Next+ 1st impressions
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I have a 3500km trip around the Alps coming up this summer. I want to plan my trip at home on my PC using Basecamp, Google and MyRouteApp. I want to ride the trip exactly as I planned except when I don't. I want to stop for petrol or coffee or follow an interesting detour and still be able to get back on track without needing an advanced computer science degree. I am trying different options to find something that meets my needs.
I tried the old Navigation app in '22 and '23 but eventually gave up on it because it could not handle interruptions gracefully. Even something as simple a stopping for petrol meant the planned route was lost and it took too much rigmarole to get back on track to be worth using. I use or have used Google, Waze, Basecamp, Kurviger, MRA and Garmin. I have an Android phone (Pixel 8Pro) and on my bike I can have a QuadLock, a Garmin and/or an AndroidAuto Display (I currently use an Aooccii C6 Pro).
Today I activated the free trial on Next+ and generated and rode a 150km loop. There were some things I liked, some that seem like a matter of taste, and some that I am dubious about. One thing I really liked was the speed limit and current speed. I don't know why but they seemed unusually clear and easy to understand - except when the speed limit was partially covered by an unexplained button marked "Exit", but even then, I still knew if I was over the limit. I also liked the top left Next Turn with the following info below it though I sometimes struggled to read the details though whether that was a problem with the screen, font, resolution or my eyesight is a conversation for another time.
I did not like the behavior when I deviated from the suggested route. Normally, it recalculated within two to five seconds (which is acceptable, but still quite slow compared to some of the competition), my problem was that it was recalculating to get to a point now behind me with no indication on the display of where it wanted to go or how far away it was and no obvious way to skip to next point still ahead of me. I only knew this because it was trying to send me down roads I knew that only had exits behind me. On today's roads, where I knew generally where I was, that was manageable as it would eventually give up and move to the next point on the route. On roads I don't know, I need to know exactly where the app is trying to take me. If there is a setting to show these points, I suggest you turn it on by default and let experienced users turn it off if they don't need it. If you don't have such a setting, please prioritize adding it. Perhaps also consider that the info box with final destination info could be more useful with name, distance and/or time to next navigation point with a small compass arrow indicating relative direction. Some indication of whether it is a stopping point or a shaping point would be useful as would a button to skip it.
On more then one occasion the recalculation got stuck, even on a relatively long road with no turn-offs, the spinning arrow just kept spinning. After five minutes or more, I pressed the unexplained and inconveniently placed "exit" button just to see what would happen. That offered me some text about leaving android auto (huh?) with the choices "No" and "Navigate". I have always thought of myself as a rather intelligent person but when riding a motorbike, it appears that I don't have nearly as much cognitive reserve as I thought I had. The dialog made no sense to me at the time so I pressed a button just to make it go away. The good news was that it recalculated quickly and the bonus was that it made the annoying "Exit" button go away so I could now see with the speed limit was. Bikers have limit to how much they can focus on, if you need to ask them a question, please keep it simple.
I did not like the fact that the displayed route and the map it was displayed on sometimes did not agree with each other. I don't really understand how this could happen. I mean, what is the point of calculating the route against a different map than the one you are displaying? This probably ties in with my next comment.
The point of having a map is to tell you about what is ahead before you can see it for yourself. When the map does not display the other roads in the area then you can't know about junctions, cross roads, loss of right-of-way and any of the other important information that a map is supposed to give you. I know the other roads were on the map because sometimes there were thin strips of pixels that would probably have been the names of the roads if the screen was much larger and of much higher resolution. Perhaps the roads were there and just displayed as white on white, or perhaps the edges of the roads dropped below the pixel resolution of the screen I was using, but the result was the same. Please use better defaults.
The image below shows the route not matching the map, the "Exit" button covering the speed limit and the turn to the right that I could see is not displayed.
I will, weather permitting, do a few more tests with Next+, but at the moment I am not convinced enough to pay for a subscription.
