Anyone use their EVO as their sole GPS?

[PM-Performance]

Well my Garmin took a dump and i convinced Best Buy to take it back rather then sending back to Garmin for a replacement.
They said they will give me the store credit for another unit, but now im thinking about not getting another unit since i have this phone.

Anyone trust this as their sole GPS for long trips?
Does either the Sprint Nav or Google maps do the spoken street names and such? Or just map based and not speak?

My Garmin actually died on a trip where I had my Evo and i set it up to finish the trip and ended up not using it to see how it works, but this all got me thinking. . . .

 

[msross]

I have used it many times and it works great. It's far better than the built in one on my Lexus

 

[Eazy123]

Not sure about the Evo, but last year I used Sprint Navigation on my Pre on a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles and back, and it worked like a charm. Only drawback that I could see someone having is that you need a cell signal to initialize the navigation. For instance, I stopped at a diner in bumblefudge Utah near the Arizona border, and shut down navigation to conserve the battery. Unfortunately, I didn't get a cell signal there, so when I got back in the car, Navigation wouldn't initialize. I had to use my actual road map to continue on and once I found a signal, I was able to connect to navigation again. Once you start Sprint Navigation successfully, don't shut it down unless you are in an area with a cell signal. You could lose the signal and the GPS will still go fine until you shut it off.

You wouldn't have that issue with a standalone GPS. But even still, my road map + Sprint Navigation didn't get me lost once on that trip.

 

[sniffs]

I used the EVO to travel from Southern California, Orange County, to Show Low, AZ..

12 hour drive, GPS worked perfectly the entire way, both ways.

Google Nav caches the route, so if you lose cell signal, you will not lose GPS(GPS is line of sight however and if you go in tunnels, you'll temporarily lose signal)

the only time a cell signal is needed is for mapping data, and incase you take a wrong turn, for rerouting.

I wouldn't ever pay for any carrier navigation service as long as I have Google Nav.

 

[marclile]

sprint nav and google nav both do spoken turn by turn directions. both work pretty good. the voice on sprint's is a little more pleasing, in my opinion anyway. both of them will kill the battery though. real quick.

 

[PM-Performance]

How would that work if you are in an area where it is not getting cellular signal though?
Would it still be able to pull sattelites for nav?
Im just worried about getting stuck somewhere with no service and using this thing.

Does it have features like some of the better external GPS units?

EDIT:::;: just saw some more info after I saved.

I know it will kill the battery quick. I would very likely just keep it plugged in while using nav since it will be in the car.

 

[Averix]

Verify its stable

The GPS is really nice both with the Sprint app and Google Maps. However, my EVO has a habit of rebooting the first time either of those apps touch the GPS after it is turned on. After a reboot, as long as the GPS is one when it comes up, they will not crash when using the GPS. I've seen others with this problem. It may be hardware (rev 002), it may be software.

Either way, just make sure your phone doesn't crash when you use the GPS before getting too far from where you bought it.

 

[sniffs]

When you do the initial route, it caches the whole route.

Only time a cell signal is needed is for the initial map data and the only other time is if you take a wrong turn and it has to re-route, again, needed for mapping data.

If you purchase a mapping software that has pre-included maps that are stored on the SD, you dont need a cell signal.

 

[marclile]

How would that work if you are in an area where it is not getting cellular signal though?
Would it still be able to pull sattelites for nav?
Im just worried about getting stuck somewhere with no service and using this thing.

Does it have features like some of the better external GPS units?

EDIT:::;: just saw some more info after I saved.

I know it will kill the battery quick. I would very likely just keep it plugged in while using nav since it will be in the car.

i believe that the google one caches your route when you first get the directions so even if you loose cell signal, it will still continue to work. you wouldn't be able to navigate off of the route that it laid out though.

 

[marclile]

@sniffs - you beat me to it

 

[EvilMonkey]

I've been using it as my sole navigation GPS since I got it (replacing my Garmin 60CSx that was my combination navigation/hiking/biking/geocaching GPS).

It works well, although is somewhat worse at directions than the Garmin, as far as taking me what I think is the best way to go, but still gets me there.

