Droid Navigation

[aosman]

If you start your navigation somewhere where you have 3g then the maps DO preload... however if you exit the navigation and then try to fire it up again while in a dead spot you are in trouble. You are also screwed...I think.. if you deviate from it's directions while in a dead zone. It cant reaccess the maps again to figure you out an alternate rout.

I just drove frm tulsa to Dallas and went through atleast 100 miles of dead zone. On the way there i exited navigation to look at something and didnt get my navigation back untill 60 miles or so later when i approached civilization again. Troublesome because I wasn't sure about a turnoff in that stretch.

On the way home though i didnt touch it and it did fine through the same area even though pandora completely shut down for over an hour because of reentering the data dead zone (not even 1x). My girlfriend sitting beside me with her droid couldnt access a thing for that 100 mile stretch but my navigation kept on going on.

Interesting... and good feedback Cowpoke. This is a Android flaw that needs to be fixed. Until then, I wish there is a workaround where you can tell the software to keep the cached maps in the phone and not wipe them. When I navigated to Palomar mountain, I turned of navigation and GPS for about an two hours while we were there to save battery and when I was ready to head back, I turned on GPS and attempted to start navigation with no success because of the no signal issue. If the maps were cached then I would've avoided the problem.

[takeshi]

Anyone aware of a way to do this? I don't want to be stuck in another situation in the future where I am depending on the Google Navigation on my Droid and be unable to use it because no signal.

You'd just need a GPS app with map data stored on the SD card. I wouldn't really expect Google to do this since they tend to favor the cloud approach. It's really just a matter of time before we see more Android GPS apps.

hmm I havent had that problem. I was under the assumption that navigation used GPS and not 3g.

It does use the GPS receiver (if enabled) for fixing your location but maps and all that data have to be downloaded.

If you start your navigation somewhere where you have 3g then the maps DO preload...

That's pretty typical for GPS apps that stream data. Telenav behaves in the same manner.

[trainryche]

I can relate, my wife and I each have moto droids and 3 times in the month or so we have had them we have been on the road using navigation and one of the phones will lose or be unable to acquire gps... which is weird since it always seems to be showing where we are pretty accurately. When one phone can't acquire gps the second one always can. We are in the Temecula area of so cal, its happened in carlsbad and san diego too. Our signal is always strong out here so this one puzzles me.