Time to ditch my Garmin and use the phone?

Recently I rented a car for a trip and used the phone connected to the car's infotainment through one of the car options. It displayed a map to let me see the route, traffic and connected to satellite radio. Worked great for me, but then I'd already preplanned my route and which roads before starting.

You can download the area of the Map you will be going to your phone or tablet from Google Maps and use it off line. I do that before I go anywhere (when I remember).
The maps off line don't have traffic and anything that you use live but other than that they have been them same for me.

....if I have a rental or if I'm in my truck, Samantha goes with me. Sam always gives me good directions and I have never had an issue with this GPS. I also will use Waze; more so with the in car navigation system than with the Garmin. If I get away from a major city, traffic will not display on the in car system.

Toyota has not taken the blue ribbon for its nav system, so I mainly still use my Garmin. I wish the Toy didn't even have one but they keep bundling it with other wanted items.

How do you reset?

I went to school in Washburn. That is only around 6 miles from Bayfield.

Be careful to make sure the car doesn't have phone data stored when returning the rental car. Sometimes the car system downloads the phone's contacts for making calls on the car's screen.

I was down in Los Angeles today and last night did a little research on a couple of places that I wanted to visit. The first visit was to a barbecue restaurant, then afterwards to a nearby brewpub to pick up some cans of beer.

I checked on Google Maps the best route, and found that they were only 1.1 miles from each other, and was an easy route of making a left hand turn after leaving the restaurant and a straight shot to the brewpub, which would take a total of 4 minutes.

Well, just for fun I fired up my Garmin to see what it would say was the best way. It wanted me to make a right and turn out of the restaurant (which I already knew was the wrong way) and making a series of turns that ended up looking like a pretzel. Total estimated time to my destination, 13 minutes.

Uhhh yeah no ... sorry Garmin, you failed me again. Thank goodness I did my homework the night before or I would have followed the Garmin's directions.

And yes, I have the latest map update installed. I had my phone GPS on as well, and it guided me the correct way.

^^Did the garmin have your correct heading or just the location?

Before leaving the parking lot at the barbecue place I inputted the location for the brewpub and waited until it fully loaded the address and route. Upon reaching the exit for the parking lot my phone told me to turn left (the correct way) and the Garmin told me to turn right. I even left the Garmin on as I drove the 1.1 miles to the brewpub thinking it might re-calculate and correct itself but it didn't.

It does this on occasion. In fact when I am leaving my house there is a straight shot down my street to a main connecting street that usually leads to where I need to go. The Garmin tells me instead to make a left hand turn before I get to the connecting street, then go two blocks in the opposite direction, then take another street that eventually connects to the one I want to go to, but it makes my trip two blocks lengthier for absolutely no reason. Well anyway, I'll still keep using the Garmin but check my routes online before leaving anywhere. I'll also keep my phone handy just in case.

I use mostly the phone. I sometimes use both for interstate travel.

I have a car with auto-android and I use Waze frequently. It does a good job and I use it a lot. What it does extremely poorly is waypoints and trips. There is no, zero, nil waypoint management or route management capabilities.

Around the nearby area - sure, I use waze. Anytime I need a custom route, multiple stops, longer trip, saving and using waypoints, I use Garmin. On longer trips, I actually use both, at the same time. I have my custom route running on Garmin, and on Waze I get real time information on things like objects on the road, police activity, just to the minute points of interest.

One day cellphones will replace standalone garmin units for personal civilian use. Heck look at the new generation of kids, everything is on a cellphone - "There's an app for that"

I guess just us old timers use garmin units.

My geriatric little mind boggles at the capabilities of today's smartphones. In the '90s I worked for a large tech company (S&P 200? S&P 100? certainly S&P500) where I and some other tech weenies were asked for our opinions re: should we be in the mobile phone industry? We never knew if they were playing to our delicate little egos or actually valued our opinions.

I got the economics of cell sites all wrong. I likely would have fixed that by further investigation had I gotten the prior problem right: I didn't believe that anyone would even try to make a cell phone anywhere near as reliable as an AT&T phone.

Well,,, I got it all wrong. I favor my GPS for navigation with my phone as backup.

Phone is ok for local but the Garmin is a necessity for over the road travel.

I use my cellphone very little so consequently I just have a pay as you go plan.

In Canada a monthly plan with data would cost me atound $ 50.00 a month to use the phone for what my Garmin does for absolutely no cost.

One of the world’s richest men “ Carlos Slim” who owns Telcel lets me buy cellphone time for around $ 10.00 for 30 days which lets me make unlimited calls within Mexico and around 2,000 minutes calling Canada and the USA as well as 5GB of data.

You are making Carlos rich. He doesn't need the money. I switched from Carlos to Consumer Cellular.

I pay $ 10.00 for 30 days. Betcha dollars to donuts YOU pay more!

BTW: There is NO Consumers Cellular in Mexico!

For me, it comes down to screen size and waypoint management. When I get a new vehicle, it will have a large dash LCD display. Using Apple Car Play could solve the screen size issue but I have yet to see an ACP compatible smartphone app that will manage 2 or 3 hundred waypoints.

I tend to agree. Also, my better half and I will be traversing several states to a state we've never been to. I ordered AAA paper map. Better half said, "Why, we have GPS?!". I replied, "Electronics can fail, and there's no [in-car digital] substitute for an unfolded paper map."

I got in on a steal of a deal 4 years ago. Cricket group plan. At the time it was 5GB, unl talk/text for $10/month. Recently group plans got changed, now its unlimited for $10/month. No complaints here.

Cell phones these!days can over heat, I don't think my Garmin does that S long as it's not left in the sun

Driving between California and Colorado, there are areas with no phone coverage, so I still use Garmin. Better for interstate travel.

