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NAV VI Discontinued

Interesting, I'll assume you've got people you know with other than ATT that have the same experiences.

Of course. This is a tight knit and informed community. There are spots 20 miles east of me where folks can get Verizon due to a tower south of Marathon. But generally AT&T and Verizon have similar coverage with only minor differences, while Sprint is virtually absent. Then there are the privately owned contract towers that add $$ to your bill regardless of your carrier plan even when you don't know it until you get the bill.

When you look at the broader areas in the rural west there are of course spots where one carrier exists while others don't. But the overall picture remains the same: vast areas without coverage. For a note of contrast, fifteen years ago when we traveled in Botswana, cell phone coverage was seemingly everywhere. They never had a decent land line system so when they developed a national phone system it was cellular.
 
I have always been surprised that BMW utilizes a proprietary Garmin Navigation device AND that it was not incorporated into a permanent TFT screen build. As pointed out, the small number just drives up the price. Perhaps they will make a major change in the 2021 models? Or...maybe they go towards some mounting system for an existing system, such as this new XT. Time will tell. The ADV crowd seems quite pleased with the XT, according to the initial reports I have been reading. I had just picked up the Garmin Zumo 595LM as a secondary unit to the Nav VI for rally events, but it is still sitting in the box after its arrival about two weeks ago. I think I'm about to pull the trigger and return it for an XT.
 
Interesting, you own a cell phone and can't use it until you're that far from the house? Have you tried all the carriers for signal strength in your AO? I was under the impression some carriers had little to no dead zones in the US

The coverage maps show theoretical coverage in a radius around the cell tower, but do not take into account terrain and buildings that block the signal. I've not seen any coverage maps that show actual measured signal strength.

The coverage maps for all the carriers show that our suburban area has their very strongest 4G LTE signals, but none of them work in our house. Outside, in one corner of our lot, we can sometimes get 1 out of 5 bars, but even there calls often drop. Nearby hills block the signals until we move about 300 yards down the road.
 
I was under the impression some carriers had little to no dead zones in the US

Here in tropical North Dakota we get coverage over most of the state, but there are a lot of dead areas. I travel the eastern third of the state and the most populous part. In the north eastern part of the state there is a stretch of about 50 miles of road where I do not get coverage with Verizon. Farm country, tiny towns, thinly populated. As you go west and off the major highways it gets worse. I travel Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming every year and there are a lot of areas with no coverage, but then very little people too.

Although I remember standing at the top of a mountain pass in Montana and my cell phone rang. My dad just happened to call and we talked while admiring the view. I got off the phone and a friend looked at me and asked, "You have sell service up here?!"
 
We had AT&T when we moved from AK to Montana and got no service at our house. Verizon was the only other carrier and it offered sometimes spotty coverage. Verizon has gotten better over the years but two miles down the road I get no service. Living in the mountain west we often encounter areas with no cellular coverage.

And, North Dakota is not in the Tropics. Montana is in the Tropics.
 
Can we keep this thread on topic? :whistle

Is the NAV VI discontinued?

Or... does the new zūmo XT look like a good unit?

Cell coverage? YMMV! :banghead

Grazi!!

:thumb
 
Can we keep this thread on topic? :whistle

Is the NAV VI discontinued?

Or... does the new zūmo XT look like a good unit?

Cell coverage? YMMV! :banghead

Grazi!!

:thumb

Yes the NAV VI is discontinued.

And yes, the Zumo XT looks good.

And yes, integrating other stuff like cell service with the GPS was asked about and the lack of cell service was relevant to the discussion. If not interested, scroll right on by.
 
My service is AT&T. It allows wifi calling so I can use the phone in the house over wifi. And of course I have kept track of what carrier is doing what where. One not ought believe those glossed over coverage maps. They are, to put it as politely as possible, lies. Sure, they provide coverage for a very short distance in towns and along the interstate highways. But between towns and along the US and state highways coverage is spotty at best. I have of course not mapped it but do travel enough to guess that service is lacking in at least 50% and maybe as much as 75% of west Texas. And about the same in New Mexico. And Wyoming. And Montana. Welcome to rural America.

The service coverage map provided by the major cell companies are LIES. Paul is correct.
Here in Vermont we were promised 95% coverage ...and still many many of us complained.
Last summer and enterprising state employee with some outside help took several cell phones using all of the cell services and drove all around the state, main roads and more importantly the back roads too. What he found that cell service is good on interstate and main roads and in the larger cities and towns but on a geograohic metric only about 25% of Vermont have cell coverage. If you use the population density metric it goes up to something over 50%. If you drive secondary roads it is 100% certain you will have lots of areas with no coverage.

