After 2-1/2 years of ownership, my Q5 reached 20,000 today!

(closer view)

Interestingly in the same time, GPMINI has covered almost 20,000 miles, even though she spent a lot of time parked up in Florida – but driving coast to coast and back, as well as a few Florida to New Hampshire trips, help add the miles … My Q5 averages 21.3mpg (calculated, not the OBC) over that time (GPMINI averages 27.3mpg from new).

Last weekend I attended an Audi drive event where I got to test drive the latest A6 and A7 cars, more expensive than my Q5 (double the cost of my GP) – neither car was anywhere near as nice to drive as the Q5! And the BMW 5GT I tried a while back is not as good either … I wonder what else I should test drive, offering comfort, good steering, and excellent cabin tech?

Today I headed down to MINI of Peabody for their “MINI Rocks The Rivals” day – a chance to drive the new MINI Countryman, and other cars that MINI USA consider to be “rivals” …

I’d consider the BMW X6 more of a “rival” to my Audi Q5 – but that car wasn’t available to drive! Instead, I had the chance to drive a Nissan Juke! It makes even the Countryman’s headlights look good:

The Nissan Juke interior is very cheap plastic, it doesn’t look very good at all …

The Nissan Juke was awful to drive – steering was so disconnected, and the CVT transmission gave a very strange acceleration experience, though I suppose it’s possible to get used to it. Of course, it’s hard to call this a “rival” when it costs thousands less! Maybe that’s why MINI USA are offering a $1,000 discount to everyone that participates in the test drive.

After the Juke, I skipped the Toyota RAV 4 and VW Tiguan, and got in to a Countryman – an ALL4, but in the not-so-great semi-red color …

I still don’t like those headlights, and it struck me today how huge and plain the rear hatch is – definitely needs some more badging, or decals. Inside the finish is way better than the Juke – but I still had trouble with the stereo controls. Better position for the volume knob now, but those two knobs right next to each other, doing very different things, is confusing. Turn one to adjust volume, but turn the other to adjust bass/treble/etc:

Of course the Countryman drove much better than the Juke, and offered great connectivity to the road with good steering and a responsive engine. Unfortunately, I’m not comparing the Countryman to that, but to my Q5! Rear visibility when I reversed in to parking was very poor (no backup camera option from MINI either), and while the stereo sounded good, it didn’t sound great.
On the other hand, the ride is much better on our potholed roads than my GP, pretty close to the Q5 ride; reasonably quiet interior too.

In conclusion I think the Countryman is a great car at it’s price – but I’d have some trouble switching from something that cost half as much again! I think I should go test drive that X6 instead

Thanks to MINI USA and MINI of Peabody for a fun afternoon!

(a couple more pics in the Gallery)

Seen while out for dinner this evening, in Kennebunk:

It’s a rant, and it’s not MINI related – but I’ve posted about iPhones a few times, and there’s an amount of overlap between the communities; something about wanting form and function, perhaps.
But I’ve been frustrated with my iPhone 3GS for a while; primarily the screen is just too small, expecially since getting an iPad last year. It’s also probably related to poorer close vision as I approach 50(!), though I guess glasses might solve that.

Margaret switched from T-Mobile to AT&T this past weekend, renewing my plan as now a family plan, so I’m staying with AT&T – in any case, Verizon doesn’t work in England! So I figured I’d get myself a new phone too, and the current iPhone 4 might have more dots and a better camera than mine, but it’s still a small display … I got tempted by the much bigger display of an Android phone, the HTC Inspire 4G.

Problem #1 is, of course, that it’s different to an iPhone that I’ve used for the past three years; little and big differences – one is that there’s no screen capture function, so here’s a picture of the HTC Inspire, taken by iPhone!

That screenshot is the best bit of this new Android phone, and what sold it to me – a big clear colorful screen with useful information right on the home page, courtesy of customizable “widgets”; I’ve got time and weather but I could have chosen lots of other things. Customizing is an easy drag-and-drop affair, too.
Notifications are really nice on Android too, all clustered in to the status bar at the top as little symbols, but a quick drag down gives a list of all of them – and tapping any one takes you to the “trigger” (email, or whatever). Very nice!
iPhone notifications are pathetic, with a single message box when you turn on the phone, which I always half see just as I slide to unlock, and it’s gone before I properly read it. Now it’s “hunt the non-zero count” among all Apps, but you may never discover just what that original half-seen message was …

Even with the lovely big screen, and notifications, as the post title hints, I’m less than enthusiastic so far. There’s a long list of issues, and some might yet be sufficient “show stoppers” to get this Android phone returned …

#1
Battery life is poor, or worse. The first day, with some experimenting, it struggled to last 8 hours; today, we’re down to 33%; you’ll see on the screenshot I had to install a battery percentage widget, since the built-in status symbol doesn’t give enough indication of remaining battery.
This phone will need daily charging – never had to do that with my iPhones.

