Garmin Nuvi 34xx/35xx updates firmware & Smartphone Link - Traffic Problems Solved?

Today Garmin released firmware v6.2 for the Nuvi 34xx and 35xx devices, as well as a Smartphone Link for Android app update.  The release notes make reference to several Smartphone Link and Traffic improvements that insinuate that perhaps we finally have a fix for an apparent problem that I outlined several months ago in this post and this post.  I won't restate those posts other than to say that the problem was an apparent incompatibility when using both Smartphone Link Live Traffic and the GTM-60 HD traffic receiver.

After updating my Nuvi 3590LMT to v6.2 and upgrading my Smartphone Link for Android app, I set out to determine whether the problems have been solved.  Tonight I report that I think that most of the issues are resolved.  I say that I think they are resolved because there is one little nuance that I observed that I am not entirely sure how to interpret.  In addition there remains one issue that appears to still be unresolved.  Here we go...

I began this test with Smartphone Link connected and the Nuvi connected to a non-traffic-receiver DC power source.  As expected, traffic was received without issue through Smartphone Link.

Smartphone Link connected, GTM-60 disconnected.

I then turned off my smartphone's bluetooth service and turned off the Nuvi.  I turned the Nuvi back on with the non-traffic-receiver DC power source to ensure that all knowledge of any traffic detail was gone.  I confirmed this by attempting to go to the traffic screen.  I was shown this screen:

Bluetooth off / Smartphone Link disconnected / GTM-60 disconnected

Next, I connected the GTM-60 while bluetooth was still turned off (thus Smartphone Link disconnected).  The Nuvi began to acquire traffic from the GTM-60 as shown in the following screen:

Bluetooth off / Smartphone Link disconnected / Obtaining traffic signal from the GTM-60

Once the GTM-60 successfully connected to the traffic service, I obtained traffic content.  Bluetooth and Smartphone Link are still disconnected.  You can be assured that the traffic being received comes from the GTM-60 because of the green signal strength bars at the top of the screen below.  These are not present when using Smartphone Link as your traffic source.

Bluetooth off / Smartphone Link disconnected / GTM-60 connected

So far, everything works as expected.  But it worked like this up to this point two months ago too.  Now is the step that will test if anything has been fixed from two months ago.  With the GTM-60 connected, I will now enable bluetooth and connect Smartphone Link.

Smartphone Link connected / GTM-60 connected

Yeah!  Unlike what happened two months ago, I received a Traffic Up To Date message from Smartphone Link while the GTM-60 is connected.  The traffic incident shown above was short lived and within a couple seconds of seeing this screen, the screen changed to this:

Smartphone Link connected / GTM-60 connected

This is still a positive sign.  The GTM-60 is connected. Smartphone Link is connected.  I am seeing messages that reinforce that this is working as it should.  It is reporting Traffic Up To Date and No Traffic In Area.  This reinforces that a signal is being received from Smartphone Link and the content of that traffic signal is no traffic content.  However, while observing this screen I find that this screen only lasts a matter of seconds.  The screen then switches to the screen below for a significant amount of time (several minutes).  The switching from the screen above to the screen below is what makes me unsure that this is working exactly as I'd expect it to be.

Smartphone Link connected / GTM-60 connected

This screen is what makes me unsure about whether this is really fixed or not.  This screen is only seen when BOTH Smartphone Link and the GTM-60 are connected.  You never see this screen when using only Smartphone Link or only the GTM-60.  Garmin needs to be consistent about the messages it presents to the user so that confidence is instilled in the user that the service is working as it should be.

I must presume how this should be working because Garmin doesn't document the specifics.  I presume that there are two aspects of receiving traffic data on this unit.  First, you must have a data connection to the traffic server.  Garmin has provided us two ways to make this data connection, either using HD Radio through the GTM-60, or using bluetooth through Smartphone Link.  Once this data connection is made to the traffic server, then we obtain traffic CONTENT from it.