I've been using Google Navigation, which does voice with street names, although the voice is irritating (would like some different options such as a sexy British accent) and she can't pronounce anything correctly it seems: For example "Colebrook" becomes "Cawl-ee-brook" and "Sunnyburn" becomes "Soon-eee-burn"

But it does do a bit that my standalone didn't (keeping in mind I don't have a "car" GPS but have one for hiking). The voice directions are nice, as opposed to the "beeps" my old one did when turns approached. Google Maps, as well as POIs are updated more often than the Garmin maps were (and I had to buy updated versions of Garmin maps). It does traffic and satellite overlays as well, and alternative routes which my old one didn't. Also does Google Street View for the next turn...not really handy but is a nice "show off" feature. But it does NOT do Topo, as far as I can tell (which is nice to have when I'm hiking/biking)

For the first time yesterday, it actually crashed on me, which was annoying since I was somewhere I wasn't familiar with....I actually had to reboot the phone and by the time I got it back up, I was about a mile off course. That may have had something to do with the update, perhaps? I'm hoping it doesn't happen again.

My other concern with it is while the GPS functions off of satellite, the maps function off of Google Maps...so no cell service = no maps. I haven't ran into this yet, and I think it caches some of your route, but could see it being an issue when driving through areas with long periods of no service. I will actually know more tomorrow since I am going on a ~300 mile trip to my parents for the weekend and will go through about a 30 mile section where I know the signal will be bad.

I have not tried it for geocaching yet....haven't downloaded any apps, and it appears the best one (C-Geo) is violating Geocaching.com's TOS and I don't want to support it. Supposed to be an official one coming soon, but in the meantime will probably try out Geobeagle or something. Also not sure I will want to be holding my phone while I'm traversing streams and rock fields and running away from rattelsnakes, so I may stick to my 60CSx anyways for that.

I'll probably use a combination of both....the phone/Google Nav in the car and then my rugged 60CSx for hiking/biking/caching (especially since I already have belt and handlebar clips for it) and to serve as a backup if the signal fails on the phone.

 

[marclile]

and to the OP... i was actually thinking about buying a garmin too and after getting this phone and using the mapping solutions on it, i decided that i did not need to get one.

 

[PM-Performance]

Hmmmm. very interesting. Not as bad as I would have thought then.
That mapping software pretty expensive I assume?

Other thing is. . . .while in navigation mode, i am assuming you do not have ability for normal phone features like text, phone calls, ect correct?
I guess that could be a downside (being a passenger for lack of argument)

 

[Eazy123]

Google Nav caches the route, so if you lose cell signal, you will not lose GPS(GPS is line of sight however and if you go in tunnels, you'll temporarily lose signal)

Really? What if you back out of Google Nav, does it still keep the cache?

 

[Eazy123]

Hmmmm. very interesting. Not as bad as I would have thought then.
That mapping software pretty expensive I assume?

Other thing is. . . .while in navigation mode, i am assuming you do not have ability for normal phone features like text, phone calls, ect correct?
I guess that could be a downside (being a passenger for lack of argument)

On the Pre, I was able to text while navigating.

 

[marclile]

Really? What if you back out of Google Nav, does it still keep the cache?

if you just back out of it, it continues to run. to exit google nav, you have to hit menu and then exit navigation.

 

[sniffs]

Really? What if you back out of Google Nav, does it still keep the cache?

No, it loses it.

in my travels, I've lost signal on my EVO and it tracked the route perfectly on the cached map for over 30 minutes.

 

[EvilMonkey]

Hmmmm. very interesting. Not as bad as I would have thought then.
That mapping software pretty expensive I assume?

Other thing is. . . .while in navigation mode, i am assuming you do not have ability for normal phone features like text, phone calls, ect correct?
I guess that could be a downside (being a passenger for lack of argument)

I believe I paid over $400 for new maps for my Garmin a couple years ago. I am not sure, but looked at their site and it looks like they've drastically reduced the cost, since Navigator NT is now $99.

I can make calls and do everything while in Nav mode. It just silences the navigation prompts while you are on a call....so yeah, it wouldn't work that great if you were doing a lot of calls while you are also trying to navigate somewhere.

The nice thing is that I have it plugged in my AUX jack in the car, and can use Pandora or Slacker Radio or just my music player and it silences the music to give you the voice prompt.

 

[marclile]

No, it loses it.

in my travels, I've lost signal on my EVO and it tracked the route perfectly on the cached map for over 30 minutes.

it continues to run in the background until you actually "exit navigation" though doesn't it?

 

[Eazy123]

That would be sick if there was a navigation program that could actually save (not just cache) entire sections of a map to the memory stick.