HondaLink App Update

  • Thread starter Thread starter vicw
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I too blocked update, thanks to this thread. Battery percentage is important for me since I charge only at work.
 
Some of my thoughts on this update. I accidentally made a new post on this without realizing this was here.

My personal opinion is that the UI refresh is at least a bit more of a modern look but there are some choices that don’t resonate with me.

1. The popup panel at the bottom is for remote commands but only contains turn on climate, schedule climate, and find my car. I don’t know if find my car really screams “remote command” but okay. If that’s the case though, how is stopping or scheduling a charge not a remote command?

2. Speaking of remote commands...this is just sloppy app development:

IMG_0129.webp

They couldn’t properly centre the text?

3. The percentage on the battery gauge being removed could go either way. I kind of preferred it (because I almost always appreciate more information over less information) but it’s not the end of the world. Others clearly have split opinions on this.

3. This one immediately jumped out at me though and I think this was an intentional move on Honda’s part: I can’t force the app to update its data by locating my car anymore. It gives me a “Last updated at” indicator under the charge and fuel bars and when I go and relocate my car, it doesn’t update the time (and subsequently the charge status). I’m guessing this is to reduce bandwidth use by the cars but who knows. Has anyone had any luck with this?
 
Ceetee said:
Me too, in case one accidentally update. Old versions are here https://m.apkpure.com/hondalink/com.honda.hondalink.connect/versions
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Oh thank you thank you thank you. I hate it when apps are updated and have worse user interfaces. I just went through that with Pocket Casts which released their V7 disaster. I switched to Podcast Addict.

I went back to HondaLink V3.8.2 and I'm happy to stay there as long as it works. Hopefully Honda will restore the % charged value. I definitely prefer the older version user interface. I turned auto update off for the HondaLink app.

But wait!!! How do I get the HondaLink App back on my android phone desktop? All I can do is start APK and open HondaLink form there. This is the first time I've been exposed to APK.
 
Personally, I won’t much miss the percentage of charge.

I think I posted that the display of percentage of charge did not correlate meaningfully to predicting EV range at full charge. At least for me, the non-segmented progress bar will probably be a close enough approximation.
 
petteyg359 said:
Out of curiosity, how many people would be willing to pay $1/month for some nebulous "better"?
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I'd prefer an up-front cost; $10-15 sounds reasonable. I'd still pay a $1/month subscription if the app had the following:
  • % charge status that updates when I open the app (and has a refresh button that polls the car so I don't have to do the "find my car" workaround)
  • Estimated time until charge is complete
  • Option to have the car stop charging at a user-defined % charge
 
I don't know if it's a new issue with the update, or not, but on my Android 9 phone, I see that when I select "Find my Car", it activates Location(GPS), which is fine, but when I exit the app, it doesn't turn it off again. It's been staying activated for extended periods beyond 30 minutes. It isn't killing my battery, but it does affect it, and there's no reason that I know if that it should stay active.
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UPDATE: It seems that problem is tied to my having disabled the mystery persistent Notification "Hondalink is connecting to your vehicle" a few days ago.

After I re-enabled it, and rebooted, the Notification and the Location/GPS active icons both go on simultaneously, as soon as I open the app, and both go off about a minute after I exit the app. It's weird, and I have no idea what the purpose of the notification is, but at least they now go back off in fairly short order.
 
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On my phone, the old version magically removed some important files. It was still "installed", but they managed to make it break, so I was forced to uninstall and reinstall from Play Store. Don't see anything immediately unpleasant about the new version. If the new battery bar actually fills in more fine-grained than the previous 15% intervals, it'll actually be better :p
 
Sure it looks nicer but I'm still waiting to be able to have multiple conditioning schedules for different days of the week or multiple times per day.
 
petteyg359 said:
Out of curiosity, how many people would be willing to pay $1/month for some nebulous "better"?
Click to expand...
Or pay, period. Well, in a sense we are paying now, by supplying Honda with data from our vehicles. But you got me thinking. If this was a subscription service, would I be willing to pay for it?

And the answer is, probably. I use the app quite a bit, but mostly for turning on preconditioning, and it only saves me the trouble of walking over to the garage door and using the key fob. But somehow I find it interesting that I can "talk to my car". Logically it isn't really worth cash out of pocket to be able to do that. But I pay for other stuff that, logically, isn't justified.

I've used it for finding charging locations but I suspect there are other apps that do a better job of that. Experience from the group?
 
MNSteve said:
Or pay, period. Well, in a sense we are paying now, by supplying Honda with data from our vehicles. But you got me thinking. If this was a subscription service, would I be willing to pay for it?

And the answer is, probably. I use the app quite a bit, but mostly for turning on preconditioning, and it only saves me the trouble of walking over to the garage door and using the key fob. But somehow I find it interesting that I can "talk to my car". Logically it isn't really worth cash out of pocket to be able to do that. But I pay for other stuff that, logically, isn't justified.

I've used it for finding charging locations but I suspect there are other apps that do a better job of that. Experience from the group?
Click to expand...
I have flaky chargers at work so I use the app to see if I need to go out and reset the charger or move the car to a different one. Before SB 18-097 I was resetting 3x per week. Now it’s once every 3 weeks, but I still check every day.
 
petteyg359 said:
Out of curiosity, how many people would be willing to pay $1/month for some nebulous "better"?
Click to expand...
I might consider paying for the app if it included options of setting a temperature setting instead of just turning on climate control, provide me with more info regarding my last drive in terms of KWh used, ICE hours of operation, etc.
 
Well that’s just great. They had to take away battery percentage. I used that to determine how long the charge would be. 40% per hour on a Level 2 and 10% per hour on my 120v 20a at home. Thanks Honda.


Sent from my iPhone using Inside EVs
 
I like the new UI as well, except for the pop up panel which seems to come up randomly. Too bad they didn't add any new features. I was hoping for enhancements to charge scheduling and remote climate controls.

The fact that people were complaining about the app only showing 99% on full charge might have been played into the decision to remove % indicator.
 
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