Waze GPS APP

AdamZ

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Adam Zucker
Thinking about having my daughter use the Waze GPS APP on her cell instead of buying a new Garmin GPS. APP is free and pretty accurate. My question is does it use data or just function as a GPS?

If it uses data I'll probably just get a Garmin as I don't want a huge data charge on the monthly bill.
 
I've noticed it uses a good amount of battery and some data. Pretty accurate, relies on other users to give you traffic and alerts. Functional as a GPS (what I use it for). At least on the iPhone 4 :p

//edit
Google says ~20mb a month, others say 500kb-1mb per drive. YMMV it appears :dunno: I haven't used it for a while since no other users travel on my route to work (back roads) and I know where I'm going. Calculating the route at home before you leave on WiFi seems to reduce how much it uses greatly, if that's an option for you.
 
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Wife's used Waze for a few years but prefers Beat the Traffic now. It has good up to the minute reroutes around traffic. She likes it better than her Audi nav system for avoiding gridlock and road construction. Only Waze has user reports for speed traps, though.
 
Google maps is quite good. Very user friendly, but on the fly reroutes don't seem to update often enough.
 
Thinking about having my daughter use the Waze GPS APP on her cell instead of buying a new Garmin GPS. APP is free and pretty accurate. My question is does it use data or just function as a GPS?

If it uses data I'll probably just get a Garmin as I don't want a huge data charge on the monthly bill.

It uses data. What makes Waze different is that it is crowd-sourced. It's not just "how do I get from here to there?" Because drivers feed information into the system, it alerts to radar traps, accidents, high traffic volume, things like that. That typically means if one route is better than another that day at rush hour, it chooses the different one.

But for a more extreme example. My wife and I were going to a concert downtown. I decided to use Waze to get the best routing and started along he route. At a point about halfway there on out 55 MPH+ routing, it announced that there was a serious accident ahead and said "I have a better route. Turn left at the next light." Waze routed us to bypass the accident by using side streets. We never hit the accident traffic and the net loss of time on this 50 minute trip was 3 minutes.

For your daughter, another feature might be a consideration. It can be set up to notify people chosen if the ETA changes substantially. Does such things as announce that there's a delay due to traffic and do you want it to notify someone about the updated ETA? (and btw, it's ETAs are incredibly accurate)
 
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I love the Waze app. I have found it to be correct within +/- 5 mins. The only downside is since its crowd sourced, like the others have mentioned, it works vastly better in larger cities. However, even in rural Arkansas it still serves me well.
 
I'm a rural Waze user as well and have been fairly impressed with the reporting it provides even in my limited traffic areas.
 
Waze fan, I've saved time with reroutes the speedtrap notifications are nice, and wife and I use it to send each other ETA's I stead of calling or texting. I believe the Waze maps are Google maps cartooned.
 
instead of buying a new Garmin GPS.
Couple weeks ago I picked up a new Garmin Nuvi 2598LMT at Costco for $130. This includes lifetime traffic and lifetime map updates, no fees, no subscriptions. Tested many times and could not be happier, I don't have a smart phone.
 
I have the Nuvi with traffic and Waze is much better. Like seriously better. Not to mention the Garmin is full of **** have the time and not what I'd call an intuitive device.
 
agree to disagree, mine is super intuitive, idioten intuitive.
 
I agree that Waze is very accurate. I am most concerned about data usage though. I guess they all use data to some extent but the question is, Is it a data hog?

She currently has a OLD Tom Tom that is ok but the mount is gone and the after market mounts stink and well its just not that accurate. Her main usage will be for driving up to summer camp in the mountains ( about 2.5 hrs north) where she is a counselor and back home and then to college and back and perhaps in to Philly. I figured I'd just buy her a vent mount for the iPhone so she would not have to look down at the phone for directions.

If however I'm going to get a big data charge on my phone bill I'll just get her a garmin. Mark, do you have an idea how much data it uses?

Also as for the garmins being accurate. Our two year old Nuvi has recently started sending us on some very circuitous routes that have added a lot of time on to drives.
 
I agree that Waze is very accurate. I am most concerned about data usage though. I guess they all use data to some extent but the question is, Is it a data hog?

