Best Cell Phone App

waze

Bumpyroad wrote:

wildtoad wrote:
While it sounds good to use your phone and an app to navigate but you will be happier with a Garmin for RVs. Garmin is the best of a so so bunch. Yes you will have an additional piece of hardware but money well spent.

and you won't be stuck with a tiny phone screen, I have found that bigger is better.
bumpy

Step into 2021 cell phones can now display their images on the larger built in screens of the vehicle via car play or Android auto.
You are no longer limited to the tiny phone screen on newer vehicles.

I use Google Maps. The CoPilot is a handy app also.

Yeah, but you and I are the Grumpy-Old-Men in residence.

A

Allworth wrote:
I am sure I'll catch a bunch of flak over this, but based on 15 years of pulling a fiver and having used everything from a Garmin hand-held to a Rand-McNaly RVND (backed up with cell phones and/or laptops):

99.75 percent of the time a stand-alone navigation specific device with lifetime updates is more accurate and faster than any app or software.

If it can see the sky it works!

A

PS - Always carry a fairly recent print comp of the Trucker's Road Atlas.

I agree
bumpy

I am sure I'll catch a bunch of flak over this, but based on 15 years of pulling a fiver and having used everything from a Garmin hand-held to a Rand-McNaly RVND (backed up with cell phones and/or laptops):

99.75 percent of the time a stand-alone navigation specific device with lifetime updates is more accurate and faster than any app or software.

If it can see the sky it works!

A

PS - Always carry a fairly recent print copy of the Trucker's Road Atlas.

I have not had issues with Google Maps when I lose cellphone coverage. In fact the big issue with Google Maps and other similar programs is the huge use of data if you travel with Maps running continuously.

pnichols wrote:
In addition to our phones and excellent Garmin navigator, when traveling in the Western U.S. we always try to carry along several of these to cover each state we might wind-up in. They are excellent - and well worth the money: https://www.benchmarkmaps.com/atlas

I'm curious ... my phone has a huge storage memory (256GB) and as I understand it ... full GPS capability. When is SOMEONE going to come out with a super great navigation phone app (doesn't have to be free), that can hold an entire U.S. roads updateable database (updates don't have to be free) in phones with large storage capacity ... that DOES NOT need to have Internet access in order to navigate?

It seems like many of today's modern phones could be programmed and otherwise equipped to on demand perform just like (or better than) a non-Internet-connected navigation unit. :h

Your phone has GPS and uses the GPS to navigate when you don't have cell service. I use Wayze a lot when traveling and travel over mountain passes with no cell, the GPS keeps the location on the map up to date, but nothing else updates like police, incidents, etc. I also have a map app on my dash cam app, kind of cool as it also shows you the road ahead. But Wayze is my go to.

After spending a small fortune on Garmin GPS's over the years I bought the Copilot RV APP for $6.99. You don't need internet connection, is automatically updated and it works with no cell towers. You can set the ht of your RV and it will avoid low brides and propane restricted tunnels. It came with active traffic for 30 days then you had to pay. Instead of paying I just use Waze when around cities to check for traffic backups.

RV Life, Sygic Truck/caravan, and trucker path all are big rig specific apps that allow full offline map capabilities. I just found out that Sygic has a plugin for Chrome and Firefox that allows you to send a route to the app so I'll probably be investing the $75 in a 3 year license for their caravan product. If I don't like that I'll try trucker path gold at $99/year. It's basically the Google maps interface tweaked for truck specific routing/POI and with full offline database. If it wasn't so expensive I'd probably just pay right now as it has the best interface of all the big rig solutions I've tried.