Yes, you can use a smartphone for satellite navigation on a road trip but doing so with A-GPS on your smartphone will consume a lot of mobile data, access which might not be available. If you are in a rural part of America, your phones 4G-LTE or 5G wireless network might not be accessible cellular networks if you are in a "dead zone" or deep rural area camping or similar. Safer to use a dedicated GPS for navigation because of the simple always on interface with easily legible cartoon graphics & turn by turn audio speaker voice instructions.
A window mounted GPS unit easier to read at-a-glance with its cartoon like graphics and the touch interface typically contains larger easier to touch graphical user elements that make it easier to interact with. Since the GPS wired into your vehicle power with its charging cable into the 12v accessory outlet, using the GPS unit does not drain your phone battery. You can even turn your smartphone off & focus on driving & navigating safely ^^
Yes, Apple Maps & Google Maps on your smartphone has more features & functionality for local navigation, last mile navigation, more modes of operations & blah blah, but nothing matches a dedicated GPS device overall performance in terms of viewability, legibility, ease of use, constant power on without needing any networking or wireless networks.
Yes, Apple Maps & Google Maps on your smartphone has more features & functionality for local navigation, last mile navigation, more modes of operations & blah blah, but nothing matches a dedicated GPS device overall performance in terms of viewability, legibility, ease of use, constant power on without needing any networking or wireless networks.
The automotive GPS has all the maps loaded onboard or on the installed memory card, so no mobile data needed, and no wireless network access required for operation. This means the GPS will work where A-GPS in most cellphones does not, especially during natural disasters when cell networks are overloaded or there are network outages, system wide power outages or similar hazards & disaster conditions.
Below I describe the tedious process of getting my older Garmin with its lifetime maps & traffic updates, to update, but in the end, I succeeded where many others would have "thrown in the towel." This was Nuvi Map Update was done using a Windows 10 fully software updated laptop and the Garmin Express software.
It took 26 attempts over the course of 2 days, a few hours each morning, and applying all of the methods described below to update the Lifetime Maps on our Garmin nuvi2589lmt.
Main Garmin Map Update Solution Points
Restore your Garmin device to factory settings if you are unable to update the map or if the onboard maps are corrupt. This can be accessed in the settings
Run the Garmin Express software as administrator during the map update
Turn off the network firewall settings temporarily, enhances stability of update, then turn the firewall settings back on as soon as you are done.
Do not use the computer for anything else during the update over USB cable to your Garmin nav. unit
If the map update fails, restart the Garmin unit & the computer with the Garmin Express Software
In the Garmin software folder, install Map Update as it contains special USB drivers that windows does not contain
You might have to adjust the proxy settings in Windows to make it work
Get a Bigger Memory Card (From your Old Android Phone)
Older Garmin nav units do not have enough onboard useable memory storage (less than 7GB) to store the current 8GB+ 2023 Map Update (CN North America NT 2023.20 ALL Canada & Mexico, CN North America NT 2023.20 ALL US, and CN North America NT 2023.20 Foursquare) which is larger than 8 GB. To achieve this, install an SD card with more capacity (16-32GB) or similar capacity micro-SDHC card into navigation units memory card slot (bottom edge), as was the case with the 32GB Sandisk class 10 trans flash card I took out of my old Kyocera Brigadier, after which I then extracted the photos & videos to a folder on the windows 10 laptop, then reformatted the microSD to FAT32 for use after installing it into the nuvi2589lmt in order to accommodate the enormous number of files for the current as of 7/15/2022 map update. If you have an older disused android phone with such a memory card, take your personal photo & video content off the card & store it on your other computer, then use the windows drive format tool or DISK TOOL in MacOS, to reformat the memory card before installing it into your Garmin navigation unit.
Smartphone as GPS Fail Faster from Overheating
Most GPS units are more durable & less fragile than a typical glass screen smartphone. Most smartphone do not come with a suction-cup mounting solution to mount as a GPS to the front window of your automobile. Using a smartphone as a GPS for long road trips or while driving UBER or LIFT will heat up the phone, running its SOC stack at full TDP or as hot as it can operate, while overcharging & holding the LiPo battery fulling charged while waste heat from the chipset heating it, which is double bad for the battery life.
It took 26 attempts over the course of 2 days, a few hours each morning, and applying all of the methods described below to update the Lifetime Maps on our Garmin nuvi2589lmt.
Main Garmin Map Update Solution Points
Restore your Garmin device to factory settings if you are unable to update the map or if the onboard maps are corrupt. This can be accessed in the settings
Run the Garmin Express software as administrator during the map update
Turn off the network firewall settings temporarily, enhances stability of update, then turn the firewall settings back on as soon as you are done.
