I have the comfort dash, so I leave it plugged into the USB slot in the glove box and every time I start the van it connects to the discovery nav head unit and creates a wi-fi network in the van. The router also has a little slot for a mini SD card, so you can still use the USB port for storage of music or photos etc. I don't have a smart phone at the moment. I'm trying to decide which one to buy and which SIM plan to get. I'm leaning towards an Android phone though. VW UK Customer Services say that they receive fewer support requests from drivers with iPhones than they do from drivers with Android phones. When I pointed out that there are probably about four times as many Android phones in the world as there are iPhones, they couldn't comment any further!

Personal Hotspot on and linked to car. Both phones paym contracts allowed data sharing without any setup or cost. Set up car again with wizard and worked straight away. One week later No Internet. Carried out the above myself this time. Worked for 8 weeks ish and then No Internet. As you can imagine this is like getting a new phone and setting it up again every couple of weeks and TBH getting a bit ****ed off with it. Have you got a Columbus or Amundsen head unit? My Amundsen doesn’t have a globe, but a standard Wi-fi fan type symbol instead. Are you saying you can tether it via USB, or do you mean connect to the personal hotspot whilst it’s plugged into CarPlay? Yes, Car-Net Guide and Inform (Basic) comes as standard equipment on my model. I did not want App-Connect which you appear to have. You state that you connect your iPhone to the Infotainment system using a USB cable, but then you refer subsequently to using only Apple CarPlay, Siri, Apple Maps, etc.. Can you connect via USB cable and use the Car-Net Guide and Inform services? As implied in my original post, this way of connecting is not mentioned in my Infotainment manual.I also have managed to connect the Infotainment system in my car to the WiFi hotspot of my home router. No problem there. As a side note I mentioned that when i disabled hot spot on the phone while it was connect via CarPlay I retained a white globe icon (its red when i have no connction) and had access to Skodaconnect. so I guess carplay also tethers it? Any way I think i've managed to get it working, so thought i'd post to share with anyone else on EE.

Siri works very well, activated by voice dial button on steering wheel using the car microphone. Functions better than my previous Golf which had voice control. The Discover Media happily connects to the Huawei modem, seems to be getting all the correct traffic updates, CarPlay is streaming music etc.It is really getting off topic to discuss the relative merits of the iPhone and Android phones. I’ve been a Luddite for many years and have refused to buy a smart phone. However, my elder daughter has an Android and is very pleased with it, and my younger daughter has an iPhone and is equally pleased with it. And, having watched them use various useful apps on their phones, I’ve been persuaded to buy a smart phone. I've been very impressed with the built in nav system compared to Google maps on Android auto. It seems better at not sending you down ridiculously small roads for example. I don't have an apple phone so can't comment on the Apple equivalent. Haven't used with with any other hardware apart from Apple - yet! My son has an Android phone so I may try this out at some stage to see what the Android apps are like.

You state "Personal hotspot on and linked to car.". I'm sorry but I don't understand this. I am assuming that you have not configured your iPhone as a WiFi hotspot and that the Infotainment system does not connect as a WLAN client. So what is a "personal hotspot" in relation to an iPhone? Internet connection - Personal Hotspot - wrong assumption. When set up the phone acts as a mobile wi-if router and can share its internet connection with any wi-if device, of which one is the DNS and therefore car-net. Connecting to an EE iPhone over wifi hotspot is particularly slow (I've found it unreliable on everything, regualrly having to turn the hotspot on/off/on to make a connection actually access the interent). Possibly the DNS may use the Internet connection (*) to update traffic en route. It also uses traffic info via the radio system. I'm driving the vRS to work tomorrow so I'll carry on experimenting to try and confirm these methods.

There was some uncertainty about whether you can tether the Virgin sim, but I've had 3 devices at once connected to it and had no connection issues, but it is painfully slow for browsing and streaming is almost impossible. If using streaming services occasional dropouts due to signal loss are avoided by saving playlists to the phone. You can tether it when you plug it in to the USB port (with hotspot on and discoverable) and it will connect and continue working after you unplug. I think tethering via cable will also work as at some point yesterday, the globe was white but it didn't say WLAN next to it, and it still worked (this was with hotspotting turned off, because I was also using car play to try and get the OneSkoda app working, but more of that on a different thread...).

Apple maps works well as an alternative to the DNS on board satnav. Great with Siri voice control, as is the iPhone dialler. There are other wee examples too for example when you get low on petrol, it automatically shows you where you can find it and at what price, i love that. Car-net iOS app has basic functions away from the car, one of which allows destinations and poi from this app to be sent to DNS. As a whole the only part of Car-Net I find useful (excluding in my case the very much used CarPlay) is the upload of destinations to the DNS satnav from the comfort of an armchair. SD Card music - my car has the Dynaudio speakers - which sound outstanding to me. I wanted to give them something high quality as a source. CDs sound incredible, but so do does high-quality digital music files from the SD card. This lives in Slot 1 now, and has all my favourite music on it. I know most people now probably don't have a digital music collection like this, but I still do, so might as well use it. To my ears, it sounds better than either bluetooth-based audio, or my wired Android Auto phone using high quality Spotify streaming. Its also very easy to get to the album or artist you want, or just to shuffle the whole thing.With car play (or Android auto) you lose functionality on the instrument panel in front of the driver. It only works on the centre screen. I am still not sure whether your iPhone is configured as a mobile WiFi router AND is also connected to the Infotainment system by USB cable – that is, you use both types of connection.