She currently has a OLD Tom Tom that is ok but the mount is gone and the after market mounts stink and well its just not that accurate. Her main usage will be for driving up to summer camp in the mountains ( about 2.5 hrs north) where she is a counselor and back home and then to college and back and perhaps in to Philly. I figured I'd just buy her a vent mount for the iPhone so she would not have to look down at the phone for directions.

If however I'm going to get a big data charge on my phone bill I'll just get her a garmin. Mark, do you have an idea how much data it uses?

Also as for the garmins being accurate. Our two year old Nuvi has recently started sending us on some very circuitous routes that have added a lot of time on to drives.

Tom Tom has an iPad app (and possibly an iPhone app) that I've been using for about three years. It requires GPS but no data (except for updates). I believe it costs $55 and that's a one time charge unless you do an in app purchase for traffic, etc. I haven't been keeping track, but I believe that they update their app (including maps) about 3-4 times a year.
 
I agree that Waze is very accurate. I am most concerned about data usage though. I guess they all use data to some extent but the question is, Is it a data hog?

She currently has a OLD Tom Tom that is ok but the mount is gone and the after market mounts stink and well its just not that accurate. Her main usage will be for driving up to summer camp in the mountains ( about 2.5 hrs north) where she is a counselor and back home and then to college and back and perhaps in to Philly. I figured I'd just buy her a vent mount for the iPhone so she would not have to look down at the phone for directions.

If however I'm going to get a big data charge on my phone bill I'll just get her a garmin. Mark, do you have an idea how much data it uses?

Also as for the garmins being accurate. Our two year old Nuvi has recently started sending us on some very circuitous routes that have added a lot of time on to drives.

Hard to say. I don't keep track of my per app data usage, although I try to minimize my data use by not allowing automatic push in my email accounts and connecting to wifi when it is free and I feel comfortable with the source. I also rarely use my smartphone to listen to music.

Best I can do is tell you about March. My wife and I have a 2 GB shared data plan and Android phones. We drove from North Carolina to Colorado and back with Waze on all the way all the time in both directions (2.5 days each way), and periodically when we were traveling at the destination. We also periodically used my phone as a hotspot en route for my iPad (which doesn't have its own data plan) to make hotel reservations. In general we used out data plan more often that wee than usual.

We did not go over. Not even close. Data use for that period shows 1.2 Gb.

Does that help? Of course, since I am not a college-age girl, YRMV :D

BTW, if you are going with a portable mount, I like the goose-neck suction ones. that essentially have the phone/GPS on or hanging just over the dash in the middle. I think it puts the phone or whatever in a much better and much sturdier position.
 
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I've been using Waze for almost two years. I haven't found it to be a data hog. In the last month it used less than 100MB of data, and I've done a fair amount of driving with it.
 
Our two year old Nuvi has recently started sending us on some very circuitous routes that have added a lot of time on to drives.
hmmm .. sounds very strange, I always get a couple different routing options from my 2598 Nuvi, if there is a detour it is always because of traffic, road work, etc. I never yet got a routing suggestion that would violate common sense and I live in an area with pretty complex terrain and road network. Pretty amazing arrival time prediction too.
 
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Thinking about having my daughter use the Waze GPS APP on her cell instead of buying a new Garmin GPS. APP is free and pretty accurate. My question is does it use data or just function as a GPS?

If it uses data I'll probably just get a Garmin as I don't want a huge data charge on the monthly bill.

It is the greatest app ever. It uses data, but for a very good purpose: it will warn your daughter of changing road conditions and police presence so she avoids getting stuck in traffic.

Nominal data use.
 
Waze was purchased by Google. If you compare Google Maps traffic to Waze, they'll be nearly identical. Google wanted more inputs for their stuff. Waze got them near real time updates from the roads.

As far as data goes, just go into settings->advanced->data usage and look. The biggest data usage is if it needs to download new maps.

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I'm showing 86 megs used in the past month, and while I typically only use Waze on that particular device, it should be less than that, since that is going to include app updates as well.
 
Nick, One of the trips Nuvi messed up was to a funeral my wife drove to in CT. The trip from PA to CT is 3 hours easy so it wasn't a short trip.

Nate: Thanks for the info on checking Data useage.
 
Chiming in in favor of Waze. Definitely the best I've used. Apple maps and Google have both let me down at times and traveling to newly constructed sites is no good if your Garmin database is expired.
 
