Ok I have been searching for a few weeks on the best 2-din stereo to get for my vehicle. I have been tempted many times by the Appradio 2 - but I keep shying away from it because I am not sure it will work well for me?

Mostly I want a stereo with Hands Free Calling - Love the idea of a touch sceen and Navigaiton abilities would be a big bonus and something I believe I would really want - I have the GPS Sygic already on my S3. I would also like to plug my phone in to play music and have it charge - I am not a big fan of bluetooth streaming because I believe it eats battery life fast and I already do not like the battery life on the S3.

Now I am from the Iphone community and switched to the Galaxy S3 - I use to jailbreak and unlock my iphone for use on Tmobile so I am kind experienced but one of the many reasons I have switched is because I was tired of the unlocking and Iwas always worried I would make a mistake or I would brick my phone.

So from what I understand to really open all the features for the Appradio 2 you should get Arliberator - but the device must be rooted... this just worries me I truly do not want to have to deal with doing this and you have to do it everytime you upgrade your OS I believe... am I right?

So I guess my questions are:

How complicated or difficult is it to Root your device?

I am also confused as to what cable I need... I see talk of a HDMI and a MHL ?

If this is not what I should get ... what other HU's are out there that will work with the S3 - for Handsfree calling - that are double din ... etc. and have Navigation or can use Sygic off my phone. I need a GPS with offline maps because I do not want to rake up data charges.

Thank you!

felinawi asks:

So I guess my questions are:

How complicated or difficult is it to Root your device? Quite easy compared to jailbreaking.

I am also confused as to what cable I need... I see talk of a HDMI and a MHL ? The SGS3 now has a different mhl port so you need either a special adapter to connect to a conventional hdmi to micro hdmi or you need the sgs3 cable itself. There are cheap copies of them out there, but there have been video snow issues attributed to them. Get the original Sammy and be done with it.

If this is not what I should get ... what other HU's are out there that will work with the S3 - for Handsfree calling - that are double din ... etc. and have Navigation or can use Sygic off my phone. I need a GPS with offline maps because I do not want to rake up data charges. I was seriously looking at the Parrot Asteroid Smart, but it appears to be crippled, but with it's android os, it might be rooted in the future. Also, they are not for sale quite yet. There's another which I don't remember the name, but it being $1150 put it out of my price range.

Personally, I love my appradio 2 with arliberator. The dev is constantly adding features and fixing bugs. My motorola razr maxx just works great with it.

texbuck

textbuck - So what is the original - is it by Samsung or Pioneer - can you send over a link? With Arliberator can I use Sygic? Do you know?

There are now 1 touch rooting options for the SG3. Its pretty simple to do to be honest.

Get the Samsung one rather than Pioneer. It is basically an 11pin MHL (micro USB) cable which has an HDMI connector at the other end. You also plug in a powered Micro USB cable into the Samsung cable and it will charge the phone as well.

With ARL you basically get the phone mirrored to the head unit with full touch capability. Add in the fact you use the Appradio GPS as well it is pretty quick on the start up and you can use whatever sat nav application you want to use.