Turn-by-turn in Prime better than Google Maps!

The best is waze. Bar none.

 

Great review!! That's my reason for not liking ANY factory-supplied GPS: 100 times harder to "program" a destination than my Garmin nuvi 3490LMT and updates and traffic are free!
The big advantage of my Prime Advanced's Big Screen, of course, is the ability to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime video (on my Prime!) Har, har. It makes those long drives so much more relaxing!!

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Interesting since I believe Google owns it. I know Google Maps uses some of its data, but I don't know how much comes back to Waze.

Lee, your usage pretty much aligns with my longer trip I took a week after owning it. Now I use the Entune apps, which you don't find much usage for, to pre-input my destinations to the Nav system. Works pretty good.

Waze is always running though in my vehicles. Generally the Social aspect of traffic updates works pretty darn good. YMMV

 

I would hope a dedicated GPS unit would give better directions than a phone ap that might have to work on a device without an actual GPS antenna.

 

I'm a Waze lover too. My favorite waze feature is the countdown thermometer to show how long you're going to be stuck in traffic - helps keep despair at bay. I think the San Francisco Bay Area is saturated with waze users. It doesn't seem to work as well where there are fewer users - I've tried it in suburban Chicago and Newport News, VA.

It seems to me that since Google bought waze both products have improved: google website has much better time estimates and waze has better searching. I haven't tried the google app in a few years.

Alas neither has rest areas as far as I can tell - that's a great thing for long trips when stops for gas are no longer required. Thank you, Lee Jay, for pointing that out! I was working on a list of rest areas for a 600 mile drive later this month.

 

Waze effectiveness depends heavily on the area you are travelling. Here in bay area, we have tons of uses and hence tons of data. It perfected the predictability part of the software.

 

BOB HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO WATCH NETFLIX AND AMAZON?

 

This is Henri Pierre, Henri PrimeAdvanced. Like anyone else, I watch Netflix with my left eye, and Amazon Prime with my right. I keep an eye on the road with my third eye. Quite simple, actually!!, har, har! I'm not sure what Bob's technique is....!

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Google Maps is dead-on. Nothing you describe is the apps fault. It is 100% the phone to blame. I have no idea what phone you have, but the phone has to get GPS reception well enough to get your data while moving and while being obstructed by natural obstacles (mountains) and man-made ones (buildings). All onboard GPS systems are not actually pure GPS. They take your wheel speed into account, and use that to update your GPS position when the GPS is gone or obstructed. Easiest way to see this in action, is go drive through a long tunnel like the Eisenhower tunnel. The Toyota system will show you gradually going through the mountain. The phone will show you going in, some averaging keeping you going for a few seconds, then it will stop and the GPS signal is lost. Then after you come out the other side of the tunnel, there is a lag and delay before it can re-pin-point you and comes "back online". The phone does a similar thing using cell triangulation based off of your signal to various towers in reach, but it is extremely inaccurate and is only considered an "assist", hence "aGPS".

I have used my phone and Google Maps to navigate extensively throughout the US and the world including remote locations. It all comes down to your device that's running on it.

My phone gets positioning info from GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and BeiDou as well as cell towers. In different parts of the world it picks up on all the signals available. For example in East Asia it will use GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou and I have super accurate positioning anywhere. Down on a remote island in the Southern hemisphere, only GPS and GLONASS.

The other thing that makes phones so variable are the resources available on the phone itself. A bad phone with low resources may miss turns as it is too slow in processing all the data coming in.

 

I wish Waze was on Entune. Waze has saved me many hours of traffic jams in travels from Chicago to Michigan. I kind of miss using it.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

I just got my Prime Plus and tried using the Navi around RI and I didn't like it. I thought it was slower and didn't show the detail that I'm used to seeing with Google Maps and Waze. I flip between the two depending on where i'm going. If I need lane guidance then I use Google Maps. if I am taking a normal route and want to be re-routed in case of traffic jams....and be warned of cops, then I use Waze.

Waze does have it's faults. It does work better on iphone. One major issue may have been because of my android phone but if I was going a long distance and I missed a turn, it would try to re-route me and it would time out. It happened twice on the crossbronx expressway and I divorced myself from Waze till I went back to iphone.

 

Yeah, I'm overall pretty pleased with the Prius Prime NAV, and it's GUI system as a whole.

Not to suggest that the GUI is really superb; in the case of the audio system, I've sometimes found it difficult to figure out how to back up the the previous step. Still, all-in-all, so far I'm fine with its "OS."

Somewhat relatedly, in the couple weeks I've had it, I have not yet had problems with crashes or iPhone-interfacing. I had to do an update right after I got it. That might suggest that Toyota fixed something.


iPhone ? Pro

 

Doesn't matter who owns Waze. If it's unfriendly, and I think it is, uninstall it, which I did, too. Since difference between Google Maps and Nav is negligible and Nav is hard to program (I agree), I'm sticking with Google. nothings perfectperfect. In another trial, Google might be slightly better. Need about 100 trials.

Gen 2 (2006) and Gen 4 (2017)

 

I do Philly to Tampa road trips a couple of times a year. I tried a few times to show rest areas with Google maps. No luck with that.
Looking forward to trying that on the nav in my Prius Prime.

Thanks Lee Jay for discovering that feature and agree with your comments about entering destinations.
You better get the destination in before you start driving.

I always familiarize myself with the nav a few times in the neighborhood before hitting the road on a trip. Yesterday, I was totally baffled when the screen would not recenter after inadvertently touching it. I had to spend a half hour looking through the manual to find the home button does that.

 

Lee, that's interesting about your phone, you must be on an Android, which I don't use. When any nav app is on my iPhone 7+, the phone will not go to sleep. For me plugging it is just such a habit now, that it isn't such a big deal, my Gen 3 always needed Entune running to have some of the features working on the Nav system.

And thanks for the headsup about tilt on the map screen, will have to check that out.