Connectivity Plan Expired Today - Which Alternative Option is Better?

MrLeadFoot · November 8, 2025

Plan included with vehicle purchase expired today, and I am not interested in paying $25 a month to continue, so I'm trying to determine which is better - connect my truck to my phone's hot spot in lieu of onStar's cellular service, or just use Android Auto.

I hadn't used it before, so today I enabled Android Auto when I got home from work. I didn't play with it too much, but I'm guessing that pressing the "talk" button on the steering wheel will always invoke the built-in system rather than interface with Android Auto, so I'm anticipating I will have a little adjustment period if I go this route - I assume I need to start saying "Hey Google" instead of pressing the button. If there is a setting to enable the button to work with Android Auto, please enlighten me.

I also connected my truck to my home Wi-Fi network for updates and such when I'm parked at home, and can do the same at work. Will the truck's system remember each network and connect to each when it sees them?

Along that same vein, am I better off trying to connect my truck to my phone's Hotspot, and skipping Android Auto altogether? If I do that, can my truck be configured to connect to my home Wi-Fi, work Wi-Fi, and phone's hot spot as needed?

FWIW, for music I predominantly listen to FM Radio (although I will use Amazon Music, or the music app to play tunes stored on my phone, on the rare occasion I'm out of range of radio stations). I also frequently use Nav, make phone calls and use hands-free texting.

Shortcomings when using the truck's system have been a long warm-up time, especially when I get in the truck and need Nav. That seems to take forever to be "ready". Same with trying to tell it to call or text someone. It takes FOREVER because it always has to load my 1700 contacts every time I get in the truck. Nav seems to always set me up for the most fuel-efficient routes and I always have to uncheck that option. In fact, I've been routed to time-consuming routes only to find out later that route having avoided freeways because the trucks gets better mileage on city street speeds! The truck's system also has a hard time understanding what I say when telling it to call people and taking dictation for texts. I'm wondering if Android Auto will make all these issues go away.

Please share what you would do, or have done, and your experience with either of these setups. Other thoughts, suggestions and opinions would also be most welcome.

Thank you.

Edited November 8, 2025 by MrLeadFoot

Velocity12 · November 17, 2025

I pay for the wifi hotspot separately, it’s $15 a month. Not terrible to me. That’s all I pay for though. I let the rest of the onstar stuff go. I have used the phones hotspot before. It will connect automatically when the hotspot is made available after you connect it the first time. I don’t have any experience with android auto so I can’t answer those questions. To me the easiest option is to pay for the wifi hotspot and keep all of the factory data functions. But I use the trucks hotspot almost daily. If you don’t use it often it’s probably better to just use the phones hotspot.

MrLeadFoot · November 17, 2025

51 minutes ago, Velocity12 said:

I pay for the wifi hotspot separately, it’s $15 a month. Not terrible to me. That’s all I pay for though. I let the rest of the onstar stuff go. I have used the phones hotspot before. It will connect automatically when the hotspot is made available after you connect it the first time. I don’t have any experience with android auto so I can’t answer those questions. To me the easiest option is to pay for the wifi hotspot and keep all of the factory data functions. But I use the trucks hotspot almost daily. If you don’t use it often it’s probably better to just use the phones hotspot.

I think you're saying you pay for data access, which includes allowing the truck to be used as a Hotspot for other devices, correct? I didn't know there was such an option, so thanks for chiming in here. I'll have to look into it.

What I've found in the meantime is that using android auto offers some HUGE advantages over the factory nav, text, and call functions.

No more waiting for the truck's system to load before it's ready to accept commands for any of those functions, since your phone is already "awake", and all it's doing is projecting itself onto your truck's screen. Instead of sitting in the truck waiting and waiting for the system to load maps and be ready to accept voice commands, i can say an address within seconds, and I'm ready to go.

Trying to text or call someone is SO much faster because I no longer have to wait while my phone's contacts are transferred to the truck's system, after the truck's system has booted and is ready to accept the transfer.

Sure, there are some things that are done a little differently, which requires a little getting used to, but all the little quirks of the truck's maps, texts and calls not working here and there in the middle of a drive are gone, too, since I'm not using those functions on the truck's system.

You lose the ability to have, say, trailer or music app side by side with the map, but even if you switch views back to the truck's system to view trailer app or truck's music app, android auto's nav and directions remain active. Don't know if all model trucks have it, but when navigating, directions still appear on my head-up display, and radio still shows on my dash cluster, so no biggie for me to switch screen displays back to truck to see trailer app.

On the other hand, android auto has its own split screen which displays your choice of music apps that are on your phone, so if you listen to your own music instead of the rsdio, no loss here. In fact, android auto lets you choose from any music apps you have on your phone instantly, without having to download music apps to the truck's system, which I found not always worked. So, for music, android auto wins again, here, too.

I'm pretty sure you can run Android auto even if you have a data plan on the truck, so you can try it, if you want to see what you think.