When only the GTM-60 is used, Garmin nicely presents the status of the traffic CONNECTION by showing the green signal strength bars at the top of the screen.  However, when the Smartphone Link app is used, there is NO confirmation provided to the user that there is a traffic CONNECTION being made.  All we know is that there is a bluetooth connection to our phone.  That is not the equivalent of the green signal strength bars when the GTM-60 is used.  Bluetooth can be connected without there being a connection to the traffic server.

Therefore, when Garmin shows the message above "Waiting for Traffic Data" it leads the user to say "Why?"  Why are you waiting for the traffic data?  Do you not have communication with the traffic server? Or is this simply the dormant period while the Nuvi waits 2 minutes (or whatever the time is) before it checks for the next traffic message and everything is operating as expected?  There is no way for the user to know this.

One thing left unresolved is the intelligent switching between Smartphone Link and the GTM-60 for users on a 3G CDMA network (Verizon, Sprint and others).  On a 3G CDMA network there is no data connection while on a voice call.  But when in a voice call, the Nuvi screen shown above never changes.  This perpetuates the confusion.  When on a phone call on a 3G CDMA network there is no way that the Nuvi will receive traffic data but it continues to say "Waiting for Traffic Data."  There is no data connection available on the smartphone.  The Nuvi should be intelligent enough to detect the loss of connection to the traffic server from the smartphone and switch to the GTM-60.  Instead, the Nuvi sits there "Waiting for Traffic Data" when there is no chance of receiving it until the phone call is over.

This perpetuates the confusion of the "Waiting for Traffic Data" message when not on a call.  Since it has been shown that this message is displayed while on a phone call when there is no possibility that it could be connected to the traffic server, it gives me no confidence as to whether I am actively connected to the traffic server or not.

The user should be shown the connection status to the traffic server, the signal strength of that connection (GTM-60 only) and the content of the traffic message.  Those three pieces of information permit users to know what is happening with their traffic service at all times.

One other annoyance remains not addressed in this update.  This issue involves Garmin's use of the green traffic icon on the main map display.  Consider the following example:  you are driving on the freeway between two major cities.  You are using the GTM-60 traffic receiver.  As you travel between major cities, somewhere in the middle you will be well beyond the reception range of the GTM-60.  You are therefore not receiving any traffic content at all.  However, because the GTM-60 is simply physically connected to the Nuvi, Garmin displays a green traffic icon on the map.  This is inaccurate.  A green traffic icon indicates that traffic is clear.  The Nuvi doesn't know this however, because it doesn't have a traffic signal at all.  The icon should be a gray or similar color to indicate a lack of a traffic signal.  Visually, Garmin should not be presenting "No Traffic in Area" the exact same way as not having a traffic signal at all.  It is inaccurate and misleading.

Bottom line - it appears that the traffic problems when using both Smartphone Link and the GTM-60 are resolved.  However, there is much work that could be done to improve the presentation of this information to the user.  And there is an unresolved problem for 3G CDMA users that still needs to be addressed.  The majority of CDMA users will not be using 4G (which does allow simultaneous voice & data) until well after the 34xx and 35xx series devices will likely be discontinued.  Garmin should fix this 3G CDMA oversight.

Garmin adds Tracker feature to Smartphone Link - Beware surprise privacy issues!

Today, Garmin released an update to Smartphone Link which added an exciting feature called Tracker.  Think of tracker as Garmin's version of Google Latitude.  This feature requires an update to Smartphone Link in the Android Play Market as well as an upgrade to Nuvi firmware v6.2.

The Tracker functionality allows you to use your smartphone to keep track of other Garmin Tracker user's location.  However, the Tracker feature also lets you post messages and location information to both Facebook and Twitter.  Interestingly, Garmin's implementation of this feature seems to require both the Facebook and Twitter apps to be on your phone.  You enable this feature from within the Smartphone Link app, not on your Nuvi.  It appears to derive your login information for these services from the Facebook and Twitter apps themselves rather than having you enter them into the Smartphone Link app.  When selecting the social network services you wish to use, appropriate permissions are requested and confirmed within the Smartphone Link app.

