Blue Link Mobile App
Hyundai offers a Blue Link mobile application for iOS and Android phones to control certain features of its vehicles. We tested the Android-based version of the app, since that's our primary mobile operating environment. Pleasantly, Hyundai's Blue Link app for Android officially works on Android 2.2 and newer devices. We had no major issues running it on our Samsung Galaxy Nexus equipped with the AOKP Milestone 6 ROM.
The application is fairly simple, giving you access to remote start, the door locks, the car's horn and headlights, and a vehicle report feature. Everything worked the way it was advertised, but we do lament that it takes so long to actually execute a command sent through the Blue Link mobile app.
We certainly understand that the software has to communicate through the phone and over a vehicle data network. However, it takes around one minute for a command to register. Hyundai positions this as a safety net for folks who might worry that they forgot to lock their car before leaving on a trip, and for that purpose, the Blue Link app is indeed useful. It's still a novel feature, though. For instance, it's all well and good to fire up your car remotely. But we wish that Hyundai would go a step further and add climate control commands. Otherwise, you're resigned to dialing those settings in before you leave the car.
In theory, it's also nice to have access to the horn and headlights. Hyundai touts this as a way to find your car in a crowded parking lot. If you misplace your vehicle and wind up out of the key's range, this could come in useful. However, the fob has a perfectly functional panic button that does the exact same thing without traversing a cellular network.
The vehicle reports are pretty standard, conveying any faults found by the on-board computer. We didn’t have any issues with our test mule, so the reports were consistently uneventful.
