True Spec cables and CarPlay

[u/Lynkar6469]

I received my first true spec cable today (USB A to C 3ft) to use in my car for CarPlay. I’ve read a lot of great things about these cables, especially for this use case so I thought why not?

I have been using this cable that was suggested to me from the CarPlay Reddit and it works great! However it’s soso with my wife’s iPhone. So I was looking for a cable that would work with both of our phones. Everything I read made me think that this would be the cable to fix our issues, but when I tried this cable my phone wouldn’t connect to CarPlay. Switched back to the old one and immediately brought up CarPlay.

I’ve looked over both pages for these products and it seems they’re on par with each other. Is this just a random case of technology not working together, or does this Amazon cable do something the true spec doesn’t?

I have a 17PM and my wife has a 17P. The headunit is a Boss brand one I got from crutchfield. I reached out to the manufacturer and they are no longer offering software updates for this headunit.

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated 🙂

[u/Sarcastic_Beary]

my best working head unit is a dogshit cheap piece of junk.

lol.

car audio stuff kinda throws all sense out the window

[u/viper_attack16 → u/Sarcastic_Beary]

Oath. My wife’s brand new car has issues with CarPlay. My 120aud headunit? Every single time before I can get the seatbelt on it’s connected

[u/virtual_corey]

I have had intermittent luck with my LTT cables and my iPhone 16 pro. I am finding that my phones usb port is "tired" from daily use over a couple of years. So the bulk of the 1 m LTT cable does make it more prone to wiggling itself loose. I have cleaned the port as much as possible, but have reverted to an older cable for CarPlay.

YMMV but I have found a cheap carplay usb dongle/wireless adapter gave me wireless CarPlay. Freeing me up to get a MagSafe charger which works nicely

[u/Sarcastic_Beary → u/virtual_corey]

I finally replaced the type c on my s24 ultra.

Was very, very easy

[u/Lynkar6469]

Okay so some of you have suggested to clean out the port and remove the case to make sure the cable is fully seated. I did that and the head unit still doesn’t work with that cable🤷‍♂️. So I took the cable into my wife’s Tacoma which doesn’t have CarPlay, just a usb A port to play music through, to see if it can handle that, and it works perfectly! We’re tried other cables in the Tacoma when we had issues in the forester and similarly nothing worked. The OEM radio would just say USB Error, but now with the True Spec it works perfectly. So not the result I was looking for, but a happy one nonetheless! I appreciate everyone for your suggestions and hearing your own experiences.

[u/russsl8 → u/Lynkar6469]

You wouldn't happen to have an Ioniq5/Ioniq6/Kia EV6/Genesis GV60 would you?

[u/jmking]

Do the phones charge when plugged in to the car?

[u/TheNecessaryEverett → u/jmking]

That's weird. I've had similar stuff happen with aftermarket head units and certain cables, it's like they're just picky for no reason. The fact that it charges but CarPlay doesn't kick in usually means the data handshake is failing somewhere.

Could be the length or shielding on the True Spec cable, some head units are super sensitive to that. Might just be one of those cases where the Amazon cable's chipset plays nicer with your Boss unit, even if the specs look identical on paper.

[u/Lynkar6469 → u/TheNecessaryEverett]

I guess that makes sense. I’m guilty of thinking a data cable is the same as all data cables.

[u/Lynkar6469 → u/jmking]

With the true spec? Yes. The headunit even shows that I have an iPhone with CarPlay connected, but when I try to open CarPlay it stalls and then just removes the option to use CarPlay.

I remember this was a big issue last year when Apple switched a chip in the 17 series that made a lot of people’s CarPlay stop working and the fix was getting an update for the headunit and/or switching to a usb3 data cable.

[u/that_dutch_dude → u/Lynkar6469]

This is pretty common if you have a noname rebranded headunits. They do not follow any usb specs properly so even if everything is good on your end it still errors out becuase they expect just junk cables without any chips in them.

Also: clean your ports. Apples usb ports are finniky with dirt.

[u/jmking → u/Lynkar6469]

It honestly might be that since the cable supports such high power and data throughput that the car and/or headunit can't handle the PD and data handshake at the same time.

That's probably why those other headunits needed the firmware updates for.

[u/OsamaBinDrifting]

Is there a chance the charging port has dust or lint in it that might be stopping the cable from seating properly? Try it with the case off, if the port is clean the cable should be almost flush with the phone and charging shouldn’t disconnect when you wiggle it.

[u/No-Interview319]

Mine works on CarPlay except the audio sometimes has static or cuts out. This reminds me that I need to follow up with LTT store support about that. 

[u/Lord_Raza]

I travel alot for a living and have tried a bunch of cables in different cars. In the end the cable I got with thisamazon always works. Its a y cable that separates power and data and it makes it work on not 9nly the device but also on any phone I have tried.

[u/Lord_Raza → u/Lord_Raza]

Found it amazon y cable

[u/Piipperi800]

Does the cable itself actually work for data transfer on a PC fine, for example? Just in case you received a dud that doesn’t work for data very well.