So who likes the Droid's gps navigation?

[joneee]

Not sure why but google navi always give me really bad directions!! I mean, eventually I get there, but it gives me the weirdest routes. I tested it while traveling to places I've been to a billion times, like school, and it tells me to get off the freeway early and go local for about 5 miles when school is 1 mile off the freeway...

Anyway, I still use it whenever I'm bored. Gotta get "Nav Launcher" from the app store. Makes using gnavi 100x better. Highly recommend it.

 

[dave412_4]

Well i had the Voyager when it came out on verizon. I always used the VZNavigator at least 4-5 times a week. It was very accurate but always had problems of it losing my position. Used the the Google Nav the other day and used if for a place I somewhat knew where it was and it performed perfectly re-routed when i took a wrong turn so quick.

So far i give Google Nav: 4.5 stars its still says BETA

 

[TonyG]

So you have Google Nav--and still make wrong turns...?

 

[hipquest]

While I won't be giving up my garmin my droid really came through navigating "Death Valley" in Greensboro, NC. (My husband had to appropriate my GPS). I will be using it in walking mode on upcoming Chicago and San Fransisco trips.

 

[Redflea]

I haven't tried my Droid in a dense city yet, but I know w/my BB Pearl that I had issues getting a good lock on satellites in some cases when in San Francisco last year - too many big buildings blocking signals. Be interesting to hear if the Droid has similar issues.

 

[UncleMike]

While I think Google Maps Navigation is pretty good, comparing it to a Garmin product isn't saying much. I used Telenav for quite a while, and Viamoto (discontinued) on my Nextel phones, and preferred both over a standalone Garmin unit.

Since Google abandoned Navteq and Teleatlas and now maintain their own map data, I find the maps to be pretty bad compared to what they used to be. I've personally submitted 50 or more corrections to Google for my local area since getting my Droid. The technology behind it seems pretty good though, and I would still take Google Maps Navigation over a Garmin any day.

One of the reason's I got a standalone GPS device to start with is that with phone-based navigation I couldn't get directions and be on the phone at the same time - incoming phone calls would interrupt my navigation. This doesn't seem to be the case with the Droid, though lack of a data connection while on a voice call prevents maps from displaying, even though you still get the audible directions.

Something that Google Maps Navigation doesn't (yet) allow is avoid certain roads - sometimes a necessary thing for commercial vehicles. So for now I must stick with my TomTom in my work van, but Google Maps Navigation works well for personal use.

 

[DrDude]

The voice for the DROID is somewhat distorted, but I don't have an issue with the "smoothness" of it. For the most part, I run with it MUTED anyway. I did change the voice to the "British English" which did seem to help.

How did you change the voice to "British English"?

 

[Barbara]

How did you change the voice to "British English"?

Go into Text to Speech in the settings and change the language there to British.

 

[DrDude]

Thanks! Now if they could only change the tome of the voice so it didn't sound so robotic ...

 

[Droid4JB]

I use it all the time and love the options it provides. I especially like that I'm not being charged he $9.99 for VZ Nav anymore.... that's just the bonus!

 

[FrayAdjacent]

I like it overall, but have found that the position on the map lags my actual position by at least a few meters. I'll pass a street, but the icon is slightly behind where I actually am. This could possibly cause me to miss a turn.

Still, it's a GREAT feature for a smartphone to have.

 

[The_Chief]

It has shown me shortcuts in my area that I didn't believe existed... and last night it took me straight to Star Wars in Concert and back home again! All those poor people with Droid wannabes can only be in wonder at what this phone does. I LOVE MY DROID!

 

[Venom51]

I am in the EU and will need to use MOTONAV... looks decent but not sure how it will compare to Google Maps navigation. I will pick mine up in a week or two and let you know.



Stop trolling?

thank you.

So the guy brings up a valid point...I.E. If you go to a place all the time why would you need a map? So he's a troll.

Do they routinely move the places you go to all the time so they are in different locations? I just want to know. Is that some EU thing that we don't have to deal with here? Have we somehow mastered some black art of leaving buildings in the same place after we build them?

If being a troll is pointing out when someone makes a less than intelligent statement then I guess I'm a troll as well.

 

[curtdragon]

So the guy brings up a valid point...I.E. If you go to a place all the time why would you need a map? So he's a troll.

Do they routinely move the places you go to all the time so they are in different locations? I just want to know. Is that some EU thing that we don't have to deal with here? Have we somehow mastered some black art of leaving buildings in the same place after we build them?

If being a troll is pointing out when someone makes a less than intelligent statement then I guess I'm a troll as well.

LOL I was thinking the same thing. But I guess if you travel a lot and maybe going to this place and leaving from a different place everytime.


Anyway for those mentioning the speech, try changing it from normal to slow and as has been said change it to British English

 

[mcattack44]

I would like an option for favorites as well. For instance I travel to work everyday, so I obviously know the directions to get there... but there's traffic, and traffic is different everyday. So every morning I click on my created shortcut to navigate to work, put on the traffic layer, and can evaluate what is the best route for me to take. I can ask Google Navigation to give alternate routes and it will calculate which route will be the fastest for this particular day's commute - for this reason the whole favorites thing was by no means a "less than intelligent" statement.

For things other than work though, perhaps a restaurant that I go to every month or so, I want to be able to save that as a favorite so that I can get directions quickly, and that way I don't have to make it a contact or create a shortcut on my desktop for it.

 

[AZDroid]

It has shown me shortcuts in my area that I didn't believe existed... and last night it took me straight to Star Wars in Concert and back home again! All those poor people with Droid wannabes can only be in wonder at what this phone does. I LOVE MY DROID!

