Navigation Experience

[VinceL]

Got to get my first taste of the 'new' navigation. I was pretty impressed. The level of detail is incredible. We chose a restaurant in a rather large corner shopping center, pretty much a really big strip center. To our surprise, the individual little roads through the parking lot in the center were mapped. Pretty cool.

The voice function worked well, with only one hiccup. We had said that we wanted 'Destination POI' and specified 'Nearby'. When it asked for the name of the POI, we said it too soon, and it would kinda sit there with a blank screen for about 30 seconds, and then go back to the main nav screen. We kept trying it until it worked, but then we realized what we needed to do. After the nav asks you for the name of the POI, wait until the keyboard starts getting drawn on the screen. When we did that, it recognized McAlister's Deli immediately (surprisingly fast as a matter of fact, that aspect was quite impressive). It seems that the MFT doesn't buffer the microphone and can only accept voice input after it had loaded the nearby POI's. Once we figured out that little quirk, we were able to plot the rest of our destinations easily.

It is a dramatic improvement over the previous version, and makes the navigation not only useful, but fun to use as well.

I'll give the Ford team an 'A' on the Nav. Fix the little bits of input delay, and I would easily give it an 'A+'.

 

[gdecamp]

Very happy to hear this! I really had no issues with the old Nav but really didn't use it that much.Will be taking a couple quick trips this summer so nice to hear the above. Thanks for the review!

 

[2001Explorers]

Yes, it really is excellent. One of the + sides to MFT. I am very impressed with it so far. The whole bunch though. Climate, Entertainment and Phone as well. For me they are all working amazingly.

 

[VinceL]

Very happy to hear this! I really had no issues with the old Nav but really didn't use it that much.Will be taking a couple quick trips this summer so nice to hear the above. Thanks for the review!

Sure thing!

I wasn't holding out much hope, seeing as how iffy the previous version could be, but the detail on this thing is incredible. It even had the little McAlister's Deli logo on the screen. We got a chuckle out of that one.

I think our experience would have been even better if we had a better understanding of the command structure. My friend used his old one so little (because it was so bad), he never had the opportunity to become a power user. Now that the system is vastly improved, I think he will get quite a bit of use out of it (especially since his job requires a lot of travel, a good bit of it to small towns, which are a good test of any Nav system).

Happy driving

 

[dinom]

Has anyone else experienced long delays in acquiring satellites when first starting up the vehicle? This seems to happen more often than not when we start the Explorer inside the garage, and then pull out a few moments later. In these situations, it can take several minutes for the "X" over the GPS symbol to clear up, and for the navigation to properly follow our route.

This used to happen with version 2.11, and still seems to happen with version 3. We also have cases where the GPS will totally lose satellite communication while driving on a sunny, clear day away from buildings and trees.

I'm wondering if we have always had a hardware problem with our GPS, or is this normal for the Ford?

Thanks for any feedback.

 

[willwitten]

Has anyone else experienced long delays in acquiring satellites when first starting up the vehicle? This seems to happen more often than not when we start the Explorer inside the garage, and then pull out a few moments later. In these situations, it can take several minutes for the "X" over the GPS symbol to clear up, and for the navigation to properly follow our route.

This used to happen with version 2.11, and still seems to happen with version 3. We also have cases where the GPS will totally lose satellite communication while driving on a sunny, clear day away from buildings and trees.

I'm wondering if we have always had a hardware problem with our GPS, or is this normal for the Ford?

Thanks for any feedback.

I have not had that problem in the 11 months I have had my Explorer.
I put a "shark fin" antenna cover on after 2months and it caused no problems.
It sounds like you have some kind of hardware problem.

 

[dinom]

Thanks Will for your feedback.

I take it from the lack of other responses, that my issues with navigation are not common. I plan to call my dealership about this soon.

 

[yow04xplr]

Got to get my first taste of the 'new' navigation. I was pretty impressed. The level of detail is incredible. We chose a restaurant in a rather large corner shopping center, pretty much a really big strip center. To our surprise, the individual little roads through the parking lot in the center were mapped. Pretty cool.

