iPhone SE to permanently connect to CarPlay

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In the past 2 months, I have dug out my old iPhone 5s, put in a data only SIM card and leave it connected to my CarPlay. It was glorious! The moment I went into the car and start my engine, CarPlay instantly (and I meant, super instant!) connects and continue my playback - if I were listening to podcast, the episode continue where I left off. If I were on Spotify, the songs continue to play. Most convenient though, Waze auto starts. I don't have to reach out to the compartment and pull out the phone and launch these app. It just restored to the state I was when I switched off the engine. Beautiful.


The nice thing about this set up is that the phone fits nicely into the compartment just below the middle arm rest, with lots of rooms to spare. The USB port is inside this compartment, so there is no ugly wires dangling about. And when you closed the compartment, no one have any clues there is a iPhone inside it.

However, iPhone 5s is a bit old and long on the tooth. Sometimes switching between apps such as from Waze to Spotify, there is a 3-4 seconds delay. And the phone gets really hot when Waze has been running for a long time. And iOS 13 does not run on iPhone 5s and Apple made more enhancement to CarPlay in iOS 13.

So, I went hunting for the next best phone in the same form factor of the 5s - the iPhone SE. The iPhone SE has the same A9 CPU and internals of the iPhone 6s, but in the size of a iPhone 5s. It's the perfect combination of speed and size. I went to Mudah.my, a local Craiglist-like website and bought a used SE for RM430 (around US$100). Reasonable...

I mean, iPhone 6s would be relatively bigger and more expensive. The SE is just perfect for this use case. iPhone SE is fast, super fast and smooth when launching these apps. And it doesn't get as hot as the 5s. I am convinced this is the superb phone to be permanently connected to the CR-V.







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