By In an attempt to make the Samsung Galaxy S3 even more attractive Samsung has decided to introduce Drive Link. It’s an application that’ll give you quick and easy access to your smartphone’s more important features while driving. With big buttons and legible text you won’t be fooling around with your phone while your eyes should be on the road.
From within the app you can initiate GPS, call contracts, check your next appointment, view date, time and weather, play music, and more. The biggest feature is MirrorLink connectivity, a standard wireless protocol for in-car units.
It makes it easy to pair the Galaxy S3 with any compatible unit, including JVC’s KW-NSX1, Alpine’s ICS-X8, and Sony’s XAV-701BT, XAV-741 and XAV-601BT. More units are on their way, and you’ll even be able to find MirrorLink available in stock car models from GM, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, Daimler and Hyundai.
Finally, text-to-speech will automatically read incoming text messages so that you can simply hear the message over your car’s speaker instead of having to read text smaller than what you’d find on an in-dash unit. US and UK English, Spanish, German, French and Italian are all supported now, and there’s no reason to believe more languages won’t be added later.
It’s not a killer app compared to many phones’ existing drive mode apps, but Samsung’s offering does provide that extra power that many users would probably love to have. The question is will you buy a phone just for Drive Link? Probably not, but if you were planning on buying the device anyway it won’t be a bad download. [via Samsung Tomorrow]
I’m still waiting for an official car dock with integrated audio and charging. Samsung’s leaving us hanging.
the AT&T Infuse dock works, I had gotten it for my Epic touch and it works even better with the S3. Grabbed it for $18 months ago. Just have to be careful when taking it out as it likes to pop out
Yea…except the phone fits like garbage and not the best quality. I use it and hate it!
Android Central has that idock or whatever, looks nice but hate the unoriginal name
-Dave
Sent from my Galaxy S III
No kidding. I’m shocked it’s been so long. All that talk about how the consistent form factor would give us Apple quality accessories seems to have come to nothing.
Is this app available in the U.S.? I can’t find it in the Samsung Apps store.
I can’t find it either o.O
Nevermind, checked the source link. Not available in the US currently.
” The app is downloadable from Samsung Apps in 21 countries including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.”
Also in that source link is the availability of the “English (U.S.)” version. But not for the U.S. Typical.
Spelling: “call contracts” should be “call contacts”
Is it really necessary to have weather on your phone while you’re driving? I would kinda hope you can tell… since you are driving and all.
don’t think mirror link is wireless.