Another Tour, another frustrating App/Android Auto experience
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I Used Navigation Next at the weekend on a two day tour or Wales with routes meticulously researched and planned. On the whole what I intended to ride was what I planned so that all worked out well. My fellow 13 tourers were provided with the routes through various ways, i.e. GPX files, MRA export etc. Their experience was mostly positive with the only issues experienced by those that imported the GPX rather than those that exported via MRA Gold. The leanings therefore have been encouraging those that don't have MRA Gold to become subscribers.
While my own experience was OK, but there are still a few moments related to the App reliability, these are summarised as follows;
Waiting on the route to be calculated even though there's clearly a Data connection.
Online/offline, Track/Route combination settings, starting with a data connection, the route is calculated fine, stopping in area without a mobile phone signal even though the app hasn't been closed, suddenly not being able to calculate a route.
Switching to Offline mode and a warning popping up about riding in Track mode.
Sudden App freezing (Yes I will report these)
Zoom settings with a mind of their own, I had the App and AA running together side by side on the ride, without warning I had a top down view on AA and/or the position indicator located half on/half off the bottom of the screen on the phone app
While clearly there have been many improvements to the App and AA integration, its still not the polished app it could be.
In summary when the app works (including using with AA) it's great, but when these niggles appear it so frustrating. These frustration still require me to have routes loaded into TomTomGo as a back up, and at the weekend I needed to use TomTomGo on multiple occasions.