Interesting perspective (dedicated nav devices)

Garmin needs to remove its head from its collective @ss and port their gps software to android/ios. I'd gladly pay a reasonable fee for it as im sure others would as well. They missed the calling on that.

I still use my garmin for custom designed roadtrips - or on a motorcycle if I still rode. None of the other nav products can imitate that.

I had the Android Garmin StreetPilot Onboard app years ago. I wouldn't "bet the farm" on them offering that again, but I suppose it is possible.

AI is in every autonomous vehicle, what we think of as navigation systems will just quietly drown

"While some navigation device makers, including Garmin, tried to deal with this shortcoming by releasing a mobile companion app feeding similar information into their GPS units via Bluetooth, the setup is complicated and doesn't make sense when a smartphone can do this out of the box."

I replaced by old non-connected Garmin Nuvi 58 with a DriveSmart 55 last year so I could use the Drive App. I got it used for $40 from Facebook Marketplace, in the box, with all accessories.

I don't find the Drive App complicated at all. It's great.

What I think is complicated is mounting / unmounting a phone to use it as navigation. Much easier to leave a dedicated GPS in the car and leave my phone in my pocket.

I guess I'm a dinosaur, I still prefer using a stand alone GPS and probably always will. The map apps are nice and more up to date, but I like having my phone ready to be a phone. My luck would be an incoming call just as I'm approaching a confusing interchange and the map screen going to a phone call screen.

Smartphones are an electronic "Swiss Army Knife." People that use the camera function of smartphones are very common. I do still know at least two people that still use a dedicated, stand alone camera. I will say, though, that some smartphones have taken some very good pictures!

Some functions that smart phones perform, they do quite well. Other things are a huge compromise. Take the flashlight function of many phones. In my opinion, it is not a great flashlight. A dedicated flashlight will perform much better. On the other hand, if it is with you and a conventional flashlight isn't, that is often what is used.

Maybe Google Maps has leapfrogged over Garmin for automobile navigation. I still think that many of us here will continue using dedicated GPS units for a while.

On a Douro River Cruise in 2019 I was the only person out of about 200 on board that had a reasonably high end DSLR. People kept asking me to take their picture at places were the phone just didn't work well.

In spring of 2023 I went from Memphis TN to Louisville KT on a paddlewheel boat with pretty much the same experience.

By the way, I don't own a Smartphone and on my dumbphone I get about two texts a week. $6/month!

Now you know three, kind of. I take tons of photos with my phone camera because I always have it with me. I still prefer to use a real camera if I know I'm going somewhere with the intention of photography.

The smartphone takes a far clearer standard photo, but the minute you use the zoom (digital) on the camera the photo goes to crap whereas I have an optical zoom on my camera and it does much better.

Smartphones are great navigators if you have good eyes and don't need to load a lot of data.

I have yet to figure out a way to read the phone at a distance or load 5000 waypoints & 200 routes.

Yes, Apple or Android Car Play helps but that ties up the dash screen for other uses.

Some smartphone nav apps are useless if you don't have cellular coverage. Where I go, that's about 30% of the time.

Yes, maps can be preloaded but I don't always have the forethought to do so.

Smartphones are perfect navigators for some, but unfortunately, I'm not one of them.

Waze and Google Maps both. Even though Google does offer the ability to download a given area it's essentially an afterthought. It's no substitute for an app like Here We Go, which has map download capability as a feature rather than an afterthought.

But I prefer a dedicated GPS versus the smartphone apps. I still keep an atlas in the car too. Batteries fail after all.

Perspective