Apr
14
My Hope Was Dashed – Part II
Filed Under Gadgets
I was finally able to complete my review of the Dash Navigator GPS, because the customer service team at Dash was kind enough to send me out a replacement device two days after I managed to make the first one useless.
Since the time of that first post, Jason Calacanis mentioned on his blog that he thought the Dash was going to be the best product of 2008. I agree that it has the potential to be the best product of the year, but I think that it falls short in several areas; so much so that I am debating on whether or not to return to my TomTom 700 until they upgrade the software.
In many ways the Dash reminds me of myself in Jr. High School; I can still hear principal Zimmerman telling my Mom that I was not living up to my potential, and that greatness was within my reach if I were to just apply myself. I wish I had the guts at the time to point out that principal Z was not taking the world by storm either, and that the whole principal gig was (in my opinion) just a way to work out his latent homosexual and sadomasochistic tendencies (he kept six wooden paddles in his office and often had a line of boys outside his door waiting to be disciplined). The Dash (like 14yo Eddie) has boundless potential, but the current implementation leaves something to be desired.
On the potential front, the Dash combines a portable (dashboard or windshield mount) touch screen GPS unit with a built-in wifi and cellular radio networking capabilities. This means that as long as you are in range of a cell-tower that your dash can send and receive data via the tubes. Dash has used these capabilities to deliver some innovative features:
- Web Search. In the same way that Google Maps on my blackberry will allow me to search Google for addresses and display them on a map, Dash will let you search Yahoo while you’re in the car for the nearest Borders or Starbucks. (no more searching on my phone and then re-typing the address into my GPS).
- Real Traffic. Since all the Dash units are networked they can upload recent data about their speed to a central server in order to alert other drivers to traffic delays. Actual road conditions can then be used to choose the fastest route and provide more accurate ETA to the driver.
- Send to GPS. The network connectivity can be used to send an individual address, lists of addresses or searches from the my.dash.net website to your GPS so you don’t have to spend time manually typing in the addresses or searches on the touch screen.
- Updates. Network connectivity also means that my Dash can dial home to receive software updates and map updates can be pushed down so your map is always up to date (theoretically). In practice I found that the map is less up to date than my recently updated TomTom 700 North America map.
That’s it? That’s all you could do with this? Let me see if I can come up with a few ideas on how to use this:
- Show me other dash users who are near me, or at least show me where my friends/family are.
- Allow me to point out where a radar trap is, so I can alert other drivers.
- Allow me to send sms or email to my GPS and have it read the message out loud. (can anyone say twitter radio)
- Um, how about a satellite or ground level view of my destination (my phone can do that).
- Track my driving and let me look at it on a map or download the mileage for expense reporting.
- Send a “meet me here” message to my friends, or an SOS message to 911
- Call/msg the phone associated with my destination and let them know I am going to be late because of traffic.
- Send my reminder or to do list to the device and let me check it off as I am running my errands
- Allow me to get rid of the yearly subscription fee (and the cost of the device) by allowing it to be an ad platform for local businesses. Even send digital coupons to the device.
- Send a text message with an address to the device.
[Gratuitous pleas for comments: What do you think, how could this combination of technologies be used?]
I genuinely like the hardware for the most part, the screen is large and easy to read, the mounting arm works very well and comes with parts to extend its reach if necessary, and the GPS receiver was excellent. However, there are some minor hardware issues that I found:
- It is somewhat oddly shaped (it looks like an upside down “L” from the side) and can’t stand up on its own. Why not put the “L” on the bottom so you can set it on the dashboard?
- On the top of the unit there is a speaker and two buttons (volume and menu), and every time I go to grab the unit, I end up accidentally clicking the volume button.
- The device has no microphone (for voice commands or to measure ambient noise), so the volume either has to be set annoyingly loud at slow speeds or inaudible at high speeds.
- The device has a mini USB port, but it doesn’t act as a storage device when you connect it to a computer, instead it creates an IP network (it is a linux based device so I suspect that you can connect to the console via SSH through the link, but I haven’t tried).
- The cigarette lighter power cord can’t connect to the Dash unit itself, it connects to the mounting arm, which is good because you can remove the GPS without disconnecting the power. However, this also means that if you want to take your dash with you in a rental car you need to bring the mounting arm with you (kind of annoying to pack that).
Software
The hardware issues are more annoyances that anything else, but the software limitations are much more serious. To start with, all of the navigation on the Dash is address based; this means that you can’t navigate anywhere that doesn’t have an address (or to an address you might not know). Why not allow me to find a place on a map and send the lat/long to the device as a way point? This also means that even if you know that the geocoding for a particular address is incorrect, you can’t change it, the software doesn’t even allow you to save or mark your current location (major downside for me).
Another major software issue for me is the lack of information while driving. The austere display only shows distance to next turn, my car icon, a small compass, and one of the following: current time, ETA, distance to destination (you have to touch the screen to toggle through the three choices, which I think is a safety issue). Don’t get me wrong, I love simple clean design, and I am sure that for many people this will meet their needs, but god-damn-it I am a gadget freak and a geek, and the GPS is my cockpit HUD. Why would you not allow me some options to add information to the display? This GPS is designed to help me navigate around traffic, 90% of the time I will know where I am going, what I want to see on the screen is a stream of data so I feel like a pilot. Here are things that are missing off of my display:
- How fast am I driving (yes I have a speedometer, but I like to see it in my HUD).
- Compass heading in degrees
- Altitude
- Time to destination
- Distance to destination / ETA / Current Time (at the same time)
- How good is my satellite fix or how many satellites am I fixed to.
Routing is another area that has potential, but needs work. When you initially plot a destination address the Dash provides you with up to three possible routes and shows the distance and estimated time for each route. I like this feature, but the number of route choices is often one, and when there are multiple routes shown there they often overlap each other to a high degree. I would like the ability to tell the dash to avoid a particular highway or to drive through a city on my way somewhere. That brings up another annoyance, there are no waypoints, all navigation is point to point.
The reliance on the Dash to recognize that you need to be rerouted is troublesome. If you are confronted with a road closure, there is no way to prompt the Dash around it. You just need to start driving in a random direction and wait till it re-routes you, and even in that case it might tell you to make a u-turn and go back the way you came.
The minimalist interface extends to all aspects of the UI, and there are very few configurable options. For example, there is no preference to set what speed you typically drive on what type of road (I drive 75-80 on the freeway, so the routing should be biased more heavily toward freeway travel). I applaud the designer’s choice to keep the UI simple, but that doesn’t mean that you eliminate configuration, just bury the stuff that you think most users would not want to tinker under the “geek menu.”
I know that this review is almost entirely negative, but I had such high expectations for the device that I was utterly devastated when I discovered that it was crippled by its software. Since I already sunk $500 into the device and service plan, I will try to keep using it in hopes that one day I will get a software update that addresses some of the key problems. Until then I would recommend that you wait and see what some of the other players in this space do with similar technology.
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