hitchens97

I've just finalized my deal for a Q5 TDI - very excited. Will reveal pricing and deal when it's in my hands for those in SF Bay Area.

In looking through the literature on Audi Connect, it seems that the A3 has 4G LTE and more features, like messaging.

Anyone know if there are plans to:

1) Upgrade the functionality - should just be a firmware upgrade
2) Give option to upgrade our units to 4G - presumably some hardware needs to be replaced.

idale

Next generation Q5 should have the LTE Audi Connect, but this generation you won't be seeing any upgrades (it's more than just a small software update, and even if it was it'd be unlikely that we'd see the update anyway just so it's a reason to buy a new car).

spijun

4G on the current platform A4 / A5/ Q5 is impossible, because you need the hardware for $ 7-8000$ , plus a software problem

superswiss

You won't see an upgrade to the 4th generation MMI hardware on the current platform, however, technically the 3G modem can be upgraded to an LTE modem. It has been so stated by Audi Engineers, but it is up to AoA to offer the upgrade and that's where I'm not very optimistic.

Having said that, I recently had an A3 Quattro loaner for 2 weeks. I put in a SIM card to take the new MMI through its paces and I walked away with mixed feelings. First off, unless you use the Wifi hotspot a lot, you will have a hard time telling the difference between 3G and LTE. It turns out that the bottleneck for many of the Audi Connect features is not the speed of the data connection, but the backend that Audi runs. Google searches for example took as long as they take in my car over 3G. The Google Maps loaded a little faster, but nothing to write home about. Same goes for the faster hardware. Overall, the system didn't feel any faster. Boot times were about the same, which I think is mostly constrained by them still using a HDD instead of an SSD. The one area where the faster CPU was clearly noticeable was with voice recognition in particular entering a spoken address for navigation. It took only 1-2 seconds to process the address, which in the 3G+ system takes much longer. On the software side they made some changes that I started to dislike. The reorganized some things and appear to have removed useful global voice commands.

While I was driving the A3 and the reason I had it this long was that my MMI in my car was being replaced with an updated unit to fix the satellite tracking issue that's affecting many cars across all model ranges. I now have the latest unit with the latest 0733 firmware. The reason I'm mentioning this is because a lot of the things that were faster in the 4G system compared to my old unit are now equally fast in my updated unit with the latest firmware. For example it took quite a long time before for Google Maps to load and in particular the traffic overlay to come in. This is noticeably faster now with the latest firmware and the screen updates quicker as I drive around and the zoom level changes. Also establishing the Bluetooth connection and syncing my address book is faster now.

In summary, I must say I don't long for the 4G system. I don't really use the Wifi hotspot, so the LTE benefits are limited. The two things I do want is the ability to update the maps by downloading updates from myAudi.com, that's a great new feature and I want the updated backup camera. After having seen how clear the image quality is in the A3, I'm really pissed about the crappy quality in my car.

tomaszp72

>>had it this long was that my MMI in my car was being replaced with an updated unit to fix the satellite tracking issue that's affecting many cars across all model ranges. I now have the latest unit with the latest 0733 firmware.>>

Can you tell us a little more about this issue? I had my navigation getting completely lost at least once, where it knew where it was in the general area but was really confused as to the details, for example was showing me driving on a different route. It reset when I turned off the car. Is this what your problem was?

superswiss

Yes, that's it. The short of it is that the current unit has a hardware flaw that causes it to completely loose the satellite signals and starts to rely only on signals it gets from the ECU about your steering angle, speed and direction of travel and basically approximates your current position. Eventually, it will have you in a completely wrong spot. Turning off the car for a while generally recovers the situation, but it can sometimes take hours before it finds a GPS signal again and corrects your position. The new units have been redesigned to avoid this issue, but they are not officially released yet, because they don't have enough in hand to start shipping them out. The son of the Audi field engineer works at my dealership, so they were able to pull some strings to get me a unit ahead of time. This issue affects 2013, 2014 and 2015 models across the board. From A4s to the Q5 via the A6 if you will. You can have your dealer submit what's called a Pending Service Solution. AoA knows all about the issue and they will put you on the list to get your unit replaced ones they are available or if your dealer can pull some strings like mine, you may be able to score a unit earlier. I also don't know if 2015 models that are built now already get the updated unit or not.

tomaszp72

Thanks.

MAMOHT

Will the dealer ask for a proof that the unit is malfunctioning or it will be a service campaign for all affected models?

superswiss

I'm not sure what it will be in the end, but my dealer requested pictures. Actually, the Audi engineer requested the pictures showing that the unit had zero satellites along with the mileage. Here are the pics I sent them. Notice that I was at sea level, but the nav had me at 3300 ft. Incorrect elevation is a good indicator that it has lost satellites. It can approximate your position pretty well using the ECU signals, but it needs at least 4 satellites to determine the elevation.

EDIT: Just thought about it some more. I highly doubt that this will be a campaign. It's very costly to replace everybody's MMI. More likely they will only replace it if the customer complains. A lot of people probably rarely use their nav and haven't even noticed the issue.

AudioBear

Does this issue affect every vehicle or just a sub-set among all models? I ask because I have 20K miles on my 2014 A6 and use the nav a lot without seeing this problem. I have had it try to take me to the wrong place a few times but I always assumed that was a database error. I can only remember thinking the NAV was confused or lost once. That's a whole lot better than I can do in 20K miles.