I have read a couple Apple watcher speculative articles that the iPhone will come out with models with no Lightning ports in another year or two. Such a phone would not work with CarPlay on the current 3G RDX, because it requires a cable connection. I have no idea if that support could be added by Acura with software updates, but I suspect not since there may be a hardware dependency. I became curious about that and there is a third party accessory that plugs into the USB port and has dongle on it that provides the wireless connection to the iPhone for CarPlay. I just ran across this and thought it might be of interest since many will end up buying a new iPhone without ports if the speculation is true before they buy a new car. The third party dongle that I saw is made by Chytah and might be a little pricey. https://chytah.com/products/wireless...almost-any-car To me it is more of a curiosity and not relevant at the moment for myself so I would have no idea what the caveats are with this product. The pasted link does get into that a little. It could be used today by heavy CarPlay users that don't want to always plug and unplug.

 

I've seen that device (or something that looks very close to it) branded by other names also. They all seem to be hit or miss on the quality from real-sounding reviews. To your point, the port does go away on any future iPhone, I prefer to just wait to see what Apple provides--although it'll probably be overpriced, I'm sure they wouldn't let millions of CarPlay users be stuck without a way to connect to their cars.

 

”No lightning port” likely means usb c port. Or a different type port. I doubt that there will be a totally portless phone soon.

 

I've read those rumors and had the same thought. Given that the vast majority of cars with CarPlay now don't have wireless capability, I'd bet that apple releases a dongle/bridge type device. This would be like when they got rid of the headphone jack and put an adapter in the box to allow those style headphones to plug into the lightning port. (and yes, the rumor is to have NO Ports at all! https://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...e-kuo-research) Why? I can't fathom but I guess it would mean completely waterproof which I guess is nice, but not worth the costs of slower charging, all these headaches of not having a port in places like airplanes (no wireless chargers there!).

I found a third party one that is pretty popular, and I emailed them. They confirmed the dongle would would work with the RDX. Seems like maybe a fun project to mess with, but not for more than $100. https://carplay2air.com If anyone wants to venmo me the money for it, I'm happy to test and report back