Garmin Glo 2

 

For several years, I have been running Android Auto on the smartphone connected to the car. For a Garmin-quality position, a Garmin Glo 2 GPS receiver is used. It works with both domestic and GLONASS satellites.

The Glo is paired with the phone in Bluetooth using the app Bluetooth GPS. I am setting up a new phone and that app is no longer available on the Play Store. Ten similar apps would do the same thing but it would be better if Garmin recommended one. Searching Garmin Support had no hits.

Emailed thegpsstore.com and Jaime answered that they didn't know either but it would be best to call Garmin Support.

Garmin answered right away that the Garmin Explore app would do this, available for Apple and Android. I will be installing it and testing the Glo in a few days.
dobs108 smile

You can try searching sites

You can try searching sites such as apkmirror to find the installation file. Once downloaded, install manually on the new phone.

download aPK file

zx1100e1 wrote:

You can try searching sites such as apkmirror to find the installation file. Once downloaded, install manually on the new phone.

Is there a security risk in doing that?

Probably as much security

Probably as much security risk as downloading from google play itself.

You can run it through virustotal.com which uses a bunch of detection engines to identify something nefarious.

Personally, my phone is rooted, I use titanium backup which is able to backup the app (.apk), and associated data. Restore on the new phone is usually issue free with all settings/data intact. Assuming your old phone can be root, usually the process itself is destructive, resulting in a factory reset.

All that said, I don't trust the smartphone platform (apple or android) to really keep anything super important on the phone. I will never do any money/banking related activities on the device. Should it get compromised, I'll just reset and restore a backup.

garmin explore

Installed the Garmin Explore app, and then the Garmin Connect app. They both are not suitable for pairing between the Android phone and the Garmin Glo 2. The reason is that to find a device to pair, the app presents a list of Garmin devices. The Garmin Glo 2 is not on the list and there is no way to make an entry of any other device.

Side load APK file

It looks very likely that I will take zx1100e1's advice and side load the Bluetooth GPS APK file to install it.

thanks zx1100e1!

Just like zx1101e1 suggested, I downloaded a seven-year-old apk file for Bluetooth GPS to the phone from apkmirror and installed it. There was some doubt that it would run because the phone is running Android 11, but it works fine.

The first position for the Garmin Glo used 12 satellites!

Glad it worked. My android

Glad it worked.

My android phone handles no money matters. As such, i'm quite comfortable having the device rooted and installing third party apps when needed. At worst they'll have access to my email. Not the end of the world either; the phone's email account is a mirror of my main account. The former can easily be shut off without affecting any thing else.