I think the blame has to lie with Lexus. My current phone is an iPhone and my previous phone was a Pixel and both work perfectly in my Subaru, although the head unit was replaced 3 times because it was triggering some type of SOS signal to Subaru.

Frankly, I've had fewer BT issues with my iPhone than I had with my Android phone, but the Android was from three years ago and I think things have probably improved since then.

I haven't driven for a few years but my iPhone 4 always used to connect and work with my Peugeot 307 perfectly.

Everyone in this thread who is complaining has either a Lexus or a Toyota (who owns Lexus) so it’s obviously a problem with some version of their infotainment system. The U2 thing was obviously an Apple issue.

Not sure why they don’t use CarPlay but maybe some people prefer Bluetooth.

I was in a Volkswagen rental last week and the Carplay integration was a disaster. 50% of the time, attempting to play a song on spotify would crash Carplay. It would refuse to work again (or hey, crash again) until you'd left the car off for a lengthy amount of time. Presumably the car turns off the infotainment system at some point, so this is a reboot, but there was no way to reboot manually... So it would remain broken for the drive.

Seems like manufacturers aren't integrating particularly robust systems on the average

I've owned a VW for 6 years and Carplay has always worked flawlessly.

I think CarPlay (both wired and wireless versions) requires Bluetooth.

I’ve never used a wireless version of CarPlay, I always plugged it in which worked reliably in every modern budget car I’ve rented (Toyota included).

If you consider Apples to be sub par. What’s your standard for decent?

I’ve never had any BT issues with Apple stuff. And most of the other things I own have terrible BT implementations. But maybe because I can’t tell how to check for a good implementation?

Devil's advocate: Couldn't Apple's BT implementation be bad but still work well with itself?