Do not use the computer for anything else during the update over USB cable to your Garmin nav. unit
If the map update fails, restart the Garmin unit & the computer with the Garmin Express Software
In the Garmin software folder, install Map Update as it contains special USB drivers that windows does not contain
You might have to adjust the proxy settings in Windows to make it work
Get a Bigger Memory Card (From your Old Android Phone)
Older Garmin nav units do not have enough onboard useable memory storage (less than 7GB) to store the current 8GB+ 2023 Map Update (CN North America NT 2023.20 ALL Canada & Mexico, CN North America NT 2023.20 ALL US, and CN North America NT 2023.20 Foursquare) which is larger than 8 GB. To achieve this, install an SD card with more capacity (16-32GB) or similar capacity micro-SDHC card into navigation units memory card slot (bottom edge), as was the case with the 32GB Sandisk class 10 trans flash card I took out of my old Kyocera Brigadier, after which I then extracted the photos & videos to a folder on the windows 10 laptop, then reformatted the microSD to FAT32 for use after installing it into the nuvi2589lmt in order to accommodate the enormous number of files for the current as of 7/15/2022 map update. If you have an older disused android phone with such a memory card, take your personal photo & video content off the card & store it on your other computer, then use the windows drive format tool or DISK TOOL in MacOS, to reformat the memory card before installing it into your Garmin navigation unit.
Smartphone as GPS Fail Faster from Overheating
Most GPS units are more durable & less fragile than a typical glass screen smartphone. Most smartphone do not come with a suction-cup mounting solution to mount as a GPS to the front window of your automobile. Using a smartphone as a GPS for long road trips or while driving UBER or LIFT will heat up the phone, running its SOC stack at full TDP or as hot as it can operate, while overcharging & holding the LiPo battery fulling charged while waste heat from the chipset heating it, which is double bad for the battery life.
Smartphones used as commercial ride hailing interface with Google Maps & the LIFT & UBER & text messaging & mobile internet all running, will burn up or die or fail within 8 months of daily heavy use from heat damage. Excessive heat loading also created as the suns thermal energy entering through the front window strikes your phone with solar radiation; nearly all phones lack a dedicated fan cooler or air source fan heatsink cooling solution.
A cleaver smartphone cooling trick: if you are running the AC for cabin cooling, mount the smartphone to the vent so that cold air from the AC will blow past the phone constantly, which will keep the temperatures lower your phone last longer. You can buy fan enhanced smartphone mounts that similarly blow air at your phone to keep it cool while driving Uber Eats, DoorDash or similar mobile phone app-based delivery driver jobs, like Amazon Flex or similar. Fan cooling is why server rooms are so noisy. In server racks the slot mounted computers use high performance loud fans to shove air through the machine rapidly or at high rates to keep the machine cooler. This is also why cloud compute infrastructure, supercomputers, server locals & other information technology search engine or elastic compute infrastructure building typically have large diesel backup generators onsite & many dozens or hundreds of tons of air conditioning capacity (many roof-mounted HVAC units) and such high power consumption. Most cryptocurrency miners (ASIC or GPU) similarly use many fans to blow air past chipset heatsinks to keep the hot parts cooler. Cooling computer chips makes them last longer.
Heat is a measure of molecular kinetic vibration; such that higher temperatures represent more molecular vibration. Heat cycling or very high temperatures cause computer chips to break down faster by causing cracks, voids, fissures, connection severing, shorts & package delamination when chips are heated above 85 C. Every 10 deg C lower than 85 C roughly doubles the useful life of most chips. This is similar to why an oil-cooler enhances the life of an automobile or truck automatic transmission. People can overheat with heat stroke too. Lithium-ion batteries are damaged by high heat as well. It seems in the biosphere of Earth; most devices & lifeforms prefer moderate average STP or standard temperatures & pressures. This is why people in cold locals started developing clothing, as thermal insulation so they could operate outdoors in the wintertime. This is why most automobiles have climate controls or air conditioning, for cabin heating in cold weather & for cabin cooling in hot weather. Many homes & buildings have insulation to minimize heat movement to keep the home warmer in the winter & cooler in the summary, while wasting less energy. Insulation reduces energy use in buildings.
Heat-pumps are the most efficient way to move heat around, like vapor chamber cooling on chipsets, more intelligence applied to the thermodynamic properties of a device, the better the performance, efficiency or longevity. With more intelligence applied to anything, better solutions emerge.
Heat is a measure of molecular kinetic vibration; such that higher temperatures represent more molecular vibration. Heat cycling or very high temperatures cause computer chips to break down faster by causing cracks, voids, fissures, connection severing, shorts & package delamination when chips are heated above 85 C. Every 10 deg C lower than 85 C roughly doubles the useful life of most chips. This is similar to why an oil-cooler enhances the life of an automobile or truck automatic transmission. People can overheat with heat stroke too. Lithium-ion batteries are damaged by high heat as well. It seems in the biosphere of Earth; most devices & lifeforms prefer moderate average STP or standard temperatures & pressures. This is why people in cold locals started developing clothing, as thermal insulation so they could operate outdoors in the wintertime. This is why most automobiles have climate controls or air conditioning, for cabin heating in cold weather & for cabin cooling in hot weather. Many homes & buildings have insulation to minimize heat movement to keep the home warmer in the winter & cooler in the summary, while wasting less energy. Insulation reduces energy use in buildings.
Heat-pumps are the most efficient way to move heat around, like vapor chamber cooling on chipsets, more intelligence applied to the thermodynamic properties of a device, the better the performance, efficiency or longevity. With more intelligence applied to anything, better solutions emerge.
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