Google maps navigation UK

billytkid said:

Hi all,

as you know from the other thread this is now released, and today I took a test drive using GMN instead of my usual copilot.

My test drive was from central south london, to Birmingham, and back to east London, through very congested roads.

The interface and integration with search (not surprising) are great, for instance put in a postcode of a business and itll usually give you the business name, which is nice reassurance.

When driving it doesnt always want to let you see the non-navigation (ie overview) view nor does it automatically show the streetview before turnings - however after playing with this it actually seemed a bit pants, as the viewpoint wasnt quite right.

The fluidity of the turns is brilliant.
The colours arent that great however, and sometimes its hard to see the route vs the road.
The voice is ok, loud, but not too pleasant.

All in all better than copilot + tomtom for all things from my test apart from two killer things:
1. No integrated speed camera database
2. POWER - this is a MAJOR issue! My phone was plugged in at all times to my 12v car adapter, at the start of the journey the battery was full, on arrival to Birmingham it was @ 30% (it was charging all the way!!), and on the way back to london the phone ran out of power.

In essence on a long run and in my case it seems the navigation app is pulling more power than the car socket can provide - madness!

Anyone have any thoughts yet?

Click to expand...

Like you I use copilot normally - I haven't yet given Google Nav a whirl, but intend to tomorrow.
Just a quick thought re the charger - is it a rated / a pattern one? I have heard of people having issues with some car charges charging slowly etc..
I'll give mine a whirl tomorrow with an HTC official car charger and report back..

billytkid said:

The voice is ok, loud, but not too pleasant.

Click to expand...

So pick a different one?

Thanks for the heads up letting us know it works now.

All chargers are not equal, most only provide 0.5 amps, if you want to use the phone in a high drain situation, you want get a 1 amp or as close as.

billytkid said:

Yep, mine is marked as a 1Amp charger

I'll see what others experiences are like before I buy another, however with copilot this charger is fine, with google maps it isnt

Click to expand...

I gave my Google Nav a run this morning (to work) with the charger plugged in.
Bluetooth on and 3G connection running - received a couple of emails en route as well over the 40 minute journey.

I arrived with 98% charge, so am inclined to believe that the phone was charging on the way. I charge my phone overnight (in a dock) but usually go online for about 20 minutes first thing whilst I'm having that all important morning cup of tea, so the battery would most probably have been in the high 80 / early 90 percentile before I plugged it in.

I do think that with Google Nav running it is not charging the phone as fast when compared with CoPilot in the same circumstances though.
Perhaps power consumption can be reduced whilst Nav is in beta?

billytkid said:

Hi all, as you know from the other thread this is now released

Click to expand...

...I'm sorry for being a prudish troll but it just baffles me as to why you created this tread if there is one that already exist with the same topic? You're just adding your experience on the UK GMN; which in my opinion you could have done (like other people) in the other thread. I've asked an admin to merge the two threads for efficiency sake.

-Roze-

Billy, I wasn't calling you a troll, but myself; I was just playing on the word troll and what it implied, lol. Your experience/insight is always appreciated here on the forum. I love reading what people have to say about various apps their phones experiences with them etc. I just thought it's a bit strange that you didn't do it on the other thread, that's all.

Well for me personally, I follow a lot of threads on multiple forums and if I see two threads with the title 90% the same, I'd overlook one for the other thinking they are the same. So in the end, I might miss out something that is being said in one thread. Like with your thread, I actually thought it was the other one that I was following, so when I saw that there was a new post. I read the last post...thought I missed a lot of posts for the thread, read the post before that etc, and they seem all 'new' to me (which they were) until I got to the OP's post...which wasn't the same OP. So I thought it would be better if the two threads should be merged. I PM an admin but I’m not sure if he will merge the two threads or not. I just felt it courteous, as a fellow forum user, to inform you that it might be merged. I didn’t want you to be affronted, which seemed like you are. Sorry if that's the case, I didn’t really mean any harm with my comment.

-Roze-

I have 1 amp chargers and 2 amp chargers, all with USB sockets. With some leads the phone thinks it's plugged into USB, with other leads the phone thinks it's plugged into AC (even if I'm using the same charger on both leads). If it thinks it's plugged into USB it takes about half an amp from the looks of it and takes much longer to charge than when it thinks it's plugged into AC (presumably to stop it overloading USB sockets which have strict limits on current).

However even when plugged into a 2 amp charger and via a lead that makes the phone think it's on AC, it still tends not to take enough power to compensate for the power taken by the screen, GPS and processor when using sat nav. So basically no matter what I did, it would always run the battery down when using sat nav, connecting to power only slowed the rate of discharge.

I suspect this is either because the micro-USB connectors aren't rated high enough to take the current, or the phone is being sensible when charging via the micro-USB as otherwise it could blow the USB ports its connected to, and it can't be sure what it's connected to when charging via the micro-USB port.

So I bought an official car dock, this charges via dedicated connectors so the phone knows what it's plugged into and can safely suck 2 amps which it can't do safely if it's otherwise not sure what it's connected to. This fixes the issue, and I can now use sat nav software without depleting the battery.

The phone does know what it's connected to, if the charger is made correctly. The 2 data (middle) pins should be shorted together, if the phone detects this, it will draw all it needs, if not then 500mA.

I'm going to inspect and (if necessary) modify my cheapo car charger today.

That's not a hard and fast way of identifying that you can draw as much as you want, some leads will identify as AC when plugged into a USB port (as you too have found), and it's not safe to suck 2 amps from a USB port, it risks frying the motherboard if plugged into a computer. As I said above, even with a charger identifying as AC the phone still doesn't draw enough current to replenish the battery when running CoPilot or Google Navigation on my phone. I've tried many chargers including 2 amp rated ones (as I already said). I couldn't find any spec on the micro-usb port that suggested it was rated for more than 1 amp. The USB spec says it's the responsibility of the attached device to limit current, I suspect the phone is being careful.

I will try this sometime by plugging the official car dock charger into the phone directly and see if it replenishes the power via the USB port rather than the dock connectors.

Well I have modified my charger as per my thread, time will tell how it performs

Yes I know, I've just replied to it. I will be doing further investigations myself at some point, while I do have an official dock, I also have four cars and don't want to have to buy a dock for each car and swapping the dock over is a PITA so I'd like to use my universal holders and USB charge leads in my other cars and the official dock in my main car. I do have some snazzy chargers though (I've been doing USB charging for many years and have quite a collection of great, good and also-rans). I've also got a wide variety of leads that can supply power to micro-usb via a USB port, and tried the lot, all to no avail.

I do also have an open-top car though, it may be that the high light levels are making a difference, that screen certainly sucks power!

I find it works quite well, but it cannot pronounce welsh street names

I was driving near Oxford today and went past "bi-sister"! So it can't quite cope with Bicester yet then..