Samsung announces an app for drivers, Drive Link

Samsung has announced and released another app. And as one may suspect, another Android app. But that being said, this release is not only limited to Samsung devices at the moment, but specifically to the Galaxy S III. More specifically, the Galaxy S III GT-I9300. On that note, Samsung did offer the following;

“Drive Link is launching on the Samsung GALAXY S III (GT-I9300) and will be made available on other smartphones running Google Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the near future.”

The Samsung Drive Link app is available from Samsung Apps and can be found in 21 countries including;

Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine, and United Kingdom.

Otherwise, now that we know who can or probably more accurately here, who cannot use the app — lets get into what it does. Samsung touts the Drive Link app as being “built around the three most popular uses of smartphones while driving: listening to music, navigating to a destination and talking hands-free.” Simply put, this simples the display on your phone and therefor should make it a bit easier and safer to use. The app also has a few neat tricks such as voice-to-text and the ability to connect to the head unit in your car (provided yours is supported) using a feature called MirrorLink.

As far as the hands-free use, Samsung has that as follows;

“Staying in touch during journeys can often be important. With this in mind, Drive Link incorporates a feature called Text-To-Speech, available in English(U.S./U.K) French, Italian, German, and Spanish, which enables all incoming messages, emails and updates from social media websites to be automatically read via the car’s speaker system so that drivers’ eyes are always on the road, ensuring maximum concentration and safety are maintained. All personal contacts saved in the phone are loaded to Drive Link and users can also make a phone call directly by dialing on the keypad.”

Finally, getting back to the MirrorMode and car integration. This comes as follows;

“MirrorLink is the new standard connectivity protocol between smartphone and car head units from the Car Connectivity Consortium, an industry body comprising most major smartphone and vehicle car manufacturers including GM, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Daimler, and Hyundai.”

More on the MirrorMode note sthat the working head units include some from JVC and Alpine as well as Sony. The specific models include the JVC KW-NSX1, Alpine ICS-X8 and Sony XAV-701BT, XAV-741 and XAV-601BT. Finally, just like Samsung noted that additional handset support was coming, the MirrorMode support will also be expanded upon in the near future.

Via [Samsung Tomorrow]