I have a 911 Turbo (991.1) - It’s a really great car which I love driving. Pretty much everything about it hits the mark for me, from the airiness of the cabin interior (pebble/agate) to the engine - the performance is just addictive and exhilarating and every journey is an event, not a chore.
If there’s one thing that I’d change though, it’s the infotainment system. Like many, I have another car as my daily which is newer and comes with a much more modern infotainment system featuring CarPlay. I appreciate CarPlay isn’t for everyone, but I like the utility of it - and what it does do is highlight how much PCM3 has aged with its clunky sat nav graphics and no live updates with TMC having closed down a couple of years ago.
Having a Porsche Warranty means there is no scope to change the head unit for a new one and it will probably be another 3 years before Porsche launch a replacement head unit (12 years past the final year of the model). With that in mind I set about trying to establish how I could enjoy some of the benefits of a more modern unit without physically interfering with the current head unit or fitting any kind of brackets anywhere so as not to damage the interior - challenges, challenges.
I’m still on the journey and it’s very much a work in progress, but thought just maybe there might be others there with the same want of at least better navigation.
I started with a very simple magnetic mount from Yosh on the air vent with my phone, but using a phone while it has the functionality is just too small to be really useful, okay, so my eyes aren’t quite what they were either so I thought something larger might actually do the trick.
The second idea was to get a small tablet and mount it. If the Yosh could support a phone, then two Yosh mounts could support something twice as heavy and withstand some fairly spirited acceleration.
I was going to buy an iPad Air, but in the end the cost of the iPad plus what I was actually trying to achieve didn’t really work so I opted for a Samsung Galaxy A9 tablet (now c. £95) with the bonus that this tablet has a GPS chip of its own. I didn’t want to have to buy a second SIM (though the tablet can take one) and had the idea of tethering the tablet to my phone for data (and live updates on navigation) as well as providing data for other apps.
The Yosh mounts come with a magnetic disc to be stuck on the back of the device being held. I didn’t want to damage the tablet so bought a translucent case to hold it - placing the magnets inside the case.
This created a new problem - weight. Now the tablet was more than 2x the weight of the phone: would the magnetic mounts support the tablet plus the weight of the case? I found out pretty quickly. It did support it, but it wasn’t facing outwards into the cabin, instead it leaned forwards towards the centre console, more than was healthy. the issue was the tablet was simply too high to be held securely. Having not used the adhesive on the magnetic discs to the tablet casing, I moved them higher in the outer case to rest the bottom of the tablet on the small ledge at the bottom of the PCM 3 screen.
Two new problems came up:
1: the power and audio connectors for the tablet are on the bottom of it and it needs both to work (the tablet audio plugs into the Aux connector) and power for longer journeys while the phone maintained the Bluetooth connection (plugged into the USB socket next to the Aux connector). Turning the tablet upside down solved this - with both connectors now at the top. The navigation App i use (Waze) rotates without any problem. I did try the connectors at the bottom (and they’’re 90 degree ones with the cables coming out at the side) but they aren’t identical in size and dont offer a stable enough surface for the tablet to be supported - a custom sized case might solve this.
2: The tablet would occasionally select something on the PCM3 screen behind it and change the settings. I think this was a capacitive problem between the tablet, its case and the screen so put an insulator on the back of the tablet case where the case touched the screen and bingo! No more random screen changes.
Where I’ve got to now:
I have a working navigation screen that’s highly visible, but could benefit from an anti-glare screen on it in bright sunlight (the tablet is locked to maximum brightness all the time otherwise it dims when it gets darker and becomes a lot less visible). Some Apps are quite happy to rotate like Waze, iTunes & Audible.
Using an internet based App for the radio is fine in principle, but depending on your network provider is a bit hit and miss as coverage varies all over the place.
Switching between the Apps themselves is slightly more fiddly as the icons on the lower part of the screen are relatively small, but you get used to selecting them pretty quickly, some Apps wont rotate, but to be honest, most are fairly easy to use. If Waze is left on, the screen never sleeps, if anything else is, the screen goes to sleep quickly (I need to change the settings here).
I tie wrapped the two leads into the tablet together and this stops them from flapping about which helped.
I still need to work out if there’s any way to make the taskbar icons that bit bigger at the foot of the screen, but minor glitches aside, this works relatively well considering it costs hardly anything to implement and solves the navigation issue altogether. One thing I hadn’t realised is in PCM 3, the sound controls work individually for each type of Audio - the Samsung Bass / Treble response is not great but the PCM 3’s controls help mitigate this.
The tablet itself can easily be popped off the magnets when leaving the car or if you need to get to the PCM 3.
