Modern Vespa

Hello all,
a non-scooter-related question for this wonderful community.

I have a Samsung Android phone with the Android version 5.1.1. The phone has the Android Auto (AA) app that used to work well for connecting the phone to the car (a 2019 Honda) so that I could look at maps, control phone calls etc. on the car touchscreen.
Few months ago the app stopped working on my phone and doing some research online I have found that now AA requires a phone with Android version 6.0 or above. I can think of two options to solve the issue but wanted to check if any of you has done anything similar and has any suggestion.

Option 1) It seems i can update the version on my phone to, let say, 6.0 or above. This is not an update my phone lets me do easily. I see that the procedures for this update require to go through the developer mode and before doing it i want to make sure i am not messing up. Anybody tried that?

Option 2) There are other apps -I have taken a look at AutoMate (AM)- that mimic AA and run properly on my phone. AM works well and basically looks like AA. But the car seems to give only two options regarding the apps to connect to: AA or the Apple app for iphones. With this said it seems that AM or other apps do not get to be shown and controlled in the car touchscreen: one can use them on the phone but that defies the utility of having a nice touchscreen, steering wheel commands etc. . Anybody has found an app or a way to work around this option?

Any other Option that I am missing?

Thanks a lot!
ed

buy a new phone?

Well, the phone works well for what I need to do and all the substantial aspects (battery, memory, apps that i can keep installed). This issue seems to be something that should have some workaround.

Lollipop (Android 5) hasn't had security updates for quite a while now. That's reason enough to upgrade.

On a 6 year old phone, there are probably plenty of things that aren't working correctly. This might be the first one you noticed, but I'm sure there are other apps and app updates that aren't available for that vintage either.

I would root the phone and flash a current Rom.
Why throw away something that works?
Think of the environment.

Even if you update your phone to Android 6, it'll be an out of date operating system. That means you are more likely to have issues for both security and apps not running right. I have heard of folks updating older phones using developer mode. But often not very successfully and I've heard of folks completely trashing their phones doing this. Not tried that myself though so you could be the test guy. Given that we are up to Android 11 now, my advice is get a better newer phone. You don't have to go expensive. I run a Motorola G6 with Android 9 and it's superb; fast and pleasing to the eye. It connects to my cars great and runs nicely through the cars touch screen with lots of features you won't get on Android 5 or 6. Cost of my Motorola G6 was just £129 discounted from £179. It has an 8 core processor making it really fast. Maybe look for something like that. Just an idea! Good luck and please do le us all know how you get on if you update your version of Android. Thanks!