I've been using Waze for almost two years. I haven't found it to be a data hog. In the last month it used less than 100MB of data, and I've done a fair amount of driving with it.

I use Waze to commute about 1.5hrs per day. This last month shows 93mb of usage.
 
I need to put more of you into my Waze friends so I can Beep Beep at you and cause more accidents on the roads. Haha.
 
I need to put more of you into my Waze friends so I can Beep Beep at you and cause more accidents on the roads. Haha.

The social network part of it is dumb. Other then sharing your drive with someone you are meeting.
 
I need to put more of you into my Waze friends so I can Beep Beep at you and cause more accidents on the roads. Haha.

I use it to notify my wife of my arrival time after work so dinner can be ready. She constantly beep beeps me. Drive me nuts.
 
The social network part of it is dumb. Other then sharing your drive with someone you are meeting.


The social network keeps the ADD poster children launching it every day. And the stupid "road goodies" game type thing.

Anything to feed the Google monster machine.

I'd dump it but frankly, it's routed me around so many traffic jams in real-time that it's a technology that's become hard to ignore.

Nobody has anything close to Google's real time traffic. The company that feeds Garmin's stuff via FM broadcast sub-carriers is a joke in comparison.
 
Late, dark, tired, driving N on I75 in our Flex headed home from FL. Cruise control set to 70.

Waze alerts to an object in the road. Start slowing as the mileage to the object counts down. Finally see a large hunk of thrown tread right in my lane.

At that point I was down to about 55 and swerved to avoid it. Uncertain if I could have reacted in time at 70.

That plus rerouting around traffic delays and warnings of police and so much more make it our go-to navigation app on trips.
 
My biggest use of waze is in reducing my commute from 2 hours to 45 minutes a lost every night coming home from work.

Never understand why traffic in the DTC is so slow. There's never a reason, just a bunch of idiots going 5mph or less.
 
My biggest use of waze is in reducing my commute from 2 hours to 45 minutes a lost every night coming home from work.



Never understand why traffic in the DTC is so slow. There's never a reason, just a bunch of idiots going 5mph or less.


Too many cars. And you're here now adding to it. Hahaha.

You weren't even here before T-REX. That section of highway gained three lanes in that area during that project in each direction.

I drove the entire length of I-25 before, during, and slightly after that multi-year project was finished, daily. Today's DTC jams are nothing at all, compared to that.

Easiest way to avoid it is to get flexible hours. A couple hours before or after the 5-6PM crunch means the difference between what you're seeing and setting the cruise control in the second lane.

When C-470 opened, it was a ghost highway to nowhere. There was a big gap of nothing between Lakewood's west edge and Morrison. It's completely full of housing, now.

The two farmhouses you see at C-470 and Bowles were out there by themselves and were about a half hour from civilization. We had friends who lived in one of them. He's a pastor at some mega-church in California these days.

Karen's family lived out past that to the west in one of two subdivisions ack there in the foothills further west. They were kinda in the middle of nowhere back there. Neighborhood is still there and fairly ritzy.

Her folks built their house custom as their big "hoorah" and found that the kids were moving out pretty quickly and they'd be maintaining a really big place for the two of them.

Interesting thing about that house was all of her family are very tall except her. They had everything in the house built taller. Countertops, toilets, everything. They ended up selling it to another tall couple who had one of the two people fighting a disability, who needed to find a structure built well enough to install a real elevator. The place met the architectural needs, and they moved to AZ to retire.

Anyway... DTC is actually better than it's ever been. If you want some real fun, look up the history of the "Valley Highway". It was originally only two lanes all the way through the city. My grandfather watched it being paved from his porch in Federal Heights.

That it's now 12 lanes wide plus weave lanes at some points is more a testament to poor city planning than anything. There aren't any other significant north-south highways in a metro holding many millions more people now.

At least I-25 could be widened. The I-70 ski corridor is a massive traffic disaster.

If you've driven the Boulder Turnpike/US-36, imagine if you will, that all civilization stopped at JeffCo... Cough... Rocky Mountain Metro(sexual) Airport and Wadsworth until you got to Baseline in Boulder.

The only thing out there was StorageTek and Rocky Flats. Nothing there at all. The building of the Sun (now Oracle) campus was huge news and started the fill-in along there.

