Navigation Update V 15 released today

To much focus on 'infotainment'. Not enough of a car being bought to be driven. As I said already, use your smartphone with a GPS app, which provides offline maps. Connected via Android Auto or Apple Carplay you got it made. And you get regular app and map updates!

 

I had been looking forward to using Android Auto on the 10.25" display, until I got the car and saw that Hyundai hadn't bothered to make it work on the full screen. In fact the 6.75" window made it slightly smaller than the 7" display on my old Volt. I guess they felt their development team was more productively occupied replacing the readable radio buttons by Nixie tubes.

In any event, I tried the Hyundai nav app and decided I liked using it better. YMMV but I do feel entitled to make my own choice.

 

The nav functionality in the infotainment system.

 

I ask this sincerely because I've simply never understood this reliance on and fascination with navigation. Where is everyone going that they are in constant need of directions? Before navigation I would print off Mapquest if I needed directions and that might, MIGHT, have happened once a year. Is everyone but me a wannabe Magellan exploring uncharted territories? Is everyone but me a delivery person in cities they don't frequent? I just don't get it.

 

Maybe there's no traffic up there in Ontario, but there is here in the Bay Area. It's helpful to see route choices and times under current conditions. And sometimes a nav system/app will suggest an alternate route when conditions change - handy with the toll bridges here, where that can sometimes save 15 minutes or more. If I'm on the phone and miss a freeway exit, it's nice to get directions. And sometimes I just like having an ETA displayed.

 

I could see the possible benefits of something like WAZE in certain situations but that's not really navigation as much as it's traffic reporting. And it's really got nothing to do with onboard nav. systems as they are apps housed on phones.

 

I don't see the need to make a distinction. I'm not going to fumble with my phone while driving, and don't need to since Android Auto and Carplay can run Waze and Google Maps on the infotainment screen. So phone apps and the onboard nav system may be implemented differently, but from the user/driver's point of view they are the same sort of thing.

 

These tools will all get you where you want to go - most of the time. The rest is personal preference. Note that the "most of the time" is important. I have a 95+% success over 12 or so years. It thought me not to be blind believer. Some got lost in the desert, some drove into a lake at night ....

 

I probably won’t take this update. Like others here I was disappointed in the spring update. The radio screen is a joke and it took me months of staring at the dim climate screen to learn what the graphic represented. Both were poor replacements for the simpler displays that preceded them.

I’ve been here before with another manufacturer: changes made because the engineers and the managers whose compensation depends on innovation asked for them. Such an approach finds favour with customers whose technology must be at the cutting edge but it alienates the rest of us who want just to increase the comfort and enjoyability of the hours we spend inside our vehicles.

 

I fully agree with your assessments of senseless/endless features. It is going far beyond Hyundai ....

 

The route offered an pick up traffic problems and re-route you to save you journey times.

 

Yes, but does the Hyundai Blue Link navigation provide those features?