionary: andThe mobile communicated with the car screen by sending applications and contentand the car’s screen and controls showed content and let us interact with apps, plus we could listen to audio through the car’s speakers.
The collaboration between Nokia and CEA4 resulted in the creation of the Automotive Connectivity Consortium, with members from automakers such as General Motors, BMW, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and technology companies such as Google , Apple, Xiaomi. or Samsung. Terminal mode was later renamed to MirrorLink and was ready to eat the world.
MirrorLink goes Android
MirrorLink used to be a standard way to connect all types of mobiles with all types of cars, and it didn’t take long for it to appear on some models from major Android brands, like Samsung. In addition to needing a car and a compatible mobile, the applications also had to be compatible.
To use MirrorLink in the car, you needed to have a compatible car, a compatible mobile and compatible apps. This last part was the hardest.
The Automotive Connectivity Consortium website in charge of MirrorLink is still active, and you can see a partial list of compatible cars and mobiles there, where it is obvious that they are all old models such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 or the Huawei P10. In these mobiles you were MirrorLink options in Android settings.
When MirrorLink was still “in” Android was it ugly
However, the biggest issue was the supported apps, and which you can also consult from its official website. Few developers have bothered to adapt apps to work with MirrorLink, which is evident if you go to its settings on mobile, as compatible apps are displayed there. In most cases, they will be none of the installed ones.
The technology was good, but without the support of the developers, it was useless. On Android, Google held the key to many popular apps – including Google Maps – and never showed much interest in the matter. In addition, in 2014 Apple launched CarPlay and Google introduced Android Auto, a competitor to the agnostic MirrorLink.
Android Auto (and CarPlay) killed MirrorLink
Rather than taking advantage of an existing standard, Apple and Google have chosen to create their own, which accelerated the decline of MirrorLink. Third-party apps for Android Auto were almost non-existent at first – and Google only recently started to open the ban – but it had the most important thing: Google Maps.
Google has never shown the slightest interest in making its apps compatible with MirrorLink. Instead, it announced Android Auto in 2014, its own system to do the same.
Interest in Android Auto grew as MirrorLink declined and companies that supported the idea in its early stages changed their minds. Samsung dropped MirrorLink in 2020, and HTC and LG have directly disappeared from the mobile landscape. Most manufacturers that still included MirrorLink on phones stopped doing so in 2015 or 2016.
At present, it is still likely that your car supports MirrorLink, but not your mobile or any of the apps that you installed MirrorLink still exists, but it’s been somewhat deprecated since the release of Android Auto. And the sad thing is that most of us didn’t even realize it because we completely forgot about it, despite being a pioneer in the interconnectivity between cars and cellphones .
