Especially with all the covid extra cycle and walking areas nicked off two way roads and the new low traffic zones done by blocking the rat runs past busy junctions, you need to recalculate a lot. Even as a pedestrian, I cannot figure out on my phone, but specialist walking solutions are very expensive indeed. Brian
Car satnavs are useless for walking or cycling because of battery life. A smartphone OTOH should be good for a whole day.
Unlikely if it's doing hardcore navigating for the day.
That said, I was impressed with Google Maps over 5 years ago when used for walking. If you ensure you can "feel" your phone (usually by having it in your hand) it buzzes when you get to a turn. Assuming you aren't completely lacking in direction you can usually work out of it's a left or right ...
Probably easier to do if he has a big screen in an optimal position rather than having to look at a phone.
Not sure where all this sudden need to "look" at a satnave comes from when it tells you when and where to turn.
Going back to the old days of maps, it's not like your passenger shoved a map in your face when they said "there's a turn coming up in 100 yards on the left ..."
Voice control.
Possibly true of 'basic' car satnavs but not of the (waterproof) GPS's I typically bought with multi-use in mind. e.g, My Garmin GPS II+, III, V (all 4 x AA) and Quest (20 hour rechargeable).
The bigger Streetpilot III was also battery capable (20 hrs), waterproof and ideal for motorcycle use (glove friendly buttons).
Well, my SGS7 is typically 'good for a day', but only if I don't have the GPS on for long. Might be that it's old now or the GPS was particularly power hungry or that I typically have my phone in a belt pouch?
My 'car' Garmin 215W is supposed to be good for 4 hours on battery and given it would need to be on all the time if you were walking a track or trail (and it starts up and locks very quickly), you wouldn't
*need* it on all the time if forced into use it whilst walking and more than enough to find where you parked the car at the end of the day in an unknown town.If you were really walking the last ting I'd do is risk draining my phone battery on a GPS in case I needed the phone in an emergency (or want rely on such in the first place etc).
Whilst I do use my phone for lots of things, in order it's probably:
Reference camera.
Whatsapp.
Phone.
(everything else, when I'm away from a real terminal / computer).
Cheers, T i m
But it's not all about that though is it? I glance at mine to give me an idea of the ETA, how far I am into the trip, how far till the next turning (especially on motorways), confirming the speed limit etc.
Luckily I never really got that as if it was the Mrs, she never map read (car sick when looking down and part of the reason for getting the GPS) and if it was daughter, she knew not to do that. ;-)
If the GPS has announced a turn (like 'At the roundabout, take the second exit') I like to glance at the popped up screen (showing the roundabout in detail) as that could be a left, straight on or right turn, requiring me to change lane for the right approach.
Maybe in the country where you are navigating simple, non-ambiguous turns that are well separated but in the city when you have multiple roundabouts and turns all over the place, I don't think the audio prompts are enough.
Cheers, T i m
I see. So all the screen design and the data such as speed limits, lane guidance, arrival time etc is without purpose.
I don't know about you, but I need the visual data as well for lane guidance, distances, speed limits and to distinguish between multiple turrnings.
Do you ever look at the road ahead or just play with your toy?
That reminds me. TomTom seems very poor on defining lanes and tends only to say "keep right" or "keep left" and not to show the lanes clearly on screen. I've only used a (hired) Garmin in LA a good few years back, and that one was very precise both in showing lanes and telling you which one to use in good time.
If you think navigational aids are a toy, you seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of their purpose. Getting confused over directions, being in the wrong lane, last minute turns etc are all causes of accidents. Satnav exists to assist the driver *if* the driver considers this to be of assistance - a judgement for the driver to make.
If the driver (like you) does not consider this guidance to be of assistance, he/she should not be using it.
I passed the IAM advanced driving course. Have you?
Thanks. I think this may be a recent enhancement from TomTom from around the time they stopped supporting the older units.
It's horses for courses - I don't tend to drive to places I've not been to before that often. So my needs are different to others.
That said, generally I find (my)( satnavs tend to be used for about 10% of the journey. To get you to the motorway, and get you off it.
Frankly if you need a satnav once you are on the motorway you need more help than I. For example, if you are in Stoke and want to get *back* to Birmingham, you should already know that you *don't* need the M6 northbound. Although amazingly my Brummie born and bred FiL did manage not to know that and let his satnav take him to the outskirts of Manchester before he twigged. Turns out he'd pressed a previous destination when he took our lad to Old Trafford.
Its extremely helpful to know there is a 2 hour delay 20 miles up the road.
And an alternative route...
Battery life can be important if you ever want to use the dedicated unit outside the car, e.g. for a walking route or when cycling. I have a TomTom 5100 (I think) about 3 years old. When new its battery might last an hour, now about 5 minutes. And there seems to be no official way to replace it with a new battery. Don't know whether Garmin units are designed with similar built-in obsolescence.
Hmmmm
Whilst you are correct, it's still of limited use.
Last time I was stuck in a jam it was between J8 and J9 of the M5. All I knew was how long I was going to be there as there was no alternative route.
And prior to that, I was eastbound on the M3 and the gantry signs were warning of delays after the junction I was approaching. So I exited, and the ****ing satnav spent the next 45 minutes trying to redirect me onto the motorway.
Of course because I was out of my manor, I had to guess as to what roads to take to get away.
Nothing I could do as I was driving and couldn't operate it.
What really pissed me off was I'd paid extra for lifetime maps and traffic via RDS so what was the point. Gamin by the way.
Hence my being "down" on satnavs in favour of a smartphone app.
Until a purchased my current car with inbuilt Satnav I've used TomTom for 2 to 3 decades (originally on a DELL PDA running an early version of Microsoft mobile).
I've purchased a few dedicated units and then later used the TT App on a mobile phone. While I've been reasonably satisfied with the routing ability I would warn against dedicated TT hardware.
They may guarantee lifetime map updates etc. but be aware that on many of their (cheaper) units the memory is barely enough for the map installed on it. Map updates appear to grow in size and at some point the map is larger than the units memory so your now into compromise territory perhaps with the only ongoing option being partial maps rather the the full maps the unit came with.
Even if you buy a unit with SD card expansion their appalling web update function may only look at the memory on the main unit before telling you you don't have enough memory for an full map upgrade. The work around is to consider your TT just to be an external hard disk which can be copied in its entirety to the SD card (via a PC). You now tell the web interface that the SD card is the TT unit which it now sees with plenty of free memory.
I've had not such problems with the Smart phone App apart from the free map updates for life ceased when they upgraded the App. Apparently life means a few years in some cases.
My TomTom battery life seems to be about two minutes in use. I think part of the problem is that the battery regularly goes flat on stand-by and the unit is then slow to start.
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