With summer nearly on us (the last 2 days being a good warm up for it) the Nav system will be used a whole lot more here and abroad.
If there’s one thing that I’d change though, it’s the infotainment system. Like many, I have another car as my daily which is newer and comes with a much more modern infotainment system featuring CarPlay. I appreciate CarPlay isn’t for everyone, but I like the utility of it - and what it does do is highlight how much PCM3 has aged with its clunky sat nav graphics and no live updates with TMC having closed down a couple of years ago.
Having a Porsche Warranty means there is no scope to change the head unit for a new one and it will probably be another 3 years before Porsche launch a replacement head unit (12 years past the final year of the model). With that in mind I set about trying to establish how I could enjoy some of the benefits of a more modern unit without physically interfering with the current head unit or fitting any kind of brackets anywhere so as not to damage the interior - challenges, challenges.
I’m still on the journey and it’s very much a work in progress, but thought just maybe there might be others there with the same want of at least better navigation.
I started with a very simple magnetic mount from Yosh on the air vent with my phone, but using a phone while it has the functionality is just too small to be really useful, okay, so my eyes aren’t quite what they were either so I thought something larger might actually do the trick.
The second idea was to get a small tablet and mount it. If the Yosh could support a phone, then two Yosh mounts could support something twice as heavy and withstand some fairly spirited acceleration.
I was going to buy an iPad Air, but in the end the cost of the iPad plus what I was actually trying to achieve didn’t really work so I opted for a Samsung Galaxy A9 tablet (now c. £95) with the bonus that this tablet has a GPS chip of its own. I didn’t want to have to buy a second SIM (though the tablet can take one) and had the idea of tethering the tablet to my phone for data (and live updates on navigation) as well as providing data for other apps.
The Yosh mounts come with a magnetic disc to be stuck on the back of the device being held. I didn’t want to damage the tablet so bought a translucent case to hold it - placing the magnets inside the case.
This created a new problem - weight. Now the tablet was more than 2x the weight of the phone: would the magnetic mounts support the tablet plus the weight of the case? I found out pretty quickly. It did support it, but it wasn’t facing outwards into the cabin, instead it leaned forwards towards the centre console, more than was healthy. the issue was the tablet was simply too high to be held securely. Having not used the adhesive on the magnetic discs to the tablet casing, I moved them higher in the outer case to rest the bottom of the tablet on the small ledge at the bottom of the PCM 3 screen.
Two new problems came up:
1: the power and audio connectors for the tablet are on the bottom of it and it needs both to work (the tablet audio plugs into the Aux connector) and power for longer journeys while the phone maintained the Bluetooth connection (plugged into the USB socket next to the Aux connector). Turning the tablet upside down solved this - with both connectors now at the top. The navigation App i use (Waze) rotates without any problem. I did try the connectors at the bottom (and they’’re 90 degree ones with the cables coming out at the side) but they aren’t identical in size and dont offer a stable enough surface for the tablet to be supported - a custom sized case might solve this.
2: The tablet would occasionally select something on the PCM3 screen behind it and change the settings. I think this was a capacitive problem between the tablet, its case and the screen so put an insulator on the back of the tablet case where the case touched the screen and bingo! No more random screen changes.
Where I’ve got to now:
I have a working navigation screen that’s highly visible, but could benefit from an anti-glare screen on it in bright sunlight (the tablet is locked to maximum brightness all the time otherwise it dims when it gets darker and becomes a lot less visible). Some Apps are quite happy to rotate like Waze, iTunes & Audible.
Using an internet based App for the radio is fine in principle, but depending on your network provider is a bit hit and miss as coverage varies all over the place.
Switching between the Apps themselves is slightly more fiddly as the icons on the lower part of the screen are relatively small, but you get used to selecting them pretty quickly, some Apps wont rotate, but to be honest, most are fairly easy to use. If Waze is left on, the screen never sleeps, if anything else is, the screen goes to sleep quickly (I need to change the settings here).
I tie wrapped the two leads into the tablet together and this stops them from flapping about which helped.
I still need to work out if there’s any way to make the taskbar icons that bit bigger at the foot of the screen, but minor glitches aside, this works relatively well considering it costs hardly anything to implement and solves the navigation issue altogether. One thing I hadn’t realised is in PCM 3, the sound controls work individually for each type of Audio - the Samsung Bass / Treble response is not great but the PCM 3’s controls help mitigate this.
The tablet itself can easily be popped off the magnets when leaving the car or if you need to get to the PCM 3.
With summer nearly on us (the last 2 days being a good warm up for it) the Nav system will be used a whole lot more here and abroad.
).
