Roav Bolt with iOS 10.3.3 on iPhone SE (Review)

#1

2nd Update: So today I updated the Bolt to ver 0.5.16 and that seems to resolve most of my issues. Here is the process…

  1. Turn on your Car and let Bolt and iPhone pair.
  2. In the google assistant app>accessories, see that your Bolt will show a sync counter (goes from 0 to 100%) and it takes about 5 min to do so.
  3. Bolt then restarts and says that there is an update available. Click that and it will update.
  4. After update, I can now have phone calls routed through Bolt. Everything else works fine as well.

I received my Roav Bolt through We Love Testing event

I’ve been testing this for 2 days now and its been a mixed bag. First of all my setup is like this…
2010 Toyota Camry LE (with Aux In), Roav Bolt connected to car through Aux out port, and phone is iPhone SE with iOS 10.3.3 and Google assistant installed.

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Unboxing: Item came in a nice paper box (100% recyclable). Inside there is the Bolt itself and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cord with one plug at 90 degree (this is awesome). There is also a quick start guide.

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Initial Setup: Initial setup was painless. After plugging in the Bolt, my phone reported that a new device is there asking for pairing. After approving the pairing it auto-paired and then the Bolt auto updated. This auto update took about 10 min to complete. After that it worked fine for regular commands.

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Sound quality: Sound quality is awesome with no ground loop noise at all. I want to stress again on this since my current Roav F0 does have some ground loop noise at high volumes but Bolt is absolutely silent :grinning:
Anker you did a great job here…

Problems: Now the problems…One thing is that there is no quick way to play/pause/forward/reverse music. Second is when I ask google assistant to make a call she said she cannot help with that. May be this is because iOS is still in beta for Bolt.
Another big issue was that when I called my voice mail, no matter what I do the sound never got routed through Bolt :rage: This was extremely frustrating…
I’ll still give this a few more days of testing. Will make some calls tomorrow when I travel to office and see how the call quality is?
Streaming music from my phone to car speaker has been awesome but everything else has been not so good so far…

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Using Roav Bolt without Google Assistant
[Expired] Roav Bolt - 20% discount at BestBuy
#2

Nice little review and pics. I’ve got my installed on a Note 8 and it seems to do everything that Google Assistant does. Still playing with.

What music system are you using? I’m using spotify. I can get to open and play music but I haven’t tried to forward or reverse yet. There’s some features on the SmartCharge F2 so I’ve got my bluetooth hooked up through there and it works great.

Of course I’m still testing and I can see some potential uses for it.

#3

I see that it is advised for android devices so the issues I’m seeing could be due to iPhone usage.
I typically use iPhone music app with my own music installed in phone. I agree that this has potential but if the google button can be user programmable for using as play pause skip button (single, double or triple press) it will be awesome. Or may be there can be a few more buttons on the top of the device?

#4

Thanks for the review!

How has the response been to commands for Google Assistant and responses, delay, accuracy?

#5

if you say"Hey Google" then there is a 1-2 sec delay, but if you press the google button then there is no delay.

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#6

That’s not bad… I was seeing higher delays and not consistent.

Also if you request for music, does it say this is not available or Google music subscription message? This never worked earlier, not sure if this has resolved.

#7

Nice review :+1:. I’m experiencing a lot of the same issues as you… I assume you’ll do an update later on?

Btw I’m feeling a lot better. I still feel horrible, but it’s near as bad as it was :sweat_smile:

#8

Nice review. Haven’t used google assistant ever and Siri isn’t too good but does the job for me. Kinda sucks that a product has been released but it’s still in beta with iOS

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#9

I’m so glad to hear that you are feeling better :grinning:
remember we all need @TechMan

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#10

Once mini review, glad your having better luck for the most part than what we have been hearing. Keep us informed of any more issues you have or that arise

#11

Great detailed review and nice pictures. Let’s hope they fix the issues with future betas

#12

Nice review and reference photos @kumar.sachin :ok_hand:

#13

Nice little review thanks for sharing !!!

#14

Awesome review! I was watching a YouTuber review this last week and they had multiple issues with the iOS beta app, but it was fine on the android side of things.

One thing they noted was that when asking any sort of request, instead of getting a reply instantly there was always a delay with processing the request. Have you experienced anything like that?

#15

This is good for my parents car as they need one… I want to test something like that or I might buy one for them

#16

Yes there is a noticeable delay in when you say “hey google” and when it is ready to listen. Also it takes a few seconds to respond back. I’ve seen that if you press the assistant button on top of Bolt, it listens right away.

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#17

This was the same issue I had experienced… Lot of delay, since it is still in beta on iOS, hope the software / firmware upgrades can fix it and not any major hardware issues.

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#18

I also experience delays when using verbal “hey google” commands. Usually about 3 seconds. I’m using a Samsung Galaxy S7 android phone so not sure if it would be quicker with a newer model phone or if the lag is just the ROAV Bolt itself.

#19

I don’t think it is a phone issue, had tested this with S9 from my wife as a simple test if it could work faster. There were delays. I am an iPhone user, response has been same for iPhone 8 and X

#20

The video I was watching on YouTube, the guy was using a Samsung Galaxy S10 to test it and was having delays of 5+ seconds at times.

It’s definitely the hardware and not what sort of phone you’re using @Cory_Blane

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