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.

Garmin Nuvi 3590LMT vs 3490LMT Comparison Pictures

I picked up a Garmin Nuvi 3590LMT today to replace my Nuvi 3490LMT.  The 3490 will grace my wife's car from now on.  On paper, I wasn't expecting a big difference between the 3590LMT and the 3490LMT, especially when looking closely at the specs.  My wife simply needed a new unit, so I figured I'd order the newest one for myself while I had the opportunity.  These two devices are generally referred to as a 5" model and a 4" model respectively.  But when you examine the spec sheets and look at the actual dimensions you figure out that there really isn't a 1" difference.  That led to my lack of expectation for a big difference.

Wow! Was I wrong.  I frankly don't care what the spec sheet says.  The 3590LMT is huge compared to the 3490LMT and I like it 100% better for that reason only.  I found myself having to really focus on reading text on the 3490LMT especially on things like photoReal junction imagery.  Those concerns are gone with the 3590LMT.

Here are some comparison pictures between the two devices:

The difference in the screen experience in this photo is real.  The 3490LMT is brighter, but the colors are more washed out.  The colors on the 3590LMT are more rich and deeper.  I much prefer the 3590LMT screen after having both devices side by side.

Something is up with the routing on these two devices.  I have the exact same route calculated on both devices.  The two devices agree 100% on the route to take. They agree on the miles.  But the 3590 has me arriving over 2 hours earlier than the 3490 on this 22 hour trip.  I've never driven it so I don't know which is more accurate.  Also note that the 3590 is 2 hours quicker WITH a red traffic icon, showing a 15 minute delay leaving Las Vegas.  The 3590 is getting a traffic signal through Smartphone Link.  The 3490 does not have a traffic source.

I wonder, since the 3490 has no traffic source in the photo above, if because of that it doesn't take historical traffic data into account?  Perhaps that feature only works when there is a traffic source connected?

The only other difference between the two units is that the 3590 has a firmware v4.70 upgrade available for download out of the box.  The 3490 reports the latest available as v4.40.  Not sure if the firmware update has any impact on routing calculation or not.

There is no difference in glare on the two device screens.  The apparent glare on the photo above is strictly a limitation of the environment that I took the photo in.

There is a thickness difference as well between the two devices as can be seen here.

I was somewhat disappointed to see that, out of the box this brand new unit had two-version-old 2012.2 maps installed.  I had to do a map update out of the box to get to 2012.4.  Not sure why a brand new device that just shipped two days again would have 6 month old map data on it.  I could see having 2012.3. Perhaps I simply don't understand the production cycle on devices like this.

Finally, note that currently the 3590LMT has the same problem of an incompatibility between Smartphone Link Live Traffic and the HD Radio traffic described in my earlier blog posts.  No update from Garmin as of yet to fix this problem.