You can enable a "follow me" functionality that can be time limited.  This feature allows you to select other Tracker users, as well as Facebook and Twitter posts, to be the recipient of periodic "check-ins" of your location.  I have not yet experimented with how often the follow me check-ins occur.

There is also a manually initiated feature that allows you to "send" your current location to other Tracker users, to Facebook and to Twitter.  You can select or deselect any of those services as you choose.  Garmin has provided canned messages such as "running late" or "stuck in traffic" that can be selected.  In a nice touch, Garmin has also populated the canned messages with messages that are "location aware."  In other words, my current location city was populated as a select-able canned message.  Also available was a message that said "it is 72 degrees here" obviously pulling that information from the Smartphone Link Advanced Weather feature. Job well done on this Garmin.

I selected a canned message that said "In Des Moines, IA" and posted it to Twitter and Facebook.  The Nuvi presents a confirmation screen that the message was posted.  Upon reviewing the resulting post on both Facebook and Twitter, I was pleased with the presentation, but also very concerned about the privacy implications of what I found.

On Facebook my message "In Des Moines, IA" was posted with the expected footer message indicating that it was posted by Garmin Tracker.  But there was also a clickable image of a website in the post! On Twitter, it also said "In Des Moines, IA" but also contained a clickable URL!

When clicking either the Facebook or Twitter link, I was brought to this webpage:

I was very surprised to find the amount of detail being revealed that I found on this website.  At the top of the page (not shown here) was my name, exactly how I'd entered it into the Garmin Tracker app.  But more disturbing was the availability of data that included an exact street address, latitude / longitude, and speed I was traveling.  There was also a map that included zoom controls that provides viewers with house-level precision of my location!

Perhaps I am too used to Google Latitude and its privacy controls, but I did not expect Garmin Tracker to reveal this level of detail about my location.  I very often use social media to inform friends of my location, but in a very general sense.  I might post that I've arrived "In Chicago, IL" or "Landed at LAX."  But seldom do I want anyone but my immediate family to know my precise location to the level shown above.

The level of detail revealed by Garmin Tracker might be fine for my wife to know.  But I probably don't want my Facebook friends to know that level of detail.  And, for sure, I don't want my Twitter followers, who I might not even know, to know this level of detail.

Tying a location notification feature to your Garmin Nuvi  makes perfect sense and it is well implemented by Garmin with this new Tracker feature.  However, it badly needs user controls for the granularity of information shared, like Google Latitude currently offers.  There are obvious reasons why, for the same location notification post, that I'd like my wife's Garmin Tracker ID to know my precise location, but my Facebook friends and Twitter followers to know only the town I am in.  I can think of no case where revealing my speed is necessary or important.

Garmin has some work to do on disclosing and tightening up this privacy issue, but Tracker is a great start to a useful feature.

Garmin completely unresponsive to Google Play Market customer service channel

At CES, Garmin introduced the Smartphone Link app to the Android Market.  As I've blogged before, this app introduced integration between a conventional PND and the smartphone is some potentially powerful and profound ways.

Consumers beware:  you better hope you don't experience any customer service issues with this app, because Garmin has been completely unresponsive to contact through the Google Play Market in over 2.5 months.

In previous blog posts, I've outlined problems with the traffic and weather features of the Smartphone Link app.  In the course of troubleshooting these problems with me, Garmin telephone support had me remove the Smartphone Link app and re-install it.   As part of that process you have to re-establish that you purchased the premium services in order to get them back.  To do that, I "re-purchased" the Premium Weather feature.  Once I re-purchased the Premium Weather feature, the system recognized that I also owned the other 3 services as well and re-enabled them automatically.  I fully expected that since I purchased Premium Weather the day before, Garmin's system would recognize me as a customer of that feature and re-enable it.  Imagine my surprise when I was billed AGAIN by Garmin for $4.99.  Here is my purchase history from Google Wallet:

As you can see, I was billed on both January 9th and January 10th for Advanced Weather for $4.99 despite this being used on the same phone, in the same app.

