Android crew, are you using waze or Google maps for navigation?

Been trying out waze for the last few days and definitely not it's better than Google maps! On a stretch of the a1, towards London, where the a14 branches away from the a1 towards m11, Google maps is terrible. However, waze is able to actually direct me to stay on either of the 2 outer lanes, wguch is brilliant. So yes so far, I'm down with waze.
 
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I use google maps plus TomTom AmiGO running in background for speed cameras etc. I don't speed but I have a real paranoia about speed cameras especially in areas I don't know.

One thing though - anyone know how to turn off Google Maps auto re-route, I have my phone in my centre box with just audio into my car radio - I don't touch the phone during the journey and if I've picked a specific route, for the sake of 10 minutes traffic say I don't want a re-route.

Seems to be set to re-route automatically unless you press no/cancel - which (1) can't do as in centre console (2) even if wasn't you wouldn't be allowed to anyway ?
 
adam cool dude said:
Google Maps.

What is more important is teaching your kids to follow road signs and not follow the sat nav. You should only really need to follow sat nav for the last few miles.

Nothing beats knowledge in the end though and a sat nav that is more basic in that regard is the best as it teaches you to use your eyes. Our road signage is fantastic really and some of the best in Europe. Use it and it will do you good. I can spot a nav follower from a mile off when on the road coming up to junctions because they are listening and looking at what the Nav is saying rather than looking up and left at the signs telling them which lane to be in for where the road is going.

As for traffic Garmin is by far the best I have used although that isn't free as you need to buy a device.
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It's quite funny seeing my dad use a sat nav because on the routes he knows he disagrees with the routing sometimes but I explained to him he could just ignore it and it would automatically re-calculate if he goes his own route, I think he's a lot happier with it now just using it for the bit at the end destination.

As for location road signs (not things like speed limits, hazard warnings etc) I'd say they are basically a poor substitute for a good sat nav with the exception of lane indicators. Basically a road sign is a periodic indicator that only tells you the direction to places nearby or large towns. So if I'm going to town X I need to know to follow the sign for town Y until I get closer to X. Whereas a sat nav you give it a specific location hundreds of miles away and it leads you the whole way. You can compensate for this to some extent by panning your route in advance so you know which signs to follow, but if you take a wrong turn or there is a road closure etc then your plans become outdated. Modern live connected ones also re-route around delays etc.

Don't get me wrong location road signs were great when we didn't have sat navs and are a useful backup if sat nav fails for some reason, but I view them as something that is functional but suboptimal compared to the tech we can leverage now. It's a bit like an encylopedia, a great resource when I was a kid and still functional, but nowadays I'd look up info online rather than reaching for one of those weighty tomes.
 
HangTime said:
It's quite funny seeing my dad use a sat nav because on the routes he knows he disagrees with the routing sometimes but I explained to him he could just ignore it and it would automatically re-calculate if he goes his own route, I think he's a lot happier with it now just using it for the bit at the end destination.
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Reminds me when I was ~13 I encouraged my Dad to get a SatNav. He ended up buying a cheap thing from Makro that turned out to be a pocket PC running Windows. Soon enough I had TomTom on it.

The first outing he was saying it was nonsense, but I insisted he was a luddite and to follow the SatNav home. Bless the guy, he totally entertained me. I think we ended up about 15 miles from home and it said "arrived at your destination" outside some blokes house (which just happened to be the default home address back then). I had forgotten to update "Home" to be our home.
 
I prefer Waze, but it has got quite slow and bloated compared to how it was.

Both are better than most of the built in satnavs though.
 
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Waze for me but sometime you have to use a bit of common sense re some of the rat runs it wants you to take
 
I’ve had Android Auto for about 4 years, mostly have google maps on screen showing my location with some music playing. I’ve got a wireless adapter now which means I can leave my phone in pocket.

I don’t really need it but it came in handy for the first time the other day, a road was closed so I had to go down some lanes and I wasn’t sure which direction I should be going in. Said to google “take me home” and it mapped out a route home for me so I could get back on track.

As soon as I had my bearings again I cancelled the navigation by saying “hey google cancel navigation”. Pretty cool, I thought.
 
I use both and have used both since the dawn of time whether on Android Auto Wireless or dedicated apps on the Android head unit or phone. Google is more intuitive and the regular route updates with voice is very welcome, means less need to glance at the "bong" Waze makes to see what it wants. Also sat maps layer is useful when in a new area and want to get a birds eye literal view of the area.

Google Nav's map UI and overall UX is better than Waze, too but the Android Auto part of Google Nav is not as good as it misses some key features like active speedo indicator next to the current road speed limit. You have the speedo on the dedicated G Maps app on head unit and phone, but not on Android Auto, which is simply bizarre.

Accuracy for both has been about the same, I have the usual "avoid complex junctions, avoid tolls" etc turned off, I just chose the fastest route options in both and they just work.
 
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tsobo said:
Been trying out waze for the last few days and definitely not it's better than Google maps! On a stretch of the a1, towards London, where the a14 branches away from the a1 towards m11, Google maps is terrible. However, waze is able to actually direct me to stay on either of the 2 outer lanes, wguch is brilliant. So yes so far, I'm down with waze.
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Why do you need a sat nav to tell you that? The road signs are clear as butter as to where you need to be to continue your journey. The signs are humongous.

This is my point about people blindly following what a Sat Nav tells you.
 
I quite like both. Waze is useful driving across Europe because you can set it to avoid toll roads but then add vignettes for specific countries to override those settings for countries you have a motorway vignette for. Massively useful compared to Google which is all or nothing with tolls.
 
adam cool dude said:
Google Maps.

What is more important is teaching your kids to follow road signs and not follow the sat nav. You should only really need to follow sat nav for the last few miles.

Nothing beats knowledge in the end though and a sat nav that is more basic in that regard is the best as it teaches you to use your eyes. Our road signage is fantastic really and some of the best in Europe. Use it and it will do you good. I can spot a nav follower from a mile off when on the road coming up to junctions because they are listening and looking at what the Nav is saying rather than looking up and left at the signs telling them which lane to be in for where the road is going.

As for traffic Garmin is by far the best I have used although that isn't free as you need to buy a device.
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I'm terrible for this now, just sat nav and go.
I do try to check the map for long journeys, try to make a bit of a route, but I'm far to reliant on sat nav.
 
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