Global Positioning Sometimes
On my handy dandy Verizon plan with my totally cool phone which I love and wouldn’t trade even for an iPhone (and I’m a Mac addict), I have GPS. We (I) decided to test out the trip navigator today on our way out to Mike’s sister’s house in BFE. Ok, it’s in Tempe, but it feels like BFE to us. The trip navigator gives you directions as you go, on where to turn and which freeway you’re supposed to be on and so forth. And if you’re not lucky enough to have someone with you to hold the phone, it even talks to you.
It worked like a charm on the way over there, told us where to turn and said “you have reached your destination” right as we arrived at their house. It also tells you how many miles you have to go and how long it thinks it will take you to get there. Pretty darn cool.
On the way home, I decided to try it again, since we knew we were going to have to take a bit of a different route home because the freeway was pretty backed up the other direction when we headed out. When we got onto the other freeway, it took it a second or two, but then it said “recalculating directions” and updated the navigator. Not bad.
Then we threw it for a bit of a loop. We had to get off the freeway and make a quick stop at the post office which sent us in the opposite direction from which we needed to go to get home. When it realized we were going the wrong direction (which was pretty quickly) it said “make the next legal u-turn”. We did finally end up back on the freeway and made it happy again.
But the funniest part was when we got to our neighborhood. For whatever reason, our street does not show up on the Verizon GPS map. So, after we passed the street before ours, which was where it thought we were going, and then turned on our street, it told us we were “no longer on a road”. So, it gets a D for not having our street in its memory banks, but it gets an A- for everything else. And I can definitely see how it would be useful for going somewhere you’re unfamiliar with. Unless, of course, the street is not on the map. Then you might have a problem!
