Monday, April 21, 2008

Griffin iTrip AutoPilot for iPhone

Just thought I would let anyone who cares know that the Griffin iTrip AutoPilot barely works in my Honda Civic.  Maybe this is due to the position of my car stereo's antenna which may be built in to the rear window glass, but I'm not really sure.

The AutoPilot for iPhone sports Griffin's "SmartScan" technology which as far as I can tell randomly picks a station regardless if someone is or isn't broadcasting on it.  Very smart.

The sound quality when I could actually hear this thing was terrible.  So smart.

This product comes highly recommended for use as a lesson in how not to build a product.

3 comments:

gaijin said...

Apologies for the random comment, but I've been running headlong into the same exact problem -- it's somewhat nice to hear it's not just me. I've returned/exchanged three different AutoPilots so far because they wouldn't work at all in my Civic.

In the end I went with the Belkin Tunecast, instead, which isn't as nice as the AutoPilot, but heck, at least it works somewhat. The weird part is that I've used the original iTrip for years in the same car w/no problems...

Rob said...

Cool, thanks for the suggestion about the Belkin. Maybe I'll give that one a shot.

gaijin said...

Be warned that it's still not as good as the original iTrip. The noise is pretty bad. I'm finding that it works best when I hold the station-selector part in my hand, and that isn't exactly the best way to drive when you've got a stick-shift like I do. Maybe I need to just drop it entirely & upgrade my stereo to one that's got a USB port, instead...