I've been using Garmin StreetPilot on WP8 for a while instead of Here Drive+. Drive+ is pretty great, but the problem with the navigation voice plus occasional crazy routes make me prefer Garmin. While Garmin it's good, it needs a couple of simple updates to make it great, and a $30 app really should get updates more often than once a year.
First a couple of things that are good:
- The display looks great. Good color choices, super smooth motion
- Routes are mostly sensible in the US
- Navigation voice briefly lowers bluetooth music volume, and doesn't interrupt it.
And now for the bad:
- no offline maps, AT ALL! For $30 that's just crazy.
- no integration with WP, Garmin doesn't show as a navigation option anywhere. Manual launch only.
- you can't customize speed alerts. If it's on, you'll continue to get alerts even if you're 1 mph over.
- lot of force quits in the background. This is on a 1520, so memory shouldn't be an issue
- address search is extremely impractical. I regularly get locations 4000+ miles away when a similar address is within 20 miles.
And some assorted niggles:
- kind of weird, lately they have been mixing in a different nav voice for when you get close to the destination.
- many times I get a 'couldn't acquire license, some features may not be available'. Annoying.
- traffic info is shown as a forest of hovering signs which looks terribly cluttered.
- if you start the app while off bluetooth and then get in the car, the nav voice keeps using the phone speaker
- no control of voice volume relative to music
- very unclear how to get out of walking directions and back to driving directions. I can't recall how I escaped in the end, but it was not obvious to me.
- no support for WP backup = all settings lost after restore.
- It doesn't show the speed limit when there is no destination set
Worst, the app hasn't been updated since March 2014. C'mon Garmin!
Below an example of the cluttered Garmin traffic info:
Example of an extremely unhelpful list of search results. Adding the city shows a slightly more practical result nearby:
First a couple of things that are good:
- The display looks great. Good color choices, super smooth motion
- Routes are mostly sensible in the US
- Navigation voice briefly lowers bluetooth music volume, and doesn't interrupt it.
And now for the bad:
- no offline maps, AT ALL! For $30 that's just crazy.
- no integration with WP, Garmin doesn't show as a navigation option anywhere. Manual launch only.
- you can't customize speed alerts. If it's on, you'll continue to get alerts even if you're 1 mph over.
- lot of force quits in the background. This is on a 1520, so memory shouldn't be an issue
- address search is extremely impractical. I regularly get locations 4000+ miles away when a similar address is within 20 miles.
And some assorted niggles:
- kind of weird, lately they have been mixing in a different nav voice for when you get close to the destination.
- many times I get a 'couldn't acquire license, some features may not be available'. Annoying.
- traffic info is shown as a forest of hovering signs which looks terribly cluttered.
- if you start the app while off bluetooth and then get in the car, the nav voice keeps using the phone speaker
- no control of voice volume relative to music
- very unclear how to get out of walking directions and back to driving directions. I can't recall how I escaped in the end, but it was not obvious to me.
- no support for WP backup = all settings lost after restore.
- It doesn't show the speed limit when there is no destination set
Worst, the app hasn't been updated since March 2014. C'mon Garmin!
Below an example of the cluttered Garmin traffic info:
Example of an extremely unhelpful list of search results. Adding the city shows a slightly more practical result nearby:
Last edited:
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