The voice function worked well, with only one hiccup. We had said that we wanted 'Destination POI' and specified 'Nearby'. When it asked for the name of the POI, we said it too soon, and it would kinda sit there with a blank screen for about 30 seconds, and then go back to the main nav screen. We kept trying it until it worked, but then we realized what we needed to do. After the nav asks you for the name of the POI, wait until the keyboard starts getting drawn on the screen. When we did that, it recognized McAlister's Deli immediately (surprisingly fast as a matter of fact, that aspect was quite impressive). It seems that the MFT doesn't buffer the microphone and can only accept voice input after it had loaded the nearby POI's. Once we figured out that little quirk, we were able to plot the rest of our destinations easily.

It is a dramatic improvement over the previous version, and makes the navigation not only useful, but fun to use as well.

I'll give the Ford team an 'A' on the Nav. Fix the little bits of input delay, and I would easily give it an 'A+'.

Thanks for the observations, I've noticed a few things as well in the short week since the update. As you had noted, there is a lag between when you would like to say something and when you can say something so it understands. I find that the lag was worse in the previous version so Ford has made some headway there. Overall the NAV system is much more responsive than the previous version, and the graphics are way better.

On a recent trip on the weekend, we were heading to a small little town off the beaten path. I issued the command "Navigation, Destination, City Centre", and it brought me to the search for POI screen and asked if I wanted to search nearby or in a city. So there appears to be a glitch in cross referencing the right search screen.

I've also noticed when I turn on POI icons "Gas Stations" and/or "Restaurants", the number of icons on the screen in my area are far less than the previous version. Many of the gas stations and restaurants shown on the previous version are not showing up on this version. In addition a fairly major road constructed in the last year that I regularly take to work does not show up on the new version, but did in the old one. So I question whether the new map and POI data is as up to date as the previous version, although the graphics and overall look and feel of the maps are much better.

Anyways, just my 2 cents worth of observations. Overall, I prefer the new NAV over the old one in terms of appearance and speed although there are few small glitches to overcome and perhaps a map/poi info update.

Martin V

 

[Asystole]

Thanks Will for your feedback.

I take it from the lack of other responses, that my issues with navigation are not common. I plan to call my dealership about this soon.

I had the exact issue coming out of a parking garage in Philadelphia last weekend. GPS would simply not lock (had the 'X' for the next ten minutes, even on I-95). I don't know if it's coincidental or not, but when I allowed the car to connect to my phone while on I-95, within seconds of the connection being established the GPS got a lock.

Does the car use the A-GPS from the phone? Does the car use the phone's data connection to pull down satellite ephemeral data to determine satellite locations and then acquire a lock?

 

[deewan]

Has anyone else experienced long delays in acquiring satellites when first starting up the vehicle? This seems to happen more often than not when we start the Explorer inside the garage, and then pull out a few moments later. In these situations, it can take several minutes for the "X" over the GPS symbol to clear up, and for the navigation to properly follow our route.

This used to happen with version 2.11, and still seems to happen with version 3. We also have cases where the GPS will totally lose satellite communication while driving on a sunny, clear day away from buildings and trees.

I'm wondering if we have always had a hardware problem with our GPS, or is this normal for the Ford?

Thanks for any feedback.

I have noticed the same thing. If I start the Explorer in the parking garage after work, it takes 7-10 minutes before the GPS knows my location. Same thing if I start the Explorer in the garage at home. But if I start the Explorer after leaving it parked in the driveway or an open parking lot, it doesn’t take long at all.

This is my main compliant with the Explorer GPS system. My aftermarket Garmin and even my GPS unit on the golf cart find me in a minute, maybe two max. It’s not a big deal if I am close to home. But if I park in a parking garage when in a big city while on vacation and I need to know where to go once I pull out of the garage, I don’t want to sit roadside for 10 minutes until my GPS locates me.

I might play around with the syncing of the phone and GPS location times as mentioned above. The GPS unit shouldn't be using a data link from the phone to locate since the GPS works for people with no phone, but I am curious if it won't find satellites as quickly if the processor is attemping to stream bluetooth or connect to a phone.

FYI, I too have the shark fin cover but was hving this problem prior to installing the cover.

 

[dinom]

OK, so it's not just me then. And from the two responses so far, this happens with the 2012 model, as well as my 2011 Explorer.

I wonder why we're having problems, yet most folks don't seem to be complaining. Did we just get bad units?

 

[deewan]

I don't know if it is bad units. If it were bad units I would think we would have problems regardless of where we park. I have not had problems if I park in an opening. But if I park in covered parking, that is when I have problems.

