gromaudio

Apologize for the delay with shipping out the pre-orders. We run out of some parts, and now in the process of receiving the new batch. As soon as the parts arrive here we will be able to send out the VLine to you, and you will receive tracking information.
Again sorry for the inconvenience the delay has caused, we are working hard to make sure that you will receive your order as soon as possible.
Thank you for your understanding.

hyb1212id

I have had limited use time with my Vline (maybe an and hour or so of tinkering) and here is my review:

-Installation was straight forward. Still need to properly mount the Vline hardware into the glove compartment. I can't figure out a clean way to run the wiring without bends.I have NOT connected the GPS antennae and microphone.
-As noted by previous reviews, the system needs to boot up every time the car is turned off for more than 5 seconds. Boot time is roughly 15-20 seconds-not ideal.
-The Android OS is buggy. My box locks up constantly which requires me to turn off the car, wait 5 seconds, and restart. Not ideal when driving.
-I have an iPhone and Carplay is working when physically connected via USB.
-Vline won't automatically connect to my iPhones hot spot. I have to manually turn off and on the hot spot on my phone for the Vline to recognize and connect.
-A2DP streaming works, but wont load Album Art
-Pause button on the music controls (when dragged from top of the screen) does not work. I have to go back into the music app to select pause
-With all the little issues, the box shows a lot of promise. Something about browsing the web on my car screen is pretty cool in my opinion. (even though there is no back button on the browser; so annoying)
-Note that I previously had the GROM USB2 module installed to allow for A2DP streaming which work flawlessly.

The box is not ready for prime time. I suspect this is why we were offered the discounted price. However, it's exciting what the Vline can do for our "Infotainment" system. I am optimistic that GROM will continue to develop the firmware and fix all the bugs. At the least, please make the system stable and reduce the boot time if possible!

rehr0001

I would clarify this is iphone functionality, not an issue with the vline. The hotspot only activates if you physically go to "personal hotspot" in your iphone settings screen. Once something connects, the hotspot remains active, though, for other devices. In other words, you need to activate the hotspot manually for the first device. Any device after the first device will connect to the hotspot automatically if it has remembered the network.

Installing my vline this weekend - looking forward to give it a try!

GarageB

I am trying to resolve issues I am having with my Grom unit, and I am holding back from posting a review video to give them a chance to resolve them.

If the issues are not resolved immediately I will be posting a video review next week.

If you are considering buying this unit - my suggestion at this point is to wait.

Grom - reread my PMs fully and respond accordingly.

AlexSweISF

damn, no good news here, first its delayed twice and then you guys think it's better to wait, i've bought it on the presale and still waiting, boot time on 15-20 sec is a joke.
was hoping to get it before the winter but the car is going in soon so i hope they will solve whatever bugs and problems there is so i can use is fully next season....

Defratos

Don't mean to thread jack but I wanted to know how is this unit different from this ----> http://www.vaistech.com/newsite/product/ivic-5i/

rehr0001

They aren't really similar at all. The Grom unit is basically a stand alone android computer that you control with touch screen and steering wheel controls. You have access to CarPlay for those with iPhones, soon to be Android Auto, and basically any app you'd like to use from the android App Store.


i installed mine yesterday and have only used CarPlay for a little bit, but in my short experience it is awesome. The boot time really isn't a big deal, controls worked perfectly, sounded great, and now I don't have to rely on my phone to be mounted on the dash with wires hanging everywhere.

To the 2 people upthread here, it strikes me as silly. Threatening a bad video review if your issues aren't immediately resolved? Give me a break. We all saw the beta reviews and knew we weren't getting a stable unit right off the bat. And to the pre-order person - it is what it is. They sold more than they were expecting and you must have purchased at the tail end. Yeah, it sucks to wait, but you still saved yourself $200 by preordering.

drcabral

You are clearly biased and trying to suppress the free exchange of thoughts and ideas which is the fundamental reason of having a forum like this. If your satisfied good. But I'm sure you would feel differently if you didn't have your unit yet.

As for Gromaudio this is classic bait and switch,so buyers beware and buy at your own risk. Maybe I'd feel different if I already had my unit like some others which I would have ordered sooner if I were not mislead and told that ALL pre-orders would be shipped out the week after 10/1. Then they tell you it's coming in a week, still no shippment/tracking. Now it's we need more parts. So business 101,don't make empty promises and take customer's money if you can't deliver! (Pun intended). As for the bugs, they have to fix them if they want to stay competitive in the market place period.

rehr0001

Trying to suppress the free exchange of thoughts and ideas? That's a new one I'm here expressing my thoughts on your ideas :P

I agree, it's pretty crappy for a company to charge you for something they can't deliver - or charge you something before they intend to deliver. In this case, I don't think Grom is probably the largest company in the world and may have underestimated the demand a bit. Now they have people they've charged and promised something to that they can't deliver on. I get that. I imagine you'll be much happier once you get your unit (unless you're upset by a 20 second boot time and bugs which you already know about).