KEIK was a pretty good hike from civilization when I finished up my a certificate there, after starting at the now-gone Aurora Airpark south of KFTG right at I-70 and the Watkins exit.

It hasn't been so much urban sprawl as an urban explosion over the last two decades.

My industrial building workplace now sits about 2500' from the north end of the former Stapleton runway 35R, dead center of the runway.
 
and yesterday I think I hit the end of my tolerance for our traffic ... tried to get from 120th and I-25 to DIA ... 10 mph heading south, did a U-Turn on 104th and went up to E-470. I hate tolls, but I HATE congestion worse, so I paid the tolls.

Dropped off the PAX at DIA and headed home down Pena to I-70, whereas that became 10mph to stop and go all the way to the mousetrap.

Then to add insult to injury, Sherry wanted to go plant shopping for the garden that we FINALLY are getting around to putting a few veggie plants in. Got the plants then with BBQ on the brain, started south on Wadsworth to Colfax to get to Dickey's BBQ ... stop and STOP and go (a little)... and then I thought "crap - we should be at Hickory House with Nate and Karen right now!" but no, I totally lost my cool and zigzagged thru the neighborhoods (and if you know this part of town - "you can't get there from here" is the buzz ... nothing goes straight thru west of Wadsworth).

C-470 has gotten worse and worse, earlier and earlier, to where 20 mph to stop and go starting at 3:30 or 4 pm is now the norm. 6 am inbound commute is still relatively ok, but starting to load up at Wads and worse at Sante Fe.

Yesterday I was ready to move to Wyoming.
 
Waze is a power hog and will drain the batteries quickly. Keep a phone charger in the car and plug it in when using waze.

Wife used it between BUF and southwestern NY. Plus we used it from Boston to SW NY. For GPS it is great. Traffic updates, road hazards (pot holes) etc depend on other users to input. As a solo driver, not good for inputting and driving. Leave that to the passenger.
 
Google maps is quite good. Very user friendly, but on the fly reroutes don't seem to update often enough.

I tried to use Google Maps (until I discovered Waze) - but found the updating to be intolerably slow (not just reroutes but ANY useful data at all!). I put the blame on Verizon's flaky network - which is horribly overloaded. Waze, on the other hand, always seems to get what it needs - and is in any event far superior. I use it every day on my drive home. I ignore the "social network" part of it.

Dave
 
All for using the cell phone for GPS, do it all the time.

But as a reminder, since i don't think it was mentioned. Unless you have one of the apps that specifically does this offline, you may find yourself staring at a blank map and getting no directions if you have no data signal.

I think most of the apps do the actual routing of directions on the server, not the phone. Then they will cache map data for around the route as they have data So they can continue after they lose data till it's picked up again. But if you don't have data to start, you may be out of luck till you can get to an area that has it.


And google bought waze awhile ago, so even on google maps there are reports from waze users. Not sure you can make reports with google maps though.
 
I view Waze as the best solution for dealing with traffic and accidents on routes I know.


Waze is for commuting, Google is for discovering..... If that makes any sense.

I don't like it as well as Google for navigation to places I don't know.
 
I've been driving a really long complex route for a while and I've noticed waze is trying to pull me back towards more "main" roads but adding on time and extra miles to do so over the Google navigation app. Not sure if it's a setting somewhere but it's annoying as I'd like to use waze for the various alerts it gives.
 
My iPhone came with a map application installed that works just fine. Mrs. Steingar and I share a 2 gig plan and we've yet to come close to using it all.
 
I've been driving a really long complex route for a while and I've noticed waze is trying to pull me back towards more "main" roads but adding on time and extra miles to do so over the Google navigation app. Not sure if it's a setting somewhere but it's annoying as I'd like to use waze for the various alerts it gives.
Waze should eventually pick up that your shortcut works and saves time and start applying it and even recommending it to others.

At least that's one of the things the crowd sourcing app is supposed to do.
 
Waze should eventually pick up that your shortcut works and saves time and start applying it and even recommending it to others.

At least that's one of the things the crowd sourcing app is supposed to do.

What drives me nuts is I say "Give me shortest time" and it gives me an oddball route, then as soon as I ignore it, the time recalculates to 5 minutes less than before. Why didn't it calculate the time on that route before?
 
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