I logged 250 miles testing Android Auto vs Apple CarPlay and there's one I'm going to stick with
It's Google vs Apple again
by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/david-nield · TechRadarFeatures By David Nield Published 1 August 2026
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For years I've had both iPhones and Android phones to hand — not because I'm particularly flush with cash, but because it's the lot of a tech journalist to have to test and report on both these platforms regularly. It puts me in what I suspect is a small minority of people who use both Apple and Google phones just about every day.
Android and iOS also mean Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, of course. It's my Google Pixel that's my main phone, and so almost all of my driving is done with Android Auto on screen. However, with a 250-mile round trip from Manchester in the north of the UK to the town of Leamington Spa in the Midlands looming, it seemed a perfect opportunity to give the Apple alternative a go — and see if there was anything I was missing.
My car dashboard supports both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, so I loaded up the Google interface for the trip down south, and the Apple equivalent for the trip back up north — and here's how it went.
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Down south with Android Auto
This is the interface I'm most familiar with in my car: it's simple, it's straightforward, and it gets the job done. Aside from a rather annoying bug where it always autoplays audio no matter how many times I turn off the autoplay setting, it's served me well down the years.
That's largely down to Google Maps: Apple Maps has certainly improved a lot in recent times, but I find that it just doesn't have the breadth and depth of Google's offering.
Apple still pulls place reviews off TripAdvisor, for example, while Google provides a host of reviews, ratings, photos, and videos from visitors. (Google Maps is on CarPlay too, but let's set that aside for the time being.)
As always, Google Maps got me safely and quickly to my destination, flashing up time-saving shortcuts when the traffic started building up ahead. It works really well with the recent Gemini upgrade too: asking questions such as "how far until the next rest stop?" brings up the right answer, with the option to add it as an extra stop.
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