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Nokia and Alpine integrating handsets into cars, bringing Ovi Maps to your dashboard
What's the one biggest hurdle to throwing out your dedicated GPS nav unit and going ahead with the free turn-by-turn navigation offered by your smartphone? If your answer was that most phones don't have the great big screens or easy installation systems of some satnav devices, look out, because Nokia's about to shake up your world all over again. Alpine has just announced its partnership with the Finnish giant aimed at integrating Nokia handsets -- complete with free Ovi Maps navigation -- into car dashboard systems. Yes, that means you can use your superb six-amp speaker system to boom out music or voice nav instructions from the phone, as well as your in-dash 7-inch LCD for showing you the right way home. There's further interaction with widgets keeping an eye on your fuel levels and engine condition, leading to location-based services such as the phone notifying you of the nearest and cheapest petrol station. Connectivity is done over either USB or Bluetooth, and Nokia promises that this Terminal Mode will be showing up in its phones in the very near future. The sooner the better, we say.
Alpine adds brains to in-car equalization with IMPRINT architecture
We've already seen a few of Alpine's latest products take advantage of its IMPRINT sound system architecture, but now we're finally getting a few more details on what the technology actually brings to the proverbial table. Put simply, it utilizes Audyssey's MultEQ acoustic correction technology to "measure and analyze the entire interior space," after which it combines results with a set of equalization filters to produce the best sound for each environment. As if that weren't impressive enough, the integrated RoadEQ is also there to "compensate for music distorted by vehicle / road noise." Granted, this all sounds fairly spectacular on paper, but whether or not it actually redefines your in-car listening experience remains to be seen heard.