In my area I have to think twice about shortcuts....it tells me to drive on roads that don't really exist...

like telling me to drive straight past the only road that goes out of my neighborhood and keep driving in the open desert, through barbed wire fences, down into deep dry washes and other such obstacles until I actually get to a real road again. I could do that if I had a hummer, or maybe a tank...but definitely not in my Hyundai

Good thing I know where I'm going here

 

[Gunner]

Google Maps Nav is pretty awesome.....when it works! Which is most of the time, really. But there have been 2 occasions already when I've needed to route somewhere and have been out of a 3G area, and thus I was SOL. I wish Google would offer some kind of off-line mode, and allow us to cache the map data on the device, at least for a certain area/state. If they'd do that, then they truly would have something that would scare the s#*t outta the GPS companies. Until then, I'll still have to keep a backup GPS w/ me, just in case.

 

[Gunner]

My biggest gripe is the lack of a good list of recent places that you have navigated to.

If you are already in "Navigate" mode there is a place where you can choose destination and it shows the last 3 or 4 places you have navigated to. I would like to this list be >20.

I would be very happy to hear this is User Error. Please let me know if I am missing something.

This app allows you to see your nav history, add favorites and launch straight into GMN:

Nav Launcher v2.1.2 Application for Android | Travel

 

[gfweb]

I can't get the voice to work on the GPS. Any ideas?

 

[Gunner]

Excuse my ignorance but why would you need a map of a place you go to all the time?

thank you.

Ever travel somewhere unfamiliar and want to be able to quickly head home, or back to the office, or [insert fav place here] ?

This is why I have Nav shortcuts right on my screen to both home and work. So when I'm 200 mi from home in BFE country and ready to go home, I just have 1-click to make GMN fire up and send me on my way. See?

 

[UncleMike]

So the guy brings up a valid point...I.E. If you go to a place all the time why would you need a map? So he's a troll.

Do they routinely move the places you go to all the time so they are in different locations? I just want to know. Is that some EU thing that we don't have to deal with here? Have we somehow mastered some black art of leaving buildings in the same place after we build them?

If being a troll is pointing out when someone makes a less than intelligent statement then I guess I'm a troll as well.

As others have pointed out, home and work are two places that people often go, but not always from the same starting point. And even if you often use the same starting point, which route is best can change depending on traffic conditions.

Lastly, using a navigation device to guide you to a place your familiar with is a great way to evaluate its routing - comparing to what you already know to be best from your own experience. If the calculated route takes 5 miles to take what I know to be a 2 mile trip in an area I'm familiar with, I can expect it to do the same in an unfamiliar area. The same can be said for guiding you through complex interchanges - if you relied solely on the navigation device, would it successfully guide you through the interchange, or are there insufficient or untimely turn notifications?

 

[murky024]

Stop trolling?

thank you.

I don't think they were trolling as it is a valid question. My response to that would be you need the GPS to get back to those places when you are in a foreign place.

 

[vincentp]

I love it. So far, despite a few minor issues (misspelling of a couple streets, nothing major), it's been great. I never planned on buying a GPS unit, it just wasn't an investment I needed to make. If I needed to get somewhere, I would typically just use Google Maps on my BB. Having an actual navigation attached to that is leagues better.

 

[esmith818]

I'm not a traveling salesperson so I don't need an app to be flawless, and overall, I'm happy with Google Nav. However, having had the opportunity to test it side-by-side with a Garmin Nuvi 255w, I will say that the Garmin still has the edge, at least in my neck of the woods. A couple of reasons I will still take the Garmin on long road trips:

1) The Garmin has yet to miss a pronunciation on any street we've been on. Google routinely mispronounces street names. Not critical, but annoying when another device seems to have already mastered it.

2) Perhaps because of the mispronunciations in #1, there are several streets I can't navigate to using voice search on the Droid. The voice search works great if I want to go to McDonalds or BestBuy, but if I'm trying to get to a person's home or a small business, the voice interface rarely understands me. (In fairness, the Nuvi doesn't offer this service so I suppose it's unfair to hold this fault against Google.)

3) Google tends to assume that any street that borders a location is a satisfactory end point. I live on a neighborhood cul-de-sac that backs up to a major street. When my home is the start point, Google knows to take me out through my neighborhood, but when returning, it assumes I can just pull off on the side of the major road and climb over my backyard fence!

4) God forbid your route takes you on a road with a long name. The Garmin will tell you to take "Exit 16, Sunset Rd." Google will refer to the same exit as "Exit 16 A-B, west on Sunset Road, State Road 1536." I didn't know Sunset Rd had a state road number, and I certainly wouldn't know where to find it to confirm my heading!

5) Through no fault of Google, there are many areas I travel with poor 3G coverage. If I begin my route in one of these places, Google never has an opportunity to cache the necessary maps. Garmin has never failed to pick up a satellite from any location.

On the plus side, Google's maps seem to be more accurate. The Garmin device has not been updated for new roadwork around us that has been open for about 6 months. Google has been flawless in these situations.

If I didn't have a GPS device, I certainly wouldn't run out to get one as Google's offering is adequate for most situations, but since I do have one, I think I'll continue to rely on it for the time being.

 

[buddiec]

I really think it needs a voice trainer on it and that would cure the mispronunciation that I always get when trying to navigate to a address and street name combination. I did however use it today, and tried 6 times to get the street name and it just would not register. So I tried speaking the letters to the street and whola it worked though you have to speak quickly or it will time out it also helps if you can get the zip code in there that really narrows it down. If anyone knows of better way please let me know.