Anyone using iPhone SE & CarPlay for Navigation?

2529 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by J. Bond, Apr 12, 2019

J. Bond

Discussion Starter · Mar 27, 2019

Was wondering how well an iPhone SE would work for turn-by-turn navigation.

Is it fast enough?

Does one need a phone with large storage capacity, e.g., 128 gb, or would 32 gb be enough?

I'd be interested in hearing from folks who are having success using this classic (& small) iPhone for their CarPlay Navigation!

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andrew28

· #2 · Mar 27, 2019

J. Bond said:
Was wondering how well an iPhone SE would work for turn-by-turn navigation.

Is it fast enough?

Does one need a phone with large storage capacity, e.g., 128 gb, or would 32 gb be enough?

I'd be interested in hearing from folks who are having success using this classic (& small) iPhone for their CarPlay Navigation!

I have a iPhone SE 32GB as a backup phone. Works with Carplay Google/Waze navigation, and no lag. You might encounter on rare occasions where the tablet in the car will crash or disconnect with Carplay but this happens on my iPhone 7, too.

J. Bond said:
Square, much thanks! I'm looking forward to trying out the Aussie and Jeeves!

Andrew, good thoughts. I'll try it again later today and actually drive it.

One wrinkle, though, is that as soon as I turned off Wi-Fi, it deactivated Maps! So, I'm not sure offline is going to work on a cell phone without cell service...

I can try an iPod Touch 6, too, though, and see if that works...

I have a short video of my iPhone SE running Google Maps with offline maps while cellular data is off from earlier today. The iPod Touch wouldn't work because they don't have a GPS receiver chip.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nupk1DCDn23U-tYElT8pipVBGy1NNOnr/view?usp=sharing

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elvin

· #3 · Mar 28, 2019

J. Bond said:
Was wondering how well an iPhone SE would work for turn-by-turn navigation.

Is it fast enough?

Does one need a phone with large storage capacity, e.g., 128 gb, or would 32 gb be enough?

I'd be interested in hearing from folks who are having success using this classic (& small) iPhone for their CarPlay Navigation!

My primary phone is an iPhone SE 16GB and haven't had any issues with using Apple and Google Maps. Have also been testing Waze as well. No issues I've noticed with turn-by-turn guidance. My wife and mother-in-law are juggling iPhone 5S that I haven't tested, but I'd expect they'd be fine.

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J. Bond

Discussion Starter · #4 · Mar 30, 2019

Most helpful! Appreciate the comments. I have an iPhone SE on order.

How much cellular data are you all finding it uses?

Enjoyed the video. Did you have WiFi on or off?

I'm wondering because I tested the navigation in offline mode with an SE and found it disconnected and the map-directions disappeared as soon as I turned off the Wi-Fi! There could be some setting I missed, though.

In any case, I figure I'll be using it mostly in cellular on line mode, and that only once in a while, so offline doesn't matter as much. Although, come to think of it, caching the maps offline would save data and, if one got lost, one could then use cellular. But in my neighborhood test, the offline vanished once WiFi was turned off. It was pretty neat, though, while it worked!

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andrew28

· #5 · Mar 31, 2019

J. Bond said:
Most helpful! Appreciate the comments. I have an iPhone SE on order.

How much cellular data are you all finding it uses?

Enjoyed the video. Did you have WiFi on or off?

I'm wondering because I tested the navigation in offline mode with an SE and found it disconnected and the map-directions disappeared as soon as I turned off the Wi-Fi! There could be some setting I missed, though.

In any case, I figure I'll be using it mostly in cellular on line mode, and that only once in a while, so offline doesn't matter as much. Although, come to think of it, caching the maps offline would save data and, if one got lost, one could then use cellular. But in my neighborhood test, the offline vanished once WiFi was turned off. It was pretty neat, though, while it worked!

I had wifi and bluetooth on but they weren't connected to anything. I have offline maps downloaded in case I get lost with no cell data service.

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J. Bond

Discussion Starter · #6 · Apr 12, 2019

Well, we now have a cell phone and have used navigation via CarPlay. Pretty spiffy!

Loaded up our destination via WiFi, and then drove there with Cellular ON. Used virtually no data. Coming home, it ate up some data as I had to enter the return directions.

I need to call Apple. While they claim that System Services data use is not controllable, it clearly is as if one turns off various settings (e.g., iTunes cell use, Game Center, etc.), you can stop certain System Services cell data being used.

I'm wondering what the absolute bare minimum is that one needs to turn on to use Apple Maps via CarPlay. It seems like it caches only one set of directions and that you need to keep WiFi on, so the question is what's needed for general navigation via Maps and cell.

I think it's

Cellular on

Siri on

Location Services on and

Maps use Cellular on

but there are buried options that likely could be turned off.

I keep getting Time and Location Services, iTunes Media Services, etc. using data even though I turned off cellular for both.

In any case, the data use, even with Cellular data on is pretty sparse.

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