One reason may be that they're not actually off when the ignition is off, they're just asleep like your phone is when the screen is off but it's still powered on.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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That's exactly it.
The unit does restart about once every week and then goes back to suspend to ram.
You basically will never notice the restart unless you cut off power. And additionally drain all capacitors.
Yeah, I recall the one time I actually saw my head unit restart, it took a minute to boot up.
There's actually a documentation article on this: https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/power/boot_time
Basically, there's just much less stuff running on Android Auto.
That, and don't many of these not actually fully turn off when you shut off the car? They draw 12v standby power and keep their RAM active, just going into a sleep or suspend mode rather than powering off fully so waking up happens pretty much instantly. It's like the difference between hard powering off your phone vs. just putting the screen to sleep.
That's how the head unit installed in my car works, anyways.
Won't this eat up the car battery in long term?
Theoretically yes, if you leave it long enough. But it really isn't much power draw so probably, like, decades. I think the battery might self-discharge and sulfate by then regardless. And this is nothing new; oldschool radios have a nonzero idle draw as well to keep their clocks running and remeber all your radio stations. I imagine the milliamps required aren't that much different.
Modern cars have all kinds of standby shit constantly drawing power to check in, keep time, phone home, blink lights, listen for the remote, etc., etc. all the time regardless. The audio system is really only one small piece of that whole puzzle.
That does make sense.
Among the other things that have been said, Android auto often makes use of some tricks too. Things like hibernation that phones typically do not do (Probably the biggest one right here), Animations to hide loading time, loading some critical, but not latency sensitive services until after the boot. and some other misc service management stuff.
Phones do actually have a "deep sleep" mode, where they suspend apps, downclock the CPU, and turn off features like radios.
Yep but that's not hibernate, that's what happens when you leave your phone on bed side table for a couple hours when you sleep. You can get very low power under these, which may be comparable to your cars alarm system.
Android emulators though have the ability to suspend all activities to disk and come back in a few seconds.
I think the phone just has to do more stuff
Yeah my S23 takes way too long to start up for being the newest tech. It's stupid.
Lol I too have a Samsung phone....That's why this question came up in my mind the first place.
Android Auto or Android Automotive?
The former is basically just a screen your phone is casting to. The latter is a lightweight (stripped down) Android fork designed to boot very quickly and do a couple things very well. It probably never really "turns off" since it still has a 12v connection even when the car is off (why your clock doesn't reset).
Android on your phone is a much more general purpose operating system that runs on a (much more limited) battery. It isn't designed to be turned on and off frequently.
There has been a lot of work done in the unix universe to reduce boot times: https://www.e-consystems.com/articles/Product-Design/Linux-Boot-Time-Optimization-Techniques.asp
A lot of it has to do with deferring services not needed immediately till later. The same could be done for Android.
They don't have as much background software recording everything and phoning home.
Give it time, and they may get there.
Source: I'm just bullshitting. I don't know jack shit about what runs on a new car. I don't buy new cars.
But my DeGoogled phone boots really fast, so I might still be right, unfortunately.
Basically, that kind of is it.
They have less background services overall as well as less hardware to initialise. Probably some other differences as well.
I'm not super familiar with Android Auto, but have worked with other embedded systems that are based on customized OSs. They typically run the bare minimum subset of features to do what they're designed to do.
It's also possible they don't boot every time but just kind of hibernate.
I would bet they have their own battery and use that while the car is off
Hmm. Maybe. Or at least an internal battery to keep it in "sleep/powersave" without draining the car's battery.
Now I want to tear one down to find out 😆
A phone uses a rechargeable battery.
The car uses a supercharged 5.0 liter Dual OverHead Camshaft 8-cylinder engine running on 93 Octane.
Which one has more power, oorrgh??
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1 upvote = more power, Al
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1 downvote = more I don't think so, Tim