No problem I thought.  I'll just contact Garmin and get this resolved.  As every software developer does, Garmin provides contact information in the Google Play Market for customer contact.  With a huge company like Garmin, I would assume that this contact would be a contact best suited to deal with a particular issue like a billing issue in the Google Play Market.  That is a pretty niche and obscure issue.  Here is a screenshot of where Garmin provides this customer contact method inside of Google Play Market:

See the "Contact Garmin International, Inc." link above?  Yes, so did I.  I've used it twice.  Take a look at my contact history above, thoughtfully summarized by Google in the Google Play Market order history.  You can see that I first contacted Garmin on January 10th, the day that I was billed twice for the same feature.  I received no response after a month. I sent a second request on February 17.  Here we are, almost 6 weeks later and I've gotten no response whatsoever from Garmin.

In normal circumstances, I'd simply dispute this on my credit card.  Clearly, I'd succeed.  However, in this case, I am afraid that given Garmin's apparent incompetence at dealing with basic customer service issues, they'd fail to understand that this is a duplicate billing issue and rather assume that I was simply disputing the charge for Advanced Weather.  The repercussions of this would be that they could simply shut off the app on the service side.  Despite Advanced Weather not working like it should right now, I don't want to loose access to it.

This is very disappointing Garmin.  Garmin badly flubbed their initial response to me when I reported problems with Smartphone Link.  They've been in possession of detailed data about the problems, including screen shots, for over 11 weeks now with no fix being issued.  And now as you can see, they've completely ignored a basic customer service contact for over 12 weeks.  I'd call them about this but quite frankly I've got better things to do with my time than wait on hold for 30 minutes.  I've used the customer contact method closest to the source of my problem, as provided by Garmin, and Garmin has completely ignored it.

In Garmin's investor relations information they proclaim in their Code of Conduct that Garmin's values "shine through in our interactions with customers."  It is difficult to take that seriously given the experiences that I've outlined in this blog.

Garmin 3590 Road Test in LA: The good & the bad

I just returned from a week long vacation to Los Angeles.  During my trip, I drove about 480 miles in southern California traffic, using my Garmin 3590LMT the entire time.  The verdict?  It was a good experience overall, however I experienced two significant problems.

First, the good....The routing combined with the 3D Traffic service was very, very good.  You can say one thing about LA - there is always "another way" to get everywhere.  The Garmin unit seemed to find them.  The unit seemed to do a good job in general, of avoiding traffic jams.  There were three times when it actually got me off the freeway and back on later down the road to avoid a significant traffic issue.  Unfortunately, in one case confirmed by visual confirmation, the traffic incident was false.  Overall though, I was very impressed with the routing and the traffic.  I've had very different experiences with the traffic quality on the 3590 in other markets, but in LA I found it to be very good.

The awareness of POV lanes, lane guidance and freeway sign imagery were extremely valuable on this trip.  I do not know LA freeways at all.  I am driving blindly for the most part, trusting the Garmin.  Gladly, I could trust it and the guidance features it provides make a dedicated PND much better than most smartphone solutions.  Had we been driving our RV instead of a rental car, I would proclaim the lane guidance (in particular) irreplaceable.

Unfortunately, the 3590 exhibited a significant problem with random rebooting.  Upon landing in LA, my unit rebooted *6* times in the 30 minute trip from the airport to our condo.  In the course of the week, the unit rebooted over a dozen times.  This is very disappointing, but unfortunately par for the course with Garmin in recent years it seems.  Do a Google search for Nuvi rebooting and you'll find thousands of discussions dating back to the 7xx series.  Garmin can justify spending $300+ dollars on a PND in a smartphone world only if they can show significantly better features and rock solid reliability.  The features? Yeah, I think they do that.  Reliability?  Not so much.