I know my Garmin continues to track satellites even when no power is being fed to it (battery power) so it has a faster startup time. Maybe the Ford system does not do that and when it first tries to link up, and it gets nothing, it gets confused and takes longer. I’ll start paying more and more attention.

 

[jrmexplorer]

I used to think the same thing when coming out of my underground parking garage, but then I started timing it and discovered that it was actually only 3-5 minutes which is about right.

 

[jrmexplorer]

I don't know if it is bad units. If it were bad units I would think we would have problems regardless of where we park. I have not had problems if I park in an opening. But if I park in covered parking, that is when I have problems.

I know my Garmin continues to track satellites even when no power is being fed to it (battery power) so it has a faster startup time. Maybe the Ford system does not do that and when it first tries to link up, and it gets nothing, it gets confused and takes longer. I’ll start paying more and more attention.

My theory is that initially when you start up the Explorer it searches continuously for the satellites for the first couple minutes and then if it still doesn't find the satellites it starts searching less frequently (every couple minutes) so as not to tie up the rest of the system. What may be happening is that you don't get out of the garage in time to catch the continuous synch period and thus have to wait until it tries again.

Just my two bit theory.

 

[deewan]

My theory is that initially when you start up the Explorer it searches continuously for the satellites for the first couple minutes and then if it still doesn't find the satellites it starts searching less frequently (every couple minutes) so as not to tie up the rest of the system. What may be happening is that you don't get out of the garage in time to catch the continuous synch period and thus have to wait until it tries again.

Just my two bit theory.

You have a good theory, but it doesn't explain when backing out of my garage. It takes about 1-2 minutes to get out of my parking garage and the entire time I am under cover, but only 5-15 seconds to back out of the garage. Both result in the 5+ minute range before I can be "located". And it has taken longer before as well. One day it didn't located me during my entire 15 minute drive to work.

Tonight I started the Explorer four times. First was in the parking garage. Took 5+ minutes before GPS linked up. I was driving on a 4 lane highway and unable to watch exactly when it came online. The next three starts the Explorer had been parked in my drive way and then two parking lots. All three times the GPS location was found within 10 seconds of starting the Explorer.

I'll be able to check tomorrow morning backing out of the garage, then at lunch leavening the parking garage, and so on and so forth. While it does sting a little if the GPS takes that long to locate my position, it's nothing major so I won't complain if there isn't a "fix".

 

[deewan]

I apologize for the slight hi-jacking of this thread since it is off from the original post topic. But since it was brought up….

Some of my findings for how long it takes the GPS to locate the Explorer. I’ve only used times when the Explorer had at least 20 minutes between start up times. The times have been rounded to the nearest 1 minute mark in most cases.

Thursday:
Started in covered garage: 5 minutes
Started in covered parking garage: Never located my position during my 9 minute drive
Started in open parking lot: Received a quick “Navigation failure” failure message in right dash screen then located the Explorer in 2 minutes.
Started in covered parking garage: 4 minutes
Started in open driveway: Less than 15 seconds
Started in open parking lot: Less than 15 seconds

Friday:
Started in covered garage: 6 minutes
Started in covered parking garage: 2 minutes*
Started in covered parking garage: 2 minutes*
Started in open driveway: Less than 15 seconds
Started in open parking lot: 2 minutes


It does seem that if the Explorer is started in a garage or covered parking it loses it’s location or has problems upon initial startup. One things I did try, the two times listed on Friday with an asterisk I did something different. I did not have my iPhone paired with MFT and I had the stereo playing a CD instead of streaming from an iPod (USB) or Bluetooth device. This is just a guess, but I am wondering if the startup order is to find a phone and media player before spending processing power to find GPS location. Which makes sense to me since the phone may be needed for safety and the S.O.S. system in case there is an accident and it needs to dial out for help. And the connection to a media player after that so you hear music right away after the Explorer is started. But it could also have something to do with the cloud cover, surround buildings, or some other reason the Explorer could or couldn’t find GPS satellites quickly.

 

[VinceL]

After having a bit more time with the Nav, we like it even better than before. It is training us (lol) how to enter destinations (we have a stupidly long street name for the home address!!) so that it gets it right the first time.

My wife even used it the other day to find a restaurant, select the proper location, and then dial it so that she could make a reservation. She did this all with voice commands as she was driving around town. She loved that.

As for reception, we have not had any problems. It spent a couple of hours in a parking garage the other day and didn't skip a beat.