Garmin nuvi

What is Foursquare

Foursquare is a database to help users explore new and popular restaurants, stores, and more. Certain Garmin devices 1 are preloaded with a Foursquare point of interest database; this adds millions of new and popular locations onto your device. A Bluetooth compatible device 2 can be paired to a Smartphone to use the Smartphone Link for added functionality with Foursquare, such as viewing Trending and Best Places in your area.

1 Devices preloaded with Foursquare data:

nuvi 57/58 nuvi 67/68 nuvi 2509 series nuvi 2609 series nuvi 2709 series

2 Smartphone Link compatible devices:

nuvi 2475 nuvi 2495 nuvi 2497 nuvi 2498 nuvi 2577 nuvi 2595 nuvi 2597 nuvi 2598 nuvi 2559 nuvi 2589 nuvi 2599 nuvi 2689 nuvi 2797 nuvi 2798 nuvi 2789 nuvi 3490 nuvi 3590 nuvi 3597 dezl 570 dezl 760 dezl 770 RV 760 zumo 590

Anyone have any feedback on if this is any good or just more Garmin hype? Six years ago the POIs that came with my 250 were complete crap. They seemed to have mined local business records and included the private residences of lots of business owners and listed them as if they were stores, but most were homes that were not trying to attract customers. Meanwhile they would apparently charge some businesses to be listed as POIs and leave out others that would not pay. So while a POI might show you a gas station five miles back that you could walk to when you ran out of gas, it would fail to show you the one a half mile ahead that had been there for years. Overall I found the built-in POIs pretty worthless, except for occasionally finding a post office.

Also, the question still needs to be answered, is Canada uncluded, whatever that means?

I guess that's why we all come here as we have found the reliable data comes from our peers. The built-in POI are getting better, the database is also getting much larger. That's good but it still has many faults. Just for supposition, if 10 years ago the map provider for Garmin was loading it up with 4 million POI and 30% were bogus for one reason or another and now there are 10 million with 20% unusable, there are now more bad locations. I run into this a lot on the files I maintain where the published mailing address for a business is the owner's residence, clear across town. It take a lot of time to ferret through the good locations and fix the bad ones and I really doubt that Navteq or Next or whoever is providing the data to Garmin these days has anyone tasked to do this other than working location error reports that are sent in. As for Post Offices... The one in the town where I live lists the correct street address but the point is placed on a different street 2 blocks away, and it shows up that way also when I go the USPS website that shows a map. Good thing my postal carrier doesn't rely on automated mapping software!

The few times I have tried finding something using Four Square have been akin to unneeded appendeges on a boar hog. I have the 3597 and use the SmartLink app where Four Square is prominentlyy displayed. I usually end up uusing the voice search because I want something other than a fast food or low priced casual dining place. About the only thing it seems to recommend are Chipoltles which I can't stand.

Sorry Frovingslosh On my message I should had been more specific, on this Gps that I see at Best Buy it only mention NT America 2014.10 did not mention if Canada was included on this map version,or maybe was just the lower US State !

On my 2 gps that I have it mention NT America and Canada

I have had the Nuvi 2699 for about 2 weeks, and do NOT have the smartphone connection. Thus, when I do a search, the Nuvi ITSELF often brings up several Foursquare (so labelled) addresses at the top of the list.

When I searched for a McDonalds in rural Washington state, it appeared as a Foursquare "find." This was surprising because my Nuvi 3590 NEVER identified this McD (the 2699 also provided its correct address).

Similarly, when I searched for a favorite, small condo resort in Seaside, OR, it listed it at the top of the screen, again as a Foursquare "find" (altho it did NOT provide the address, it did display it correctly on the map screen).

NOTE: I checked the rest of the returned Search listings for both of the above instances, and neither was listed in the normal Nuvi "finds."

I am about to embark on a month-long roadtrip, and anticipate making numerous searches for this n' that, and will try to keep alert to success specifically via Foursquare "finds."

I am curious to find a trustworthy estimate of the number of ADDITIONAL Foursquare POIs built in to the Nuvi (and NOT replicated in the actual Nuvi database). I have read the Garmin product claim about "millions more," but believe that may incorporate everything via the smartphone connection to the Foursquare website. Anyone with a useful estimate?

Again, the Garmin promo is that Nuvis now have "8 million" POIs in their databases. I am simply wondering how many MORE are provided by the built-in Foursquare.

When I got my first GPS several years ago, I read in several forums that Garmin CN NA maps had 6 million built in POIs out of a possible 20 to 25 million. I don't know where those numbers came from tho ... could have just been some forum poster making it up.

nuvifan: With your 2699, If you have a smartphone, just download the free SmartLink app (free for both iPhone & Android devices). Pair the two through Bluetooth, and you will have acess to all the latest 4Square listings, and a lot of other goodies.

I found that the "send to Garmin" option is pretty slick - I talk to my phone, it finds a place I'm looking for, and I just hit "send" on the phone & Bang - its on the Garmin ready to navigate. Love it....

Ok, I did find one source from 2007 for the 6 million number I remember reading about: http://gpstracklog.com/2007/06/how-many-points.html

ONe would think this number has increased on newer versions of City Navigator in the past 8 years, but maybe not?

Hello again alandb (we've been chatting on that other forum about Nuvi "chimes")...

I read just this past week (at some unremembered website) of a comparison of built-in POIs totals, on various GPS devices. The recent Nuvis and a TomTom were rated at 10 million POIs, and some other devices at 8 million and less. Obviously, since I cannot recall where I found the graph...and since those figures had no sources...I consider this issue still unresolved.

NOTE: I just tried hard to replicate my previous Google search on this subject, but failed to find the same site (which used a simple bar chart).

Garmin advertising has long since stopped with its POI claims, but I also remember the 6 million figure, from way back when we both owned Nuvi 855s...

Was excited when I got my new 2689 with FourSquare, not so much anymore. After finding it's data way out of date I started trying to figure out what it was. It is kind of like Yelp but not as good. Registered users can set locations including where they live, they are suppose to mark them as private but some forget so you get a lot of listings in an area that are not business. Users can rate business like in Yelp. Not sure where some of the business info comes from. I did a search for Pizza in my home area, it listed a Pizza Hut that has been closed for about 15 years, longer than FourSquare has been around, and several other closed Pizza places and did not list 4 new ones that have opened in the last year.

As far as SmartLink I was hoping to do Google searches and transfer the address, from old comments this apparently use to work, but currently does not. It does work nice for transferring an address from your address book, so to get a Google search address in you have to add it to your address book then transfer, not worth the trouble with a GPS you can talk to.

You can't go wrong buying at Costco if you don't mind a year old model.