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Thread: Sygic app versus a real GPS

  1. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
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    New Westminster BC
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Schierer View Post
    You could probably test your driving app by running your phone in Airplane mode, where your don't get cell signal, and seeing if it still tracks your route.
    If I recall, in airplane mode google maps will continue to track your route but you can't plot a new route. Next chance I get I'll test it and report back. I'm interested in this topic because we have a trip planned to Costa Rica in February and need to decide what type of GPS we are going to use.

  2. #17
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Northern Florida
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    643
    I consider the GPS as part of the instrument panel and I refer to it constantly. Having the right display mounted in the right place is important to me. If I could do that with a phone or table, that might be OK but I like the dedicated GPS. The Garmin we'd had nearly 10 years died while we were out of town last week. I replaced it with a new Garmin Drive 50 LM 5 for about $130 at the Sam's Club next to the motel. I wasn't unhappy with the old one, but the interface on the new one is much improved. It works very smoothly, the touch screen is responsive. It will store routes as well as locations. It will interface with a camera.

    I wish it had traffic information but it was the only GPS in the store. I installed Waze while sitting in a 4-hour freeway tieup last week but have since uninstalled it. Google Maps had good information. It would be much more useful on the GPS.

    After looking into Sygic, I'll get that, too. $22.50 for lifetime maps & traffic on an Android is a no-brainer IMO, but it won't replace the GPS on the dash.

    [Edit a few hours later: I installed Sygic and there's a lot to like about it, but compared to a Garmin GPS the interface is extremely primitive. It also gave me some astonishing route choices apparently based on rush-hour traffic and backups that were constantly changing. It will be useful but IMO there's no comparison to a real GPS.]
    Last edited by Alan Rutherford; 10-16-2017 at 4:51 PM.

  3. #18
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Location
    New Westminster BC
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    What is the user interface like on the current Garmins? An older one we have has voice recognition but you have to spell out the words letter by letter, you also need to know the address you want to input, you can't for example, just say "Holiday Inn Seattle".

  4. #19
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Northern Florida
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    643
    I don't use voice recognition and I don't let it talk to me. My experience with the new one is one 17-hour trip last week (should have been 12 hours, that's why I want traffic) but within the limits of one-finger input capabilities, IMO it's pretty smooth. In addition to entering addresses, which works for us, you can navigate to any location you can get on the screen and you can find locations via search or scrolling. Scrolling is much easier than with my older one. I think you could find motels by location and category e.g. "lodging". It might depend somewhat on their advertising arrangements.

    When the GPS and my wife get back in town I'll look at it. Maybe someone else can answer better. My point was that although the Garmin and Sygic cover the same bases, IMO Garmin does it better. Saving locations to favorites and editing them is high on my list of priorities and Sygic seems especially awkward for that unless I've completely missed something.

  5. #20
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Northern Florida
    Posts
    643
    One important difference between a Garmin GPS made for a car and a cellphone app is that the GPS won't work unless it's plugged into the 12v socket in a car. You can't take it to your motel room and plug the USB connection into a laptop and do anything but update maps. There are workarounds and there is an internal battery that will work but I don't know how long - it's minutes in my old one. Just something to keep in mind.

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Longmont, CO
    Posts
    810
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    Google Maps supports off-line maps. Of course, you need to know in advance that you'll be without cellular connection so you can pre-fetch maps and it already pre-fetches a reasonably large area based on your travel route which deals with any short outages. I do have a TomTom app that emulates a dedicated GPS device which I originally bought because of some business travel to area that at the time had poor signals, but I honestly haven't actually used it in years.
    The offline maps work fine as long as you get them set up correctly with reasonable storage requirements and resolution. I download areas over seas before we go. worked in Laos, Vietnam, Paris and a few other areas in France. Will be using the feature this year for New Delhi, Daradune and a few other places in India where my service gets very expensive.

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