MRA with Android Auto almost unusable

[Daniel Burkhard]

Today I took my first ride with the new Carpuride 702BS and the MRA app. As I was really impressed with the MRA planning tool - I also expected a lot from the app. Unfortunately, MRA-App has completely failed with Android Auto, not to say I find it absolutely unusable!

Why am I buying a 7 inch screen? To see as much as possible of the loaded route and map in a reasonable resolution!
MRA with Android Auto fails completely! What makes it even worse is that it has no zoom functions. Simply incomprehensible.
Either a maximum of 100 meters of the route are visible because the resolution is so stupid, or the whole route plus surrounding area is displayed (with north at the top). Either way, navigating with it is PITA.

• but it has “information boards” on the left that take up almost half the screen. Why, but above all why so unnecessarily large?
• Recalculations take far too long - even the BMW Navigator is faster
• the power consumption is unacceptable. A 100% fully charged cell phone is empty in a maximum of 5 hours.

My conclusion:
The MRA planning tools are really sensational!
The MRA app (in this version) with Android Auto (in this version) is simply absolutely useless.
I will use the BMW Navigator again, which is not perfect either - but much, much better than the MRA app with Andriod Auto.

I don't want to blame anyone, maybe Android Auto is so limited that MRA simply can't do any better. But I hope that over time (when it has more and more users) this will perhaps develop further - and until then MRA will remain with me - just a very good planning tool - but not a navigation app.

[Corjan Meijerink]

@Daniel-Burkhard a great update is coming your way!

We’ve added zoom buttons to Android Auto, changed the zoom behavior to allow better visibility up ahead and made route calculation improvements.

This update has just gone into Beta and expecting public release next week!

5 hours to drain the phone is not bad at all to be honest. We have power consumption issues and they are continuously improving. 20%/hr is however a completely acceptable level showing that your device itself is not experiencing terrible rendering performance issues

[Daniel Burkhard]

@Corjan-Meijerink
Well, opinions can be divided about the battery life, another issue is the cell phone getting hot. Another thing to consider is that it was between 10 and 15 degrees today. What will it be like in summer when it's 30 degrees?

The fact that the zoom function is included is great, but what about the oversized route instructions - especially the ones at the top left?
If these were smaller, the loaded route could be displayed more in the center and not almost on the right edge as it is now.

[Corjan Meijerink]

@Daniel-Burkhard feel free to add a screenshot / photo of how it looks on Android Auto.

Another app for reference would be nice too

[Daniel Burkhard]

@Corjan-Meijerink

[Corjan Meijerink]

@Daniel-Burkhard apart from the high zoom level (which is fixed in the upcoming update), I don’t see much of an issue to be honest.

Please do let us know how it works with 4.3.7 (coming next week)!

[M. Schrijver]

@Daniel-Burkhard
The specs of your Carpuride has some influence how it is shown on Android Auto. Screenformat (16:9, 4:3) and resolution does effect the size of the button.
On your smartphone it is the same. A webpage seems to look the same on all phones but if you look better. You'll see there are differences. Textsizes are mostly the same but how the text is spread out over screen can differ.
Apple and Google defining many things for their car systems. If you compare more navigation apps. You'll see they have roughly al the same layout with the roughly the same sizes.
I totally agree with @Corjan-Meijerink on this. Everything looks fine.

Energyconsumption is always high when navigating. Doesn't matter which app you use.
The enery consumption of MRA has improved enormous and is now more in line with other apps. But it is still an app with higher consumption than average. Some other navigation apps uses less.
I depends on your phone but 20% per hour is indeed not that bad.

[Daniel Burkhard]

@M-Schrijver
I'm curious to see what the zoom function will be like. If the navigation experience doesn't improve significantly, Android Auto with MRA, or any other app, is not an option for me.

[M. Schrijver]

There is no zoomfunction.
The DPI of the screen and aspect ratio of the screen are decisive how it looks on your screen. The screensize doesn't affect it so much.

A few screenshots of my Android Auto (7" )

3 different apps roughly the same layout and button sizes

[Daniel Burkhard]

@M-Schrijver said in MRA with Android Auto almost unusable:

There is no zoomfunction.

Yes, not yet - but a zoom function will be available from around next week with the new version.

[M. Schrijver]

Ah, that zoom function.
I thought you meant a zoom function to change the size of the buttons and bars

[Con Hennekens]

@Daniel-Burkhard, there will always be discussion of what is to big and what is too small. It will always be a "golden mean". The default zoomfactor has indeed been optimized.

[Corjan Meijerink]

https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/8897/new-update-4-3-7-track-navigation-improvements-and-cp-aa-zooming

[Daniel Burkhard]

@Corjan-Meijerink
I have another question, in the navigation settings in the MRA-app there is the option under screen layout which information should be displayed, such as: Current road, Upcoming waypoint...
This works perfectly on the cell phone. With Android Auto, these settings have no effect.
Is this correct, or is it a bug? If this worked, that would be one less point of criticism

[Corjan Meijerink]

@Daniel-Burkhard Not implemented in Android Auto!
Once implemented, the settings would also do something.

AA does not show current road and upcoming waypoint.
That last one will be implemented in the future.
Current road, not sure if really worth the space / technically possible

[Daniel Burkhard]

@Corjan-Meijerink
Sorry, I didn't say enough about what I meant. When all these points are deactivated, the information panels become smaller. At least that's how it is in the mobile app.
I was hoping the same behavior could be achieved with AA.

[Con Hennekens]

@Daniel-Burkhard, I am not aware of any info-tile getting smaller when options are disabled. The only one I know of is when you disable "upcoming road", it saves a lot of screen-estate , which gets reclaimed when showing upcoming waypoints.