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Car things spotify how to#
The first-time steps also guide you through how to mount the phone to your car, but that should be a self-explanatory process for most people. When you plug it in for the first time, the screen displays a QR code you can scan with your phone that takes you to the app and through the process to pair it with your phone via Bluetooth. Car Thing also works with CarPlay and Android Auto, but we used it standalone. Car Thing works with both iOS and Android, but we (hopefully understandably) tested it with the latter. There’s some weirdness if you have a family plan - only the plan’s owner can buy a Car Thing. To use Car Thing you’ll need to be a premium Spotify subscriber, and you’ll need to own a car (duh) and a phone. Short answer: That means you can't read the screen at all while wearing polarized sunglasses while driving, as many people do. Unfortunately, Spotify didn't take into account polarized glasses when choosing the direction or type of polarization on the display itself. The screen has good viewing angles and gets both bright enough and dim enough automatically for use in all driving situations.
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It’s also a good size - not too big that it’s hard to find a spot to put it on your dash, with a screen just large enough to be useful without being obtrusive. You’ll never use it this way, but the Car Thing feels premium and well made in hand. There’s no built-in audio out (more on that later). Power is supplied over USB Type-C via a port on the back. A row of additional buttons on the top of the Car Thing studded between the microphone array offers quick and configurable shortcuts to specific content or playlists and settings, but they’re hard to hit - I wish they were either bigger or somewhere on Car Thing’s face.