#2
This might be AT&T fault (maybe because my account switched from Apple to Android?); I can’t get voicemail to work. There’s no visual voicemail of course, but calling the AT&T voicemail says “we need more information to direct you to the appropriate voicemail box” – what does that mean? Meanwhile unanswered calls to my phone don’t go to voicemail anyway!

#3
Perhaps because the phone is brand new, there’s minimal documentation anywhere; this led me to follow the screen instructions initially, which gave me HTC-branded mail and FaceBook Apps, that work annoyingly different (The HTC mail keeps creating new IMAP folders in my Gmail for example).
Eventually I had to do a factory restore and set the phone up all over again.

#4
Having set up syncing to my Gmail (mail, contacts), it seems that syncing is not reliable. More than once new messages have not appeared – and sending a message took more than an hour one time (with available WiFi continuously); as an additional annoyance there’s no lovely “whoosh” or any sound, to confirm that a message has been sent.

#5
Talking of WiFi, it seems flaky too – apparently the HTC Inspire WiFi antenna designer used to work at Apple as holding the phone at the bottom seems to drastically reduce WiFi reception.

#6
Getting music, ringtones, and photos on to the phone is challenging, at best. You can connect to a computer as a USB drive; but there’s no default folders to put anything in to.
A Google search suggested to create an “MP3″ folder and put ringtones in to it, then access them from the Music player in the phone, from where there is a “set as ringtone” function. Hardly easy – but it did work. Except for the >300K ringtone file I had, which always worked fine on my iPhone, but is rejected by Android.
Even though iTunes is criticized for doing music/photo/App/etc syncing, it’s far better than the Android/Mac solution of “figure it out if you can” …

#7
Much worse is that the Android phone might be incompatible with Mac computers! After writing some music to the phone, it decided that it’s microSD card was now “read only”. Read only means you can’t take photos – oh, and you can’t format it to solve the problem either!
Solution, after Google search – remove microSD card and connect to Windows computer using adaptor (which thankfully a work colleague had); use CHKDSK/F on the Windows computer (which did find issues).
So for now, the phone can again take photos – but will it fail again when I connect to my Mac next time?

#8
This issue of microSD cards seems stupid anyway! There’s “internal” memory (1GB) in the phone, and there’s the card (8GB as delivered) – and apparently some things must go in one or the other place. Why must a phone user deal with such technically detailed stuff? Just have “storage” like an iPhone, not different types of storage!

#9
Other annoyances include the “HTC Hub”; not sure what it is yet – because for more than a day it couldn’t “connect to server”. Oh, it just worked when I checked it, but failed after a few seconds. And now it’s working again. Slow and unreliable access to a few sounds and extra widgets, ok.

#10
And then there’s Bluetooth … my iPhone syncs to my Audi Q5, and from the car I can access all my contacts. Say I choose “Margaret”, then the car lists her details including two phone numbers (home and mobile); I can voice command “Call Margaret Mobile” to call her.
Well, the Android phone also syncs to the Q5, and makes contacts available – but somehow it doesn’t distinguish different phone numbers. So now Margaret has two separate entries, both identical except for the actual number. I can’t say “Call Margaret Mobile” any more, and if I say “Call Margaret” then the car offers two choices – Margaret, or Margaret. I can’t tell which one is her mobile number!
Maybe it’s the cars fault, but how did Apple get it right and Android wrong?

#11
Well, that’ll do!
If I can get voicemail to work, that’ll be a start; maybe I’ll use Google Voice to give me something similar to Visual Voicemail. I can learn to charge the phone more – but I need to be able to trust syncing for my Gmail mail/contacts/calendar, which I don’t, yet. Someone at Android has to figure out the Bluetooth phone directory issue, too.
But it is a nice big display!

I’ve continued to be unimpressed by IRA Audi; they do a poor job of scheduled service (here and here), require multiple visits for repairs, and completely ignore me when I call them to try and schedule the annual service!
I recently learned of another local choice – Audi Burlington owned by Herb Chambers; I figured they HAVE to be better, so I’ll give them a try …

Step one; call for service, leave a message – they called back within a couple hours but missed me, but then called again next day. I told them the car needed an annual service (ie: an oil change), and could I book a Saturday, maybe about 11am … no problem, come in this Saturday was the friendly reply. Full marks so far!