Vermont is a very rural (population density low and broadly distributed ) state and we have lots of hills and mountains. Difficult transmit environment and low population does not economically justify ( cell company perspective) lots of cell tower in these valleys and small towns.

Pressure from state politicians have NOT been successful in getting better cell coverage.

Hint Cell phone GPS is not a good choice....get a real GPS for GS riding here.
 
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Hint Cell phone GPS is not a good choice....get a real GPS for GS riding here.

I'm not wanting to open a debate on real GPS vs cell phone GPS. Just know that some phone apps (Google Maps and Calimoto are two that I use) allow you to download maps to your phone. They will give you GPS navigation even without a cell signal. It's what I do whenever I travel to Canada and don't want to pay the ridiculous $10/day that AT&T wants for service there.
 
I'm not wanting to open a debate on real GPS vs cell phone GPS. Just know that some phone apps (Google Maps and Calimoto are two that I use) allow you to download maps to your phone. They will give you GPS navigation even without a cell signal. It's what I do whenever I travel to Canada and don't want to pay the ridiculous $10/day that AT&T wants for service there.

No extra fees attached to my verizon acct when I traveled through Canada in 2018. That may have changed.

My NavIV worked flawlessly through BC/Yukon and in Ak.
 
Verizon offers Travel Pass for travel to MX or CA at $5/day. International usage is $10/day. One can avoid the Travel Pass fees by turning off cellular data, but that of course means depending upon motels and coffee shops or restaurants for internet access. If maps have been downloaded to a gps-enabled phone then mapping apps will still work.

https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/travelpass-faqs/

Cathy and I have used this quite a bit in North America as well as overseas, and it has worked well. Depending upon the length of one’s trip or stay, it can be much easier and less expensive than buying and swapping SIM cards.

Best,
DeVern
 
Will the new Zumo XT pop into my BMW cradle? I know the wonder wheel probably won't work, but I'd love it if it rode right.
 
Yes the NAV VI is discontinued.

And yes, the Zumo XT looks good.

And yes, integrating other stuff like cell service with the GPS was asked about and the lack of cell service was relevant to the discussion. If not interested, scroll right on by.


,wading through coverage talk to find out WHY VI was discontinued...it is a relatively new gen. Mine has been flawless except for one time when I think it was drunk or high or something. so...why has it been discontinued and should I worry? I doubt my 2016 R11200RT will mate with another brand...
 
Will the new Zumo XT pop into my BMW cradle? I know the wonder wheel probably won't work, but I'd love it if it rode right.

Looking at the back of the case it appears it will not work in any of the BMW mounts.
 
Will the new Zumo XT pop into my BMW cradle? I know the wonder wheel probably won't work, but I'd love it if it rode right.
It will definitely not fit. First, the back does not have a form that would allow it to attach to the BMW Mount and second, it will not physically fit in the space. It is 0.5" wider and 0.25" taller (landscape mode).

Having said that, there will likely be someone who figures out how to adapt the connection so that it could be mounted with an adaptor and BMW Motorrad may be able to squeeze something out of it with an exterior shell that is small enough to fit into the available space. The Nav-VI has 18 contacts on the rear panel, while the Zumo XT has only 5, so there would likely need to be some fiddling done to get things to work.

... I had just picked up the Garmin Zumo 595LM as a secondary unit to the Nav VI for rally events, but it is still sitting in the box after its arrival about two weeks ago. I think I'm about to pull the trigger and return it for an XT.
I'd give that very strong consideration as well if it were me in your shoes.

Any way you slice it, the Zumo XT looks to be a very nice improvement over anything that Garmin has offered to-date and at or below the other units pricing, so that is a win-win in my books.
 
Garmin

Garmin is great for screwing the customer. Owners of the Apollo IFR certified GPS units are all screwed because Garmin stopped supplying the GPS updates which to remain IFR certified must have FAA software updated every 28 days. Garmin wants over $10,000 for the new units. That’s the bottom end ones. Flying IFR require two units.
 
Garmin is great for screwing the customer. Owners of the Apollo IFR certified GPS units are all screwed because Garmin stopped supplying the GPS updates which to remain IFR certified must have FAA software updated every 28 days. Garmin wants over $10,000 for the new units. That’s the bottom end ones. Flying IFR require two units.

