Yes, phone navigation really is that bad
It's a sad state of affairs when a Garmin GPS made over 10 years ago works better and far more reliably than any phone nav app now.
Although I currently use a Garmin DriveSmart 66, I have a whole pile of older Garmins because I'm a navigation nerd, at least for car GPSes.
For almost 20 years(!) I've been using Garmins.
Also, I lied.
It's not a sad state of affairs when an over-decade-old Garmin works better than a phone. It's truly sad when a Garmin made FIFTEEN YEARS AGO works better.
Fifteen years ago, the Garmin nuvi 1490LMT was released. This can be found used on eBay starting around $15. They also show up in Goodwill stores routinely. That thing, when outfitted with a new 32GB microSD card for map storage and this power-only USB cable gets you up and running with dirt cheap navigation that works. The only "hard" part is connecting it using a computer USB-A to mini USB cable to a PC with the free Garmin Express software to update the maps.
I'm not saying you should do that (getting a DriveSmart 66 is the better and easier choice). The point is that 15-year-old navigation tech still works now and better than modern phone options. You'll understand why that is as you read through this.
Here is an actual user review posted recently on the Google Play Store:
This is the kind of crap you deal with when using navigation on the phone. It is RIDICULOUS.
But hang on, it gets worse.
Regardless of which nav app you use, these are legitimate problems that happen which should not exist:
There is no good reason why "GPS signal lost" should happen on a phone
The only time a GPS signal - which by the way is NOT the same as a wireless phone signal since it literally comes from space - is if you're somewhere where the signal is blocked. Examples of this are underground tunnels, parking garages, some deep city environments where there are skyscrapers surrounding you, some steel bridges where over-the-air signals get bounced all over the place, and so on.
Phones use multiple GPS networks (GPS, GALILEO, GLONASS, etc.) and terrestrial wireless networks to determine location, but golly gee it just can't seem to figure out where it is!
If you're driving on the highway as so many people do and the phone can't figure out where it is, that is a STUPID PROBLEM THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST. On the highway, there is NOTHING blocking the signal AT ALL. You're out in the open. No signal obstructions anywhere. And yet the phone still gets "lost".
It doesn't matter if your phone is old or if you have a brand spanking new Google Pixel. It will sometimes forget where it is. A lot.
There is no good reason why a phone should "forget" locations you save
This one is just plain dumb.
Let's take something real simple, your home location. That's literally the first location you save in your nav app. What you're supposed to do is that any time you literally want to go home, you speak or select it in your nav app, it calculates a route from where you are and directs you home...
...except when it "forgets" where home is, even though you saved it previously. You KNOW you saved it. And you've had the app navigate you home before. But sometimes, nope! Now the app doesn't know where home is.
Although this is yet another stupid problem that shouldn't exist, it gets worse.
Let's say you have multiple locations saved, all set up in a nice tidy list within the nav app. You spent time on this and have everything set up the way you want...
...and then one day you go into the app and *poof*, everything you saved is gone. You didn't do anything differently than before. You didn't switch phones. You didn't switch accounts. That list is frickin' GONE.
What's supposed to happen but doesn't is that the app is supposed to keep two databases of your saved locations. One local to the phone, and one in the cloud. But all it takes is one sync that didn't work correctly and UH-OH, GONE.
Again, a stupid problem that shouldn't exist.
There is no good reason why a phone should give such horrible routes
See the above review again for an example of how bad it can get. Calculated routes are routinely given that make no sense at all. A lot of time is wasted. And whether you drive a gas-powered car or EV, it doesn't matter. You're wasting gas or electricity, take your pick.
Want to know why this happens? It's because the phone doesn't know where it is. Remember that "GPS signal lost?" crap I just mentioned above? There's your answer. The phone forgets where it is for no good reason, or thinks it's somewhere else, then calculates a route putting you all over creation, up, down, around in circles and whoopdee-frickin'-doo!
What do people do when they've had enough?
One of two options.
Option 1: Go back to the way people used to navigate in the '90s.
Some have become so frustrated with phone navigation that they get a list of directions and then figure out how to get from A to B on their own.
People in the late '90s used to either write down or print a list of directions gathered from the internet. Most people used Yahoo! Maps or MapQuest. I was a Y! Maps guy back in the day.
The only difference using this option between then and now is people get the list of directions from the phone instead of a PC and start driving - but do not use the phone for navigation. It's only used for the directions list and that's it since using it for navigation is so bad and unreliable.
Option 2: Get a Garmin.
A Garmin GPS does not "forget" your home location or other places you save to it. It doesn't need a cell phone network or data connection at all to work. When a GPS signal is acquired, it knows where it is and therefore routes better.
Yeah, I know, it's not supposed to be this way.
The phone should be able to run circles around a Garmin, but it doesn't. It suffers from on-again/off-again location positioning, buggy nav apps where every "update" breaks more than it fixes, and routes that make no sense more often than not.
Things were supposed to be different. The phone was supposed to replace the standalone GPS. Maybe for a time it did, but not anymore.
Look up the user reviews for popular nav apps on the Google Play Store, and you'll understand fast why a lot of people don't trust phone navigation anymore.
I'm not saying a Garmin is a perfect navigator, but again, it works. That's all anybody wants out of a navigation system.
Published 2024 May 7
