Best Turn-By-Turn Navigation

[Penelope_Weaver]

I'm new to Smartphones and hence Android. I bought the Note 3 with a 14-day trial and time is running out. I am very happy with just about everything about it?except the fact that I can't seem to find a turn-by-turn navigation program that vocalizes street names. (Apparently googlemaps and waze used to do this but don't anymore.) I'd also like to be able to download the maps, and have access to traffic and 3-d views. I live in the LA area. I don't mind paying for the program if it's reliable and accurate.
Thanks

 

[Puterguru]

Google Maps does vocalize street names...

 

[Penelope_Weaver]

I thought that I might have set up googlemaps incorrectly. But when I searched this issue on google, I discovered that there are a lot of people complaining that googlemaps had taken away the street name vocalization feature...
Maybe I'm crazy, but I would sure like to know how to make it (or another program) work on my Note3!

 

[kentuc794]

I use it at least once a week. Just open maps do a search for where you want to go and click the car icon at the bottom right of your screen. Then on the next screen click start navigation. Then you will get turn by turn directions.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

 

[Penelope_Weaver]

Thanks for the specific directions. (As I said, I am new to smartphones, etc!)
I'll try what you suggest this afternoon and let you know what happens...

 

[Hokie-Dave]

Waze vocalizes street names also. Make sure in the "sound" settings you have a voice checked that states "including streetnames". Should be one of the first two voices.

 

[Penelope_Weaver]

Thanks for the help. I have English (US) - Samantha including street names checked.
I don't know what's going on.
Will retest Waze as well Google Maps this afternoon and let you know what happened...

 

[Penelope_Weaver]

The plot thickens. Right before I set out, an update for google maps got installed on my phone. It seems to do the turn-by-turn navigation now—but occasionally some of the words are clipped. And waze exhibits the same odd behavior—but much worse because only the first (or last) syllable in a location seems to be vocalized. For example, when I thought it must be trying to say a long street name like "Chautauqua Boulevard," I only heard "ard." And at other times it would say "right" or "left" but I don't know whether this was at the beginning or the end of an instruction. Any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated. I really want to get one of these to work!

 

[kentuc794]

Are you using bluetooth so it comes through the car speakers? Mine will clip the first part like that when it is connected via bluetooth. My fix was to have Pandora playing which keeps the connection alive and will mute the music to announce the directions.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N900A using Tapatalk

 

[Penelope_Weaver]

I'm not using bluetooth—so I cannot blame the clipping on that. But yesterday I made an interesting discovery. I downloaded both the Samsung High Quality Female Text-to-Speech and Google Text-to-speech voices. But when I tried to "Listen to an example," nothing happened. After lots of googling, I discovered the problem: the media sound was completely turned off on my phone! So now I'm hoping that this might explain the clipping as well...
Will find out tomorrow when I try to use the navigation again.
I'll let you know what happens.

 

[H3aTeRzz]

Google Maps is all I use, never had any issues!

 

[zapfrog]

Interesting, I have never encountered these problems and use it weekly almost daily. By far one of the best free turn by turn direction apps.

That being said, it's great for directions from point a to b but for vacationing it sucks. Thats where Garmin and others win because they are fully equipped with motel/hotel, gas, bank, interesting destinations, traffic, food, etc. Plus it seems with every update they change the voice and the voice gets worse.