I listen to XM radio. My toyota interface is a dial for volume, a dial for tuning, and 6 preset buttons (and 6 pages of presets).
I can easily tune through all 150+ stations very easily to find a particular station. I can switch up 20 stations with a single twist, without looking. Also since stations are grouped, I can set a preset for each type of station, then easily tune up or down to listen to other related stations.
My wife's XM is a honda touch screen. The presets work ok, except they are touch screen so you have to look at the screen to change presets. But if you want to manually go to another station, you have to hit 2 touch buttons to get to a tuning screen. Then you have to hit the up/down tuning button each time you want to go up or down a single station. It is pretty much impossible to try to find a station if you don't already know the number because it could be 100's of touches.
I appreciate your point, and think it comes down to what use case most users will benefit from optimising.
My wife switches between Spotify, the Music app and a separated radio app. She does it on her phone's screen when at stop, she could do it on CarPlay or the android version, but I can't just imagine how it would work without a generic touch interface.
You use case (listening to radio) is in line with the current UI paradigm, other use cases (using apps) just won't work with it. That's where we could find a tradeoff I think.
I can easily tune through all 150+ stations very easily to find a particular station. I can switch up 20 stations with a single twist, without looking. Also since stations are grouped, I can set a preset for each type of station, then easily tune up or down to listen to other related stations.
My wife's XM is a honda touch screen. The presets work ok, except they are touch screen so you have to look at the screen to change presets. But if you want to manually go to another station, you have to hit 2 touch buttons to get to a tuning screen. Then you have to hit the up/down tuning button each time you want to go up or down a single station. It is pretty much impossible to try to find a station if you don't already know the number because it could be 100's of touches.