"Here Map" for Driving Directions on Phone Takes over Watch....

[Jimmy Bernstein]

Not sure if this is new behavior or I just never noticed before, but I used "Here WeGo" on my phone for a driving route and (without me selecting it) the watch app completely took over my watch (so I couldn't use it for things like controlling music or making a voice recording--i.e., the watch would quickly revert back to the "Here" screen when I tried to select one of these other apps.)
I didn't see any options to disable this without stopping navigation altogether. Am I missing something? (In general, I wish the S2 would offer more options around its behavior of keeping an app active versus reverting back to watch face after a timeout period, etc.)

 

[tstreete]

It's been about six months since I've used Here maps, but I noticed that as well: the app is aggressive about how it takes over the watch (which in some circumstances might be what you want, but I can see not always), and I never figured out a way to control it's behavior. Agree that the S2 could use more settings, more user control; leave the "our way or the highway" software design to Apple.

 

[Jimmy Bernstein]

Thanks for the on-topic, thoughtful reply (increasingly, a rare commodity).
Just out of curiosity--what's your Android mapping app of choice these days?

 

[tstreete]

A while back, I experimented with both Komoot (on bikepaths) and Gear Navigator (on roads) while on a bicycle, where being able to glance at your wrist to see how far to the next intersection is useful. Here maps is good, but it takes over the watch, as you said; Gear Navigator had kind of the opposite problem, occasionally disappearing or freezing. For driving, I use TomTom on my phone, though Here maps is OK. I found the screen of the S2 too small for driving. And while using the S2 classic non-3g for walking around in strange cities is pretty interesting, it's not quite responsive enough to be very useful; the concrete canyons create lag and make the GPS jump around, which on the bigger screen of a phone is not so bad, but on the watch it means you too often have to stop walking and wait for the GPS to catch up; kinda defeats the purpose.