A recent post from Warren at Motorcycle Paradise found here (wow that was back in may last year) inspired me to write this post where he stated his next bike will have a carplay/android compatible dash. I thought I'd elaborate on my own experiences.
My 2020 Africa Twin comes with a Touchscreen TFT dash which is Apple carplay and android auto compatible, just connect your phone via cable. Honda appear a little behind here as Ducati have wireless /bluetooth connection built in and you don't need a cable. But my bike is now 5 years old and tech advances at a quick pace.
![]() |
Main Screen |
![]() |
Android Apps screen |
The first year trying to use it was an absolute nightmare with the screen constantly dropping out from Google maps/waze and it would flash up that you are disconnected and you cannot connect again, unless you stop the bike and press reconnect. That's absolutely ludicrous. Every time the phone loses connection to the screen you cannot reconnect unless you stop. Why? What the absolute fuck Honda? It's a simple press of the button to reconnect FFS.
I'd finally realised that the disonnections were occuring due to the cheap cable that came with my phone and purchased a better quality cable with dedicated power/comms capability. Things went much better from that point but not perfect.
Road riding after getting the new cable generally went quite well with the occasional drop out. However when riding off road I found quite a lot of drop outs. Why, not sure sometimes I think because I went out of a mobile service area. Pressing on the cable where it went into the phone caused the screen to drop out also. So I think the vibrations from riding offroad causes the screen to disconnect and then you can't connect again unless you stop, again ludicrous. Is this because the phone port and cable get vibrated loose?
Another downside is that when riding in the rain water got into the charging port on the phone and the phone shutdown, so you can't use the phone out exposed if riding in the rain.
All of these problems would be easily overcome with a wireless connection. Honda messed up with this. I decided to order an Android Auto wireless adaptor from Amazon. Looks like I'm trying to fix a tech problem by adding more tech, yeah ironic right. It was only $50 so not much lost if it doesn't work. Perhaps if there is only 1 usb connection instead of 2 then there might be less connection dropout issues.