Upon rebooting, I found the unit to have very sketchy reliability in terms of reconnecting to bluetooth on my smartphone.  Since I am using Garmin Smartphone Link, reestablishing smartphone bluetooth connectivity is essential to getting my traffic content back - a must when traveling on LA freeways.  In many cases, the only way to reestablish bluetooth connectivity with my smartphone was to disable bluetooth in the Nuvi settings and re-enable it.  Having to do this changes the reboot problem on the 3590 from an annoyance to a complete hassle.  A random reboot on a Nuvi is like a Windows blue screen of death.  It makes you cuss Garmin as much as people cuss Microsoft.  Frankly, I expect better from Garmin.

The second big problem that I experienced is with the Smartphone Link Advanced Weather feature.  I outlined the complete failure of the weather alert feature in a previous blog post.  Unfortunately, the performance of this feature got worse on my trip.  I have two locations set in the weather alerts settings.  I have my hometown (Des Moines, IA) and my "current location."  While traveling in LA, I routinely received WINTER STORM ALERTS while driving in LA.  Huh?  It was March, in LA - there is no winter there.  Of course when I pressed the weather alert icon, I received no information because Garmin isn't providing the text of the weather alerts as I outlined in my previous post.  Perhaps, I thought, the alert wasn't for my current location in LA, but rather was for my other defined location of Des Moines, IA.  However, the problem with that idea, is that I knew that on that day in Des Moines the weather was approaching 80 degrees!  In no way was there any Winter Storm Alerts in Des Moines, IA or Los Angeles, CA last week.  Had Garmin implemented this feature in a way that actually shows us the text of the weather alert, I might have been able to figure out what was actually going on.  Since the weather alert text content is blank, it is impossible to trouble shoot.  What I know is that from this experience and the experience that I outlined earlier the Smartphone Link weather service is not worthy of a charge and I would not recommend that anyone purchase it until Garmin fixes the problems.

Garmin Guidance 3.0 Traffic - not impressed

I have had some time now to play with both the new Garmin 3590 as well as my previous Garmin 3490, both of which have new Garmin guidance 3.0 along with the new Navteq HD traffic.

While these are both pretty good PND devices, I have to say that my experience so far with the traffic service is pretty underwhelming.  I mean, it is great that the higher bandwidth service provides us with more granularity in the traffic data. However, if the content is just wrong it doesn't matter how granular it is, it is wrong.

I have run into many situations with the traffic service where it leaves me scratching my head as to how the traffic data can report what it is reporting.  Or worse yet, not reporting what it should be.   Navteq has always had an arrogance about themselves.  It would just be nice if that arrogance were backed up by rock solid product content.

A recent example was a trip to Las Vegas. There's an intersection of two major freeways just south of the strip in Las Vegas. This interstate intersection and several portions of the connecting interstates is in the middle of a major construction project.  This construction project has closed several ramps between interstates. And when I say closed I mean closed as in "the pavement has been dug up" closed. I don't mean closed as in "hey we need to close this ramp for half a day so we can move some equipment in and out" closed. If you go to the DOT website for Nevada, this construction project and these closures are well-documented. But despite all that, my Garmin backed by Navteq traffic, tries to route me right through the closed ramps on the course of my trip.

I mean really Navteq. How hard is it to hire an intern and tell them to review the websites for the DOT? Is it really that hard to incorporate documented construction data into your traffic service? In 2012? Wow.

They have the opposite problem in other areas. In the Des Moines market, Navteq has a perpetual traffic delay at exit 68 where I-35 connects to Iowa 5.   There is no delay there. It doesn't exist. And without question, that delay does not exist 24 hours a day. This is Des Moines Iowa folks. There is no traffic delay that exists outside of about a two hour window during rush hour.

Today, traveling on I 88 into Chicago I was warned of a 9 mile 15 minute delay. Here's a picture of what the road looked like smack dab in the middle of that so-called delay.  This wasn't I 88 in Chicago mind you. This was I 88 in the middle of rural Illinois about 100 miles west of the closest Chicago suburbs.  Short of a meteor landing in the middle of the highway, there is no traffic out here. Ever.

I will spend the following week in Los Angeles. I look forward to seeing what kind of accuracy this new traffic service has in a major market like LA. I will blog about my experiences when I return. So far, to say I'm underwhelmed is an understatement.