Driving down to Burlington today, my Q5 decided that it’s passenger side LED “day running light” cluster had failed (I checked and yes, it was no longer lit! I thought LEDs had a long life). Well, Audi Burlington were happy to check that too – it turned out that the whole light cluster needed to be replaced, but they had a replacement part in stock (excellent!); they also did some sort of factory bulletin on the tail gate.
Meanwhile, they dropped us at the local Mall so we could get lunch and shopping, and then collected us when the car was ready – and they called twice during that time to keep us up to date with the situation.

So now my Q5 is all serviced, and clean again

And … Herb Chambers Audi Burlington successfully reset the service interval display, showing a much superior level of skill to Ira!

Overall, VERY happy with the service visit – I’ll go there again (thanks, Armen, for the tip!)

I’m hesitant to call this Apple Picking Sundae as Sheena calls it, since I picked no Apples and didn’t have a Sundae (though Cold Stone Creamery is pretty close) … anyway, it was a spectacular weather day for a beautiful drive around Massachusetts, with ten MINIs and a convertible Mercedes as well as me in my Q5!
As always, Sheena’s drive takes us along great curvy roads (which I’m happy to say my Audi performed reasonably well compared with the MINIs I was following, and better than the Mercedes behind), with hints of Fall foliage colors in addition to the colors of the MINIs

I took lots of pictures, in the Gallery, or check out the highlights here …

As always, more pictures in the Gallery!

(Previous years drives: 2006 (Rain), 2007 (Great weather), 2008 (Cool) – I missed 2009 …

It’s not just me that’s enjoying the Audi Q5 …
… The August 2010 results were buoyed by the continued extraordinary consumer response by year-over-year sales increases for the Audi Q5 crossover and Audi Q7. For the month, Audi sold 2,675 Q5 vehicles, a 78.8% increase over the 1,496 vehicles sold in August 2009. The Q5 line also enjoyed more than a 25% August 2010 sales jump over July 2010 …
(from autotalk)

Considering the Q5 is priced from about $40,000, these sales compare pretty well with MINI USA 4,425 total of all their vehicles for August – another reason for the Countryman development, no doubt!

File this under “Audi dealership hopeless, compared with MINI” …

My Q5 last week told me that I needed an oil change, as I had reached 10K miles:

So I called Audi; they said that service is not due to 15K – because they do a first “free” service at 10K. They didn’t explain whether the Audi asks for a service at 10K, or whether it asks 10K after the previous service and they just didn’t bother resetting the interval at the 5K visit.

I asked them what to do about my car asking for service; they suggested that I ignore it – for the next 5,000 miles! They said that resetting the interval “takes at least an hour” and they clearly weren’t at all interested in doing it.
I suggested that ignoring a “service due” alert for 5,000 miles was a very poor quality way to make a car – apparently they (IRA Audi) didn’t much care. I also pointed out “what if some other issue comes up that requires service, given that you told me to ignore the warning”. Once again, they didn’t care.

So, I emailed Audi USA who, to their credit, called me within half an hour and were apologetic – but still didn’t explain whether the issue is with the car or with the dealership. Anyway they said to take it to the dealership to reset, and I told them how un-popular that seemed to be, and that IRA Audi claimed it would take a long time.

Today, I got a call from IRA Audi; they said to bring the car in so they can reset the service interval – it won’t take long, maybe 20 minutes … hmmm.

If this was a MINI, I know that MINI of Peabody would have encouraged me to bring it in either to service if it needed it, or to correct the wrong interval. I know also that BMW of Peabody would behave the same – since exactly that happened with Margaret’s BMW, and they sorted it.
I know also that I would have got a friendly and helpful explanation if the car was reporting the wrong service interval – I would not have been told to “just ignore it”!

I really like my Q5, but I continue to be amazed just how poor IRA Audi can be

Corvette, BMW, Audi … which car would you drive home in?

My Q5 went back to IRA Audi today for them to (finally / successfully) fix the keyless entry; this time I got an A4 to drive for the day – thankfully, only about 25 miles in it, as it was nowhere near as nice to drive as the Q5!

The A4 felt cramped, with a much lower roof; and under-powered, with the 2.0T being very sluggish – though once or twice the turbo kicked in unexpectedly to accelerate after I’d got used to not! That’s even worse, I think.

Curiously, the Q4 interior / dash is identical to the non-nav Q5 I has as a loaner last time:

(compare with this)

Anyway, I have my Q5 back, and everything seems to work properly now