I'm happy at $300 in its current state. At $500, I don't think so, but I know this unit has potential and already works to 80% of my expectations. I'm looking forward to it getting to 100%. Having access to carplay and google maps with touchscreen and steering wheel control on a 2007 vehicle is pretty amazing.

Teachustea

I installed my VLine and it works pretty well. I use a 64 GB jump drive to store about 50 GB of media. I use onboard Lexus Bluetooth for phone audio. Local music app took forever to scan and organize music files. I installed another media player for music and video and that solved issue. I recently began getting a Vgers error message that dealt with my hybrid electric system. When I disconnect VLine power this issue goes away. I ran battery diagnostic and battery read minimum 14.3. It appears that it is draining 12 v battery even when engine off. Is anyone else experiencing power drain? I have 07 GS 450 H

mahcah

iTrader: (3)

No drainage here yet.

gromaudio

VLine should not consume more that 3mA in sleep which is inline with what stereo/navi consumes. So it might be something software related.
Send me a pic of the SW version and VBase code version in About -> VLine .... We'll check if we had any reports so far.
Make sure to turn off Smart Scheduler for now (DashLinQ Launcher->Settings). We will let everybody know when it is safe to use. I hope this week we should be able to release it.
On Local plugin, it should not take long to scan 64GB USB stick. Even though first time it might take a while, it saves the DB image internally so next time it should instant. Let me know if it not working like it should.
What app did you use that scans faster ?

gromaudio

My apologies that you did not receive your unit yet. GPS antennas arrived and we will be able to ship all orders tomorrow. You should have received email about it already.
Unfortunately we identified GPS antenna issues very late and were not able to fix them locally.

robtown

Does this mean if we received an earlier unit that the GPS antenna is defective?

wildta

TL;DR: As an Android phone user, I highly suggest others wait until improvements are made. I did an early pre-purchase price of $300 and even at that price, I would not buy this system. It's priced at $500 right now.

I just installed my VLine two days ago. Here are the issues I've experienced so far (system is fully up-to-date as of 10/30/16):

1. I added the GApps and I know the manual said it would be slower but whoa is it slow.
2. The CPU Quad Core Cortex-A7 MCU 1.35GHz is really slow. I would easily pay up $100 for the fastest Snapdragon chip (or similar).
3. The system once got stuck in the ANDROID boot screen. The only way to fix it was to pull over, turn off the ignition, wait, and then turn on the ignition again.
4. A2DP does not experience smooth playback. It skips around sometimes (not in an extremely annoying way but definitely noticeable).
5. A2DP track names were off by one, so when I hit the next track button on my steering wheel the next song would play but the display would still show the previous track's name. The only fix was to get out of the Vline mode by hitting CD and then hop back into Vline mode by hitting CD again. Track art does not get displayed (using my phone's Spotify app).
6. The Vline native vSpotify app runs into some issues when I attempt to play music under YOUR LIBRARY>SONGS. It won't even let me access the songs in order to play them. Instead I receive some error (will take note of the exact error and update this later).
7. I downloaded the Google Play's Spotify app and I'm unable to click on the LOG IN button; I can tap on the SIGN UP button though. Also, the app displays in Portrait mode instead of Landscape mode even though display settings are set for Horizontal/Landscape mode.
8. I downloaded Google Play's Waze traffic app and the app shows up in Portrait mode instead of Landscape mode, making it difficult to tap on the necessary soft buttons to log in.
9. BT for streaming rarely connects on its own, I have to go to my phone and manually tap 'vline' for it to connect. Yes they are paired and I've tried removing and repairing, restarting, etc. and it still will not connect automatically.

Because it's so slow to boot, it would have been nice to have a battery pack add-on that charges as you drive and then keeps the system in standby mode when the car is off. That way the system never has to reboot unless it loses power through the battery pack--I know my phone can go almost 20 days in standby mode with a tiny battery so this system could easily hit that. Thinking about this further: they could just sell a dongle that has two USB ports, one that powers the Vline and the 2nd one to recharge a portable battery pack--this way a user can buy their own 3rd party battery pack with whatever size, as long as it it outputs the required amps, to use for standby when the car is off and it puts zero liability for battery issues on GROM (I don't think they would want a Samsung Note 7 battery issue here!).

I'm hoping they get the Android Auto approval soon because the CPU is way, way too slow. I'm hoping I can use the processing power of my phone by using Android Auto instead of the system since the native OS is absolutely useless due to being so slow and buggy.

Having said all of this, I've had great customer service and support from GROM in past experience, including this one where the ball joint holder of the mic broke off during installation and they are sending me a new one (already shipped only a couple hours after emailing them).
Keywords: v-line, v line, grom, android, lexus, rx 400h, rx400h, rx350, rx 350, toyota, android auto, review, issues, bugs, buggy, bug, issue, discussion, forum, user, how to, install, rating, stereo, google, nav, navigation, touchscreen, bt, bluetooth