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MirrorLink-equipped Peugeot competes with Apple CarPlay

Smartphone mirroring technology MirrorLink gets demonstrated by French automaker Peugeot at the 2014 Geneva auto show.

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
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Peugeot 108 MirrorLink Screen
Peugeot demonstrated its standard MirrorLink connection for the new 108 model. Wayne Cunningham/CNET

GENEVA -- Jumping on the small but growing MirrorLink bandwagon, Peugeot chose the 2014 Geneva auto show to unveil its new 108 model, which comes standard with the smartphone mirroring technology. Peugeot demonstrated its MirrorLink implementation at the same time that Apple's CarPlay technology was being shown by Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Ferrari.

Both MirrorLink and CarPlay let a driver plug a smartphone into the car and have a modified interface from the phone appear on the car's head unit. The driver can choose functions, such as navigation, controlling it through a touch screen or other car interface while the app processing occurs on the phone.

CarPlay, being Apple's technology, works only with iPhones, while MirrorLink includes a broader roster of phones from companies such as Nokia, Samsung, and LG.

Click here to check out a CarPlay demonstration.

For Peugeot's MirrorLink demonstration, it had a kiosk fitted with the 108's head unit and a Samsung phone cabled together. Touching an App menu item on the head unit's screen activated the MirrorLink connection.

Peugeot debuts its MirrorLink smartphone mirroring (pictures)

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This MirrorLink implementation had only three functions: navigation, phone, and audio. Each of these apps was available at the touch of an icon on the main screen. Navigation used Google Maps, offering the same functionality as the equivalent smartphone app.

Audio playback showed a playback screen with album art, track information, and play controls. A soft button on this screen opened up the music library.

A welcome screen, dragged down from the top, showed weather and the current time.

Using the demo, some of the functions were a little sluggish. But what will really put MirrorLink behind CarPlay is a lack of apps. Where MirrorLink has only its three basic functions, CarPlay launched in Geneva with four third-party apps, and Apple can easily approve more.

See CNET's full coverage of the Geneva auto show