Incredible system

bike trailer Parrot Asteroid SMART Navigation Multimedia

Installation:
This unit went into my wife's 2006 Toyota Rav4. I purchased the OEM faceplate here in Amazon as well as the OEM harness that plugs in to the original head unit. I took apart the connector pins from the asteroid (very easy with a small flat head screwdriver) and soldered the OEM harness cables. Everything worked fine; my car as well as the asteroid have an illumination wire which I found no use, so I left it out. I am ordering a backup camera, so I still have to run a couple of wires this weekend. I placed the GPS and microphone close to the rear view mirror. The GPS is attached to the windshield with industrial Velcro and the mic I had to screw to the liner... It looks very good as the screw is hidden due to the headliners angle close to the edge of the windshield.
No issues at all with the installation. Everything worked fine on the first go. One thing I wished for is a wiring diagram on the manual; there is only a partial one, so I had to look at the rear of the asteroid to double check my wiring .

Setup and Applications
I was a bit worried since I don't use android, but I have to admit it is fairly intuitive. The initial setup was quick and I had the unit completely running with an iPhone 4S and 5 in no time.
I mainly stream audio from my phones to the asteroid via Bluetooth and it works great. One thing I miss is album art while streaming audio... Hopefully it will come in an upgrade. On the other hand, the asteroid market has a Spotify app which I am subscriber; it does show album art, but it does not have an offline mode like the one for the iPhone and iPad. Therefore, if you don't have an Internet connection while driving the Spotify app is pretty much useless.
Phone calls sound great on both ends. The FM radio works fine as well; one thing I haven't figured out is renaming my favorite radio stations with my own naming... it picks up whatever is on the RDS info, but no big deal.
Moving from screen to screen is pretty fluid; considering this thing runs android 2.x I was pleasantly surprised by how fluid it runs.
The voice recognition is very good as well. I haven't had any misses with contact dialing, but the assistant does have a soft British accent, sort of a young Moneypenney from 007.
I like the volume controls thru a swipe up and down; however a volume knob would've been a great addition (hint hint Parrot). The next and previous track skip is sort of unnatural to the typical touch gestures of the iOS devices, but I will get use it; it would be great if it could be set in the preferences.
The iGo navigation is OK. The tracking is a bit laggy at times, but it is usable. I have to test it to determine its accuracy.

Customization
Well this is what android is really all about. Although the asteroid market is very limited, you can still side load pretty much anything you want. Many apps work fine, but some others don't handle we'll the resolution and aspect ratio of the asteroid. I had my eye on Torque; I have to say that it works; I had to load Bluetooth apk to get the OBD2 scanner to work, but once done it worked great. I can now troubleshoot those error codes that are my car dealer's favorite source of income. Also, there are so many stats that are at your finger tips... It is truly awesome.
There is also ways to change a lot of things without having to root this thing. If you are very familiar with android then you will have many hours to tinker around. One thing you may want to do during the installation is to hook up a micro USB cable to the back of unit and tuck the wire behind your dash console somewhere; this USB port will allow you to connect your laptop and pretty much do anything to the asteroid.

Final thoughts
I really like this unit. I bought it mainly for the Bluetooth phone, music streaming capabilities, and navigation. I am really keen on my wife using the handsfree capabilities while driving. Everything additional feature has been a plus and a good one.
The unit is not perfect and you may have to hit the magic reset button every once in a while, but no head unit is free of hiccups. One thing that I noticed is that p the unit sometimes forgets to turn off the internal amp before shutting down causing a loud thump when the unit is completely off once I remove the key from the ignition. It mainly happens if you shutdown in the middle of the unit doing a background task. The first time it happen I almost jumped out of my seat.
One final observation: this unit boots very quick. One thing you will find in many after market radios is that some of best and more expensive units out there take almost a minute or more to be functional. The asteroid is very quick. The radio comes on almost immediately.
I truly hope Parrot keeps updating this unit with more features and makes the unit even more stable.