Is the LG Nexus 4 OK?

[mojoman]

Hi troops,

Quick question - has anyone been lucky enough to get their hands on the new LG Nexus 4 phone and connect it to your sporty?

I'm particularly interested to know how both the bluetooth music and phone operation went for you and if you managed to connect it to charge and listen to music as I do with my iphone cable now. The Nexus being and android phone it's not something I've used in the car before so chime in if you do it now and what you did to get it work for you. Do you use the iphone docking port in the car to do it?? Any special cables etc?

Any info will help before I decide to take the leap from my iphone to the nexus.

Cheers all

[WISporatgeSX]

I have the Galaxy Nexus (prior to the Nexus 4) and hook mine up using Bluetooth only. I do not connect to the USB port as it tries to play the music only loaded on my phone like a USB drive. The charge it gets from it is minimal too. Going over bluetooth works awesome. I can stream from TuneIn Radio, Pandora, Google Music and more. I can also stream from music loaded on the phone. When a call comes in, it pauses all that to take the call and starts back up after, although once in a while it doesn't and I have to hit play to start up the tunes.

I use my phone for the GPS as well and the directions will broadcast over the bluetooth too. There is a bit of a drawback here though, but this really affects any phones that you are using as GPS and hooked up to bluetooth, you can only listen to music from your phone when using you the GPS. If you try to listen to the regular radio, you won't hear the GPS directions unless you disconnect from Bluetooth and listen to the directions from the phone speaker. Hope that makes sense, but any phone would do this.

So, not exactly what you are looking for from a Nexus 4 owner, but I would expect a similar experience, both being Android phones. My Galaxy Nexus is not officially supported and I don't think the Nexus 4 is, but I haven't had any issues, so you should be fine.

I do have a USB memory stick (16gb) loaded with music too that I plug in to the USB port instead which gives me tunes when I don't have a signal from the phone. Could be an option as well for you.

[tom93r1]

I've had the Nexus4 for about a month now, gave the girlfriend the Galaxy Nexus and upgraded myself

WISportageSX experience with the Gnex is pretty much spot on for the N4 since they are both running JellyBean free from any operator software.

I am not sure what controls you get on an iPhone with the cable, but on the Nexus phones it is pretty basic. You get play/pause, skip, and back. Those controls work with pretty much any media you are playing whether it's Pandora, mp3, etc. Song names don't show up or anything.

[mojoman]

Thanks for the info tom93r1 and WISportaeSX - much appreciated. If I do go down that path it doesn't look to be too traumatic a difference.

tom93 with the cable you can't control music play at all from the phone. I have the Nav option and using the cable all playlists, albums etc are controlled by the nav screen or via the steering wheel (using song skip and vol) but the iphone gives you no option to move between songs or playlists as apple has decided that a screen showing "...accessory connected..." is much more useful.

Out of curiosity tom93...does the nexus 4 come with the cable you connected to the sportage and do you also see your playlists songs etc on the nav screen (if you have one)?

Cheers

[tom93r1]

there is not a way to get song titles/artists etc on the screen of my nav. I don't even connect to the usb because it gives an error trying to treat it as a usb stick. I actually bought a USB power adapter to plug it in so I can charge without it trying to connect to phone data.

[mojoman]

cheers thanks for clearing that up

[WISporatgeSX]

Originally Posted by tom93r1

there is not a way to get song titles/artists etc on the screen of my nav. I don't even connect to the usb because it gives an error trying to treat it as a usb stick. I actually bought a USB power adapter to plug it in so I can charge without it trying to connect to phone data.

Yep, same thing I did. In fact I bought a usb power plug that could charge two devices at once and then the mircousb cable for the phone. Then if at some point I wanted to charge a tablet or GPS or something else, I have a spot for that too.

Only thing I use the built in USB port for is a memory stick for additional MP3's and playlists.

[tom93r1]

That's actually what I bought as well. It fits entirely into the outlet and the cap even will close over it for a nice clean look when I am not charging anything. The dual is nice so my passenger can charge a phone as well on a long road trip.