I flew the Apollo for years. They became too dated to support and be compliant with the changing aviation navigation landscape. At some point you have to upgrade. Some will not do that unless forced, and Garmin, as well as other manufacturers cannot afford to support systems for decades just because.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Car Play and Android Auto don’t depend upon cell service unless you are using streaming services or making/receiving a call. Both can be used to play music directly from the phone, just as is currently done with Garmin and Nav devices, and there is no real difference in service availability than what you currently have with a phone connected to a Garmin or Nav unit. At home, Paul isn’t going to get calls, weather or traffic info piped between phone, gps and headset regardless of the phone, gps, or app used.

The issue is in providing proven workable apps and connectivity, and the Nav VI/TFT screen/Phone connectivity on the new bikes is horribly unreliable and incomplete. For example, if you’re playing music stored on the phone you cannot, with the Nav VI, control start/stop/pause from the Nav VI screen. Piped through the TFT, it’s much more controllable but still doesn’t utilize Siri or other functionality on the phone. Car mfgrs went through the same issues in rolling out info screens and eventually realized the smarter path was to license proven technology like Car Play, technology that works consistently across car brands, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Hence Car Play and Android Auto appearing across the car market, and not just in high-end models.

Honda is tuned in on this. The new Goldwing has Car Play, and adds Homelink to boot, so no more fumbling for a place to mount a door opener or a pocket in which to stash it. https://powersports.honda.com/goldwing/2020/index.html As TFT screens continue to drop in price it will make less and less sense to continue devoting resources to add-ons like free-standing gps units. And the widespread acceptance of CP/AA make harder to justify devoting resources to try and develop an in-house alternative for use on TFT screens.

Anyway, back to the Zumo XT and thoughts of Nav VII. The only way it makes sense for BMW to front development and production is if the exterior case and mount match the Nav V/VI units, so there’s a backward-compatible upgrade available for current Nav owners. Otherwise, it’s likely too small a market to make the unit affordable. And, BMW would be competing against it’s own TFT screens with in-house Navigation and Phone apps. Pricing on the Nav units was always around $200 more than a comparable Garmin-branded unit and I’d expect to see that continue.

I’d rather see them focus on improving and more widely deploying the TFT—including licensing CP and moving the entire TFT dash up to where the Nav units currently mount, but moved closer to the rider. One screen, apps one is familiar with and that work the same regardless of vehicle, and mounted where it’s easy to check something without distracting the view of road and traffic.

Just my $0.02.

Best,
DeVern
Unfortunately, BMW is very slow to learn what riders want when it comes to information and communications systems. Look at how long riders have been complaining about the ancient and horrible Bluetooth implementation on the K1600, BMW's flagship tourer. BMW's solution is to use their branded communication system/helmet, which is also the only way to get two helmets to connect to the bike. If they were conscious of the market, they would have long ago upgraded the Bluetooth to the latest standard and allowed for full connectivity with both Cardo and Sena. BMW is now selling Sena communicators, but I haven't heard yet if you can connect both a rider and passenger to the bike with those.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
There's still a lot of dead zones in the US.
For maps, you could always download the areas without connectivity you will ride in to your phone (Google Maps on Android, anyway) while you are still in an area with connectivity. If we had Android Auto, this would solve the problem. I can't help but think that smart phone based GPS is the future across all platforms, whether the information is displayed on the phone or in a dedicated vehicle screen. I say this as someone who bought a new Nav VI one year ago when I bought my new K1600GTL.

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For maps, you could always download the areas without connectivity you will ride in to your phone (Google Maps on Android, anyway) while you are still in an area with connectivity.

Each summer we travel 10 to 12 thousand miles, almost all west of the Mississippi and mostly west of I-25. Virtually all of this riding is on minor and secondary roads. As I wrote earlier something over 50% and maybe as much as 75% of the area we ride has no cell coverage. So for me a dedicated GPS is what I want for navigation. When riding my Iphone is in my pocket. I don't do tunes. Voni and I communicate with light and hand signals. So downloading maps every day would just be a pain in the neck.

I do use Google Maps extensively for trip planning and picking out motels if we are not camping that night. It provides a great overview of a motel's neighborhood and the appearance of the place on street view most of the time. We use the phone apps to book campgrounds and motels. I do understand why many folks want comm, tunes, navigation, and phone all integrated. That is just not us, though.
 
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