OT: using tablet as a Sat nav

[Ray]

It clearly doesn?t with google maps.

More fool you.

Nope.

[Ray]

Of course it is.

It is anyway and some of the exercise apps use it.

The world has moved on just a tad.

[Ray]

Yes, but for many the real time traffic data is much more important.

It does.

Its silly to claim that that alone stops it being the best.

[alan_m]

In the part of SE Essex where I live any re-routing from the main roads tends to cause grid lock on the minor alternative routes and journey times are often quicker staying in the slow moving traffic.

I'm not sure that all re-routing algorithms are fit for purpose. Last year I was re-routed from the M6 into traffic light hell for a couple to three hours for around 20 mile progress. The M6 motorway signs were predicting 60 minutes delays.

[alan_m]

I find the same. I regularly journey from Essex to the south of Birmingham, and then a bit further southwest. The Satnav always prefers to use the M1/M6 whereas in my experience driving further around the M25 to the M40 gives a more relaxed drive and a much quicker journey time.

[alan_m]

I once had a Citroen hire car and it was one of the worst Satnav interfaces that I've experienced. When entering a location the car knew best and used predictive text by blanking out all the letters on the keypad that it believed would not come next in what was being typed.

[polygonum_on_google]

Partner's car has that approach. Pretty crap, I agree. One reason I like Here is that if it doesn't know, it will look it up (provided you have a connection).

[Jethro_uk]

Sounds about right. Plus one of the worst debounced touchscreens this side of the Milky Way. I have a few video clips taken by SWMBO of me clearly pressing the screen, the screen clearly reacting and then completely ignoring the keypress.

The idea of Android Auto is a good one - drive the cars display from your mobile device of choice. But it falls down with it's insistence on Google Maps which are still not good enough for me.

[Jethro_uk]

In the early days of Sat Navs, I did wonder if there had been some "official" pressure to enforce certain preferred routes ...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

My TomTom Go has a rather obvious aerial in the power lead. Use the wrong lead or run it on its battery - no traffic information for it to work on. They tend to default to the shortest possible route. Which may be different on the return journey.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's looking for street names etc in its memory. Not blanking off the keys wouldn't help you. If the street isn't in its memory.

[Ray]

Apple CarPlay doesn?t have that problem but doesn?t display the current speed limit either.

[DJC]

If there is no match in the database then further typing is useless, blanked out letters implies there is not match.

[polygonum_on_google]

True. But what seems to happen (I'd have to go and check whether this is reality or just how it feels) is that you select a letter. It goes off and decides what second letters you could choose, and blanks out the rest. But this takes a noticeable time - on another device you might have been able to type in "Dover" before you are allowed to select the "o".

That is why it is horrible. (As well as it being its disconnectedness that limits you to what it has stored.)

[alan_m]

The other problem is that you can probably type faster with a full keyboard because your brain is looking for familiar patterns, such as the E being next to W on a qwerty keyboard. When much of the keyboard is being blanked the keyboard pattern changes for each letter selected.

Recently I had to use a parking meter (pay and display) which required the full car registration to be typed from a keypad arranged as a 6x6 matrix of keys. I was behind 3 other people waiting to get tickets and it was noticeable that they, and I, took some considerable time finding the correct letters/numbers on that keypad. The problem possibly not helped by the buttons being very small requiring reading glasses by those who need them, possibly something you haven't got on just after getting out of a car.

[Dave Liquorice]

The built in satnav does that and the delay is annoying.

However if you plough ahead with the next correct character before the screen has updated, even if the next character is greyed out, it still sees and accepts it.

[Dave Liquorice]

Yep, set a destination here to somewhere adjacent to the A1 / A1(M) south of Scotch Corner and the cars satnav takes you to Penrith to join the A66, come right back across the country on the A66 to Scotch Corner. It persists on this route until just past Eggleston were upon it reroutes through Barnard Castle and hacks 20 miles and 30+ minutes off the ETA.

I guess it thinks the 30 miles of B road from here to Barney takes longer than it thinks the 60 miles of rural A road to Penrith and the A66 does.

[T i m]

<snip>

And worse, the UI on the one I helped some old boy use had autorepeat on and so his elongated push (trying to ensure he pushed the inappropriately sized button) resulted in a screen full of repeated characters. ;-(

What percentage of vehicles have a sufficient number of repeated characters in their registration numbers to make auto repeat anything other than a disadvantage, ever?

Cheers, T i m

[Dave Liquorice]

Dual carriageway?

Whats the problem with that? Most of the roads around here are like that.

You'll be say next you don't need main beam on motorways as they are lit as well. Me, frequently on main beam on the M6 for minutes at a time, no tails lights in front, nothing coming the other way.

[Bob Eager]

Could be worse. It could route you via Barnard's Star!