Smartphone Link -- why does it stay running?

privet01

I thought I'd give smartphone link another try and loaded it the other day to my phone. My main reason for this is that it is somewhat easier to put a destination into my DS61lmts while on the road when Garmin's own voice command lookup fails to find that destination. All that you have to do is have google maps find the destination, then share the results with smartphone link. Fairly easy and much faster then having to manually change the "Where to" search to the city desired and then key in the name of the place and sometimes have to select it from multiple returned results.

So that part works well still. It was one of the things I liked a lot when I used it previously. However.....

I don't seem to get my new text messages displayed on the DS61 screen although it seems that everything is enabled for that. Possibly a conflict with android auto on my phone. Although android auto isn't usable in the car I'm driving at the time.

Smartphone Link seem to stay active all the time even when my DS61 is off. Even when the app is swiped closed, the background app is annoying me with notifications periodically. So I have to go in to phone settings and disable the app. Really annoying that I have to go to that trouble.

Haven't used it long enough yet, but the two reasons I quit using it before was that sometimes, even though my settings on the DS61 were set to not act as a hands free phone, it would sometimes do so anyway. Phone call audio is terrible on my DS61. Also, I never liked to pushing of FourSquare and other subscription stuff as well as the discovery of log files that appeared to be foursquare files with info about my travel history. I'd never enabled foursquare, and I don't know if that information actually went to foursquare..... but hey what's the deal. Are they going behind my back anyway? I guess they feel they have to pay for the free app somehow.

Boyd

privet01 said:

sometimes, even though my settings on the DS61 were set to not act as a hands free phone, it would sometimes do so anyway.

That's funny, I posted about a similar problem here and a couple other users said I must have set the wrong preferences on the GPS. It's possible, but I don't think so. It was very annoying, because I could pickup the call with my car's bluetooth system and hear the caller's voice, but they couldn't hear me. After a couple tries, I gave up and used the DS-61 audio. But, as you say, that's terrible. I just turned off bluetooth completely after that and use it without traffic or other smartlink services.

privet01

I'll probably get too annoyed with it again and uninstall it from my phone. But it is nice being able to share locations that Google maps can find but Garmin can't with my DS61. Sad that there is so much of what I consider bloatware attached to it. Presumably too many features just make it more difficult to keep everything running right without bugs or annoyances.

mike41

The Drive app that is used for DS 65 does not have all the features that Smartlink offers. In my opinion, the Drive app is totally useless.

privet01

Maybe we should swap devices For me, all I want is the smart notifications and ability to send/share location coordinates found in Google maps or other apps with my DS61. I think Garmin drive does that stuff, but it's not compatible with my DS61. Traffic is nice, but Google maps displays that better IMO.

The extra fluff in smartphone link is nothing I care for.