What happened to using Siri on a Prius Prime?

Same thing happened with the Google assistant for me. It's Alexa. While the car's on, she takes over.

 

I got the update as well and noticed the new Alexa app. However, Entune has to be actively running on your phone for Alexa to work. Kinda useless implementation. I haven’t tested Siri.


iPhone ?

 

I'm pretty sure the Entune Smartphone App needs to be running for any Entune App that requires Internet connectivity to work. That would apply for Alexa which is basically an skeleton app front end for processing "in the cloud". From what I recall if Entune wasn't running I couldn't run Pandora (RIP) etc. So this is nothing new.

 

I run the other music apps just fine even if Entune is not open.


iPhone ?

 

Aha! Battle of NLP apps. Toyota opted for Alexa over Siri and Google Assistant. I never used GA in my 2017 PRIME, but wonder what happens with my 2020 PRIME which came with Toyota +Alexa as a native app along with Entune3.0.

 

Do you have the Toyota Entune App settings as "Location Always"? Then the app is technically always running.

 

I don’t know. But I just know that I can always use iHeartRadio or Slacker any time I get in the car without opening Entune. But with Alexa it never responds unless I open Entune on the iPhone first. And whenever Alexa refuses to work I go to the Alexa menu on the car, it says to make sure Entune is open on my phone. I then have to open Entune on the phone again even if I just used it 5 minutes ago. It’s weird. The other Entune apps don’t do that.


iPhone ?

 

I have the amazon “echo auto” and from time to time it will tell me it’s lost communications with the Alexa app. Not often but it does happen. So rather than use some published Alexa api it’s talking to the Alexa app?

 

I’m stuck in a loop with this whole Alexa thing. In my iPhone Alexa app, I read you can add skills to Alexa, and there is one called Toyota Remote. I enabled that on my phone Alexa app but then it says I need to link my account to Toyota which I did by following the prompt from the Alexa app which sends me to login to the Toyota owners website which I logged in, but then it says I don’t have any vehicles registered for remote services, but my Prime is already registered there. So I don’t understand what’s going on.


iPhone ?

 

Android here, but what happens is that when my phone connects to the bluetooth in my car, the entune app wakes up and I get a little toyota symbol shaped notification that keeps entune awake on my phone while I'm driving. I don't have to open the app itself. It's all automated. Once I disconnect from the car's bluetooth, the icon disappears and the phone's power management puts the entune app to sleep. Again, it's all automatic, so I don't see how the implementation is useless. Alexa itself works fine and seamlessly with the car's system. I just hate losing my google assistant on my phone, because I will ask it to do stuff while driving. I don't think Alexa can control anything on my phone, just on my car. It would be great to have Alexa control the car and still let assistant control the phone, because Alexa can't seem to do both.

 

This is exactly what I was suspecting: it works great on an Android but useless on an iPhone. Usually it’s something to do with Apple’s iOS restrictions. So the whole framework of Entune shouldn’t be so dependent on the smartphone’s OS. If Entune was better designed so that apps can run without depending so much on your smartphone, it would work perfectly. It is doable but probably requires better hardware on the car’s computer and more programming on the developers used by Toyota. But they chose to go the cheap route and this is the end result: a half-working feature for iPhone users. In my case it’s even worse because I can’t use either Siri or Google Assistant anymore. I recall being able to choose which one I wanted to use by simply using the Bluetooth mic in the car to talk to Alexa, or Google Assistant or Siri running on the phone. Now, this update is not giving me any choices because they wanted to impose Alexa on everyone. Not a smart move.


iPhone ?