My wife and I annually buy the Rand-McNally atlas (Extra-large print) and use it to plan our trips along with the Garmin. Our Garmin is indispensable but the atlas gives us a wider scope of historic areas, POI's, and generally overall idea of what's in the area. We don't load too many POI's (not computer literate). Every evening or morning we review on the map and Garmin our intended routes so both of us know what to expect. This takes out the 'sometimers' surprises that happen every so often when either one of us is driving.

I love my cellphone, don't get me wrong, but when I am off grid it just doesn't work well enough. Google frequently moves my pins because it can't handle roads that are not there or GPS coordinates without crashing. I use it around big towns and such but I use a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 with a built in GPS on Streets and Trips for everything else. You can find them on ebay for a couple hundred bucks. What you'd spend on a good GPS anyways but with a Toughbook you have a hand held swingable bear deterrent thats nearly bulletproof.

When we are just going somewhere - not a big trip - I use the phone. When we go on long trips I use the Garmin. I use the Garmin on long trips because it is an ancient nüvi 760. I run it through the car sound system and listen to audio books as we drive. It pauses the book, gives the directions to give directions and then picks up where it left off reading the book.

I have had the same problem, where the Nuvi directed me to exit the parkway only to direct me back on again I will try a reset.

My problem is when I use the phone to travel, I get a call right in the middle of when I need the instructions to get off a highway ramp and need to make a few turns or other important instructions.

I use both the Garmin and phone for that reason!

It directed me off the interstate only to get on again.

My battery would be more than half dead by the time I got to work!

We only use the phone to locate some place in a town we are no familiar with. Use the old 660 for long road trips.

When I was traveling for business I preferred the Garmin because I could plan my destinations before traveling. Much easier to use the "RECENT" list with voice commands than try to enter a complete name or address in to the GPS or phone with voice commands. POI can also be added to the GPS for challenging destinations. In addition, the Garmin logs the travel (time & position) in to a file stored on the GPS. Mad it much easier to figure out my time card and mileage. I'll probably be using my GPS for a long time.
Mark

When there's no cell service, standalone SAT nav GPS is better.

If cell cervice is avail, sometimes it's a toss up.

I tend to run both, sometimes conflicting routes, so then it comes down to geographic knowledge of the area.

yeah, I have had some strange routing. It usually happens if I go off route. Instead of telling me to make a U turn, it routes me in a circle of roads. But I have had it happen on a newly computed route also.

Since my original post I've had a fair number of times when the Garmin took me on a route that wasn't the best option. In that same amount of time I think maybe once my phone sent me on a less than desirable route.

I'd really prefer to use the Garmin exclusively as my guide, but it's getting harder and harder to justify doing so. I still keep it in my car as a backup though.

I use Garmin
My wife uses google map
I drive, and my wife is with me.
So, I have both supports.

Same here, Garmin took me lots of miles before it did ask for U turn to the same point before.

Since then I learn one thing. In Garmin there's 2 options mostly to use, it's Fast or Short.

Mostly I prefer to use Fast, but it likely uses the long way to go.

For example, I did exit for finding restaurant on Highway, after turning on the car, it did ask for very long way to go back on the last exit to Highway, such as it want us to drive many blocks then going back to last depart. But if you select "Short" after the STOP at somewhere, it can show you the shortest path to go up again the last point of Highway.

Hope this help...

Best wishes if Garmin can be smarter on new models coming up next!

Most if not all current Garmins will show you route options when you calculate a route, up to 3 options based on fastest, shortest and one inbetween although often on shorter routes you may only see two or possibly only one option. You can then choose which one you prefer.

Amen for my Garmin GPS 60 - but I have not used it in so long I have the same forget how problem.

I hate when Garmin does that. I now usually just ignore the exit instruction unless there's a traffic incident ahead -- which I'll check my phone for. Have never been thrilled with Garmin's traffic function.

My cell phone bill is $ 20 a month flat rate and has been for the last 2 years.

Other than the initial cost, my Garmin's been free for the last 4 years.

I assume you also use your phone for other things such as making phone calls, sending texts, going on the internet etc ... all things that your Garmin can't do.

My phone bill covers unlimited talk and unlimited text.

As for the internet, I use a small tablet and free wi-fi.

PS To the board administrator: If you catch this message, please delete my duplicated messages from above. I'm uncertain how that occurred.

No need for Garmin

True enough.. but not all of us have built in NAV.. or even smart phones. I like the idea of an always available.. stays on my dash.. visual map showing where I am.

I almost exclusively use my phone for navigation. I will take the nuvi with me on a long trip and mount it sometimes, but for most navigation the phone is it. I agree, it's not a either or, it's what works best for the trip.

Good point and same reason I keep my GPS!

I don't think the issue is if we should ditch Garmin but when Garmin will ditch us! How long will Garmin support a very small group of loyal followers?

Sadly,time is not on our side.

My garmin use to do that. A reset would fix it if you were in area it could triangulate your position.

I started having a map cannot be found, yet I can select a favorite of recently found and it will locate and start navigation. I've reset it. Next reset will be with a hammer in case I'm not holding the button long or hard enough.

Depends on where you drive and how you navigate. Most smartphone nav apps require either a cell signal or a preloaded map.

I frequently drive in rural locations where cell service is sketchy or non existent. I also don't always have the forethought to load maps on my phone before starting a trip. My Garmin's are ready and available 24/7 no matter where I am.

If you nav by smartphone, drive mostly in cities or on interstates and can deal with the small screen, you're good to go. For me, not so much. For now, I'll hang on to my Garmin's.

Garmin may indeed get out of the automotive GPS market someday. Fortunately, all my older units still work fine. Map updates may become a problem in the future but even 10 year old maps are still useful in most cases.