Edited November 17, 2025 by MrLeadFoot

Joe Drives · November 17, 2025

I have a 2020 and have never had OnStar, so no experience with that. I do have an Android phone and use Android Auto on trips. I have not had any issues with maps, music from my phone or calls. I don't make too many calls out but any I receive connect without any issues. The split screen also is a nice feature.

MrLeadFoot · November 18, 2025

5 hours ago, Joe Drives said:

I have a 2020 and have never had OnStar, so no experience with that. I do have an Android phone and use Android Auto on trips. I have not had any issues with maps, music from my phone or calls. I don't make too many calls out but any I receive connect without any issues. The split screen also is a nice feature.

Thanks for the feeback, Joe.

Velocity12 · November 23, 2025

On 11/17/2025 at 9:05 AM, MrLeadFoot said:

I think you're saying you pay for data access, which includes allowing the truck to be used as a Hotspot for other devices, correct? I didn't know there was such an option, so thanks for chiming in here. I'll have to look into it.

What I've found in the meantime is that using android auto offers some HUGE advantages over the factory nav, text, and call functions.

No more waiting for the truck's system to load before it's ready to accept commands for any of those functions, since your phone is already "awake", and all it's doing is projecting itself onto your truck's screen. Instead of sitting in the truck waiting and waiting for the system to load maps and be ready to accept voice commands, i can say an address within seconds, and I'm ready to go.

Trying to text or call someone is SO much faster because I no longer have to wait while my phone's contacts are transferred to the truck's system, after the truck's system has booted and is ready to accept the transfer.

Sure, there are some things that are done a little differently, which requires a little getting used to, but all the little quirks of the truck's maps, texts and calls not working here and there in the middle of a drive are gone, too, since I'm not using those functions on the truck's system.

You lose the ability to have, say, trailer or music app side by side with the map, but even if you switch views back to the truck's system to view trailer app or truck's music app, android auto's nav and directions remain active. Don't know if all model trucks have it, but when navigating, directions still appear on my head-up display, and radio still shows on my dash cluster, so no biggie for me to switch screen displays back to truck to see trailer app.

On the other hand, android auto has its own split screen which displays your choice of music apps that are on your phone, so if you listen to your own music instead of the rsdio, no loss here. In fact, android auto lets you choose from any music apps you have on your phone instantly, without having to download music apps to the truck's system, which I found not always worked. So, for music, android auto wins again, here, too.

I'm pretty sure you can run Android auto even if you have a data plan on the truck, so you can try it, if you want to see what you think.

Yes, you can purchase the data alone. I use an iPhone so I have no experience trying to use an android phone with the truck but my phone loads into the truck and is ready to use pretty quickly.

MrLeadFoot · November 23, 2025

18 hours ago, Velocity12 said:

Yes, you can purchase the data alone. I use an iPhone so I have no experience trying to use an android phone with the truck but my phone loads into the truck and is ready to use pretty quickly.

Thanks for clarifying the data plan. Also, I think one reason my phone takes so long to load is because I have 1700 contacts in my address book. But, that shouldn't affect the maps app that also takes a while to get going. But, it could be that the software is written in a manner that the address book loads first, which would be a dumb idea for a car app, where driving utilities like maps should load first. But, I digress here.

So far, Android Auto seems to be working out well. Voice recognition is light years better than the truck's native app, too. It recognizes all the names I've spoken, so far. Even though the truck is also Andriod-based, for some reason it ALWAYS has problems with names. I hated that.

I do miss having maps and an applet of choice like trailer, or music side-by-side, but at least you can still scroll stations using the applet on the instrument cluster when listening to radio or whatever. I also noticed that the Android Auto map screen is about .5" shorter than the truck's native map screen, but it's not the end of the world because it supports extending the map to cover the entire screen like the native map does, so that's good.

On the other hand, somehow Andoid Auto is able to interface with my head-up display (HUD), so once I have a route set, directions display on my windshield, and navigation audio still interrupts music, even if I switch away from Android Auto and have the truck's screen display radio and trailer. And, the speed limit widget on my HUD and in my instrument cluster also works, too. All in all, things are working well.

lennybg · November 24, 2025

Onstar subscriptions have to be treated like Sirius subscriptions if you want to pay a lower price.

Call them up and tell them how much you love the service and would love to keep it but its just not in your budget and tell them you need to cancel. They will come back with a better deal. I pay $9.95 a ,month for the data/remote access. They give me this deal for 4 months and then I call back and it starts over. I use the trucks hotspot because there are areas we travel to where our phones (Verizon) have no signal.

MrLeadFoot · November 24, 2025

Nice strategy, but I'm not so sure I want to go through the hassle, especially after the government struck down the law that was going to make it so people can easily cancel services.

I don't like the idea of having to keep calling over and over to get "deals". Subscription based companies make deals and rely on you not calling them back because you're too busy or can't be bothered. I don't have time for those types of game at this point in my life, but do realize at some point this kind of thing might be part of life going forward. I'm going to see if I can get used to the new-to-me Android Auto integration for now.

On the other hand, if I could add my truck as a device to my Verizon plan, or bundle all my phones with my truck on AT&T, that would be a more tempting consideration.