Today has been a good day! I received my Carlinkit 3.0 Wireless Dongle - ordered from
carlinkitcarplay. I plugged it in to the USB-A port in my 2020 Ram 1500, the port I usually use to connect my cable for Apple CarPlay. There were some one-time prompts on my iPhone 12 Pro and on the head unit to connect, but connect it did!
Its working and appears to perform very well with virtually no noticeable lag or lack of audio quality. The connection takes only ~ 20 seconds to complete and then it defaults to Apple CarPlay!
I scanned to QR code on the instructions that came with the Dongle to access a utility to check the firmware on the Dongle. The indication is that it’s running the latest version and there is no update available. As I’ve thus far encountered zero performance issues, I’m certainty happy to keep things as they are (if it ain’t broke,…don’t fix it)!
One interesting observation I made is this creates its own distinct CarPlay profile from my original ”wired” CarPlay profile [on iPhone 12 Pro, in Settings > General > CarPlay]. Therefore I now have two distinct CarPlay profiles, one for my “wired” and the other for my “wireless“.
Somebody who heard me describe this Dongle said it sounds like a “sex toy”. Well, in some ways getting “wireless CarPlay” is very exciting, although I’m not ab to infer that it’s on the same par as sex!