I have a "Bolero" unit in my Octavia Mk3 and I usually just listen to the radio, but decided to explore the media player a little more last night. When I selected the bluetooth source it launched Spotify on my android phone (a HTC One M8, which I've always had paired to the car for phone calls). The music played through the car speakers, but there were no options on the car display for controlling what was played, short of putting the phone in a holder on the dash and doing it via that. (I'm assuming Spotify was launched because this was the last music player app that I had used).

 

It all seemed very basic, and the car manual is suitable vague: "the supported media functions are dependent on the type of bluetooth player used". Is it just a limitation of this particular technology or is there anything I can do to expose more features/control, either on the car or the phone itself?

 

the balero unit is crap and thats being kind! its the one thing on my vRS that i really hate, integration with your phone is limited and basic at best. Having to change the album/artist/playlist on the ipod itself is as basic as it gets. Ive heard some people talking about smartlink but im pretty sure there is no way to add this retrospectively. I have a 2013 carens and it can at least read playlists and covers etc natively all controlled from the steering wheel. i dont know why Skoda skimped on this and want to charge more for it with the columbus unit.

 

your best bet is an android replacement unit and they are up to 8 core now and feature 9" screen. There is a unit from Alpine for the MK3 but your looking at £1300 and then there are the add ons like rear parking camera, dvd player and it adds up to about £2K. For the same Android 8 core its £300 etc. For the Alpine unit the bonus is everything works including the steering controls and can bus info.

 

I dont have spotify but i copied every folder from my iTunes on the mac to a 200gb microsd (150GB of tunes) and use this from the cd player in the glove compartment, the search isnt too bad, as itunes has ordered by artist and then album,  but you still have no option for playlists or compliations etc. 

Edited 10 October, 20178 yr by JohnnyType2

On my 2013 Bolero I can control spotify etc from my iPhone 6 - see track info, next / previous track, control via the steering wheel controls etc. My wife has an android phone and can't control a blooming thing. After some searching on the spotify forums she found that many people had the same issue after a recent app update

It depends on the phone - my OnePlus 3T with Lineage OS shows everything from Spotify without problems, but it wasn't always so with the previous OnePlus 2 (although it eventually worked...)

 

Things you can try:

- delete the Bluetooth pairing on phone and also on car

- delete the phone/user profile on the Bolero unit

- Re-pair everything and waaaaaiiiiiittttt until the phone contacts sync without attempting any other operations on either phone or Bolero

- Start Spotify on phone and put it to play

- switch media source to Bluetooth

 

 

That did the trick for me, but YMMV

my A5 shows everything - skip, album art, title and stuff - from either Samsung Music or Spotify. Note 4 also allows complete control. 2016 Octavia with no nav.

 

 - Bret