Navionics Boating App Gremlin Mystery

[stranded]

Intriguing exchange with Garnin customer support today. About a month ago the Boating app on my iPhone started regularly crashing, mostly when I pressed a ‘button’. I have deleted and reinstalled the app with no improvement.

So I emailed Garmin this morning and got a pleasingly quick reply to the effect ‘we’ve not heard of this one before, can you send us the latest crash analytics file from your phone’. I did that and have now received the slightly bald response ‘we should release a new app version in a few days, we will keep you informed”.

Hard to imagine any company being so responsive as to change the app on the basis of one report, so I imagine the new version just happens to be in the pipeline, but thought the info might be helpful to others who might be having similar problems with the app.

 

[Cardinal]

I have not experienced such a failure but have had a freezing of the app which suddenly shows speed as zero till it reenlivens and continues. The saved track shows the freeze. Not at all what one wants in a navigation tool.
I look forward to hearing whether the next update solves your problem.

 

[KompetentKrew]

Hard to imagine any company being so responsive as to change the app on the basis of one report, …

I can - it depends how obvious the bug is.

About 20 years ago I worked tech support for a very small B2B software company, and a site complained about some random bug - I think it might've been failing to correctly transfer bar tabs to customers' hotel bills. The bug was fixed quickly after the site staff realised it was only happening to customers with Irish names (cue predicable jokes) and the developer realised that the apostrophe in O'Brian etc was causing problems because computer code uses apostrophes to indicate literal strings. It's a testament to the low quality of our software that this bug occurred in the first place, but it was fixed quickly once they were aware of it.

 

[Sandy]

Hard to imagine any company being so responsive as to change the app on the basis of one report, so I imagine the new version just happens to be in the pipeline, but thought the info might be helpful to others who might be having similar problems with the app.

The call it agile software development, software developers write stuff and customers test it for them. Saves them a load of cash having people to test it properly before releasing it to the people who pay to use it.

To be honest I have always found Garmin really, really helpful when it comes to problems with their kit.

 

[stranded]

Really interesting guys - I have zero knowledge of how the tech world operates but if they have managed to ID an issue from one analytics report and have immediately set about resolving it I will be very impressed.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Open Source projects can move fairly quickly. I had problems with the way PostGIS (an add on to enable the well known database package PostGreSQL to handle geographic data) handled certain map projections in the polar regions. I liaised with the development team, and initially we developed a work-round, followed by a proper solution on a few months time.

 

[[193211]]

I posted here about similar problem, a couple of months ago. They gave me a similar response. In fairness, it’s much improved but my confidence in the product is much reduced.

 

[GunfleetSand]

My phone navionics app crashed repeatedly and multiple times on last two outing, main plotter no issue.

On another platform there are many complaints about the detail being lost on navionics (boating) lower zoom objects since new phone app overlay update/improvement’’

 

[stranded]

They delivered the promised update a couple of days ago and say that it should have fixed my problem. Haven’t used it in anger yet but it has been stable enough when I have played around with it enough that I am pretty certain it would have crashed several times before the update. Fingers crossed…

 

[GunfleetSand]

Having a read a bit through Boating /Navionics app reviews on App Store a few have confirmed what I thought I’d imagined. I’m not off shore when using the phone app but signal strength can be poor often 1 bar of 3g. At those times (but I think other times also) the app would crash

Replies from app developer going back a few months here and there say ‘you must have an internet connection to login to app‘. Don’t know if that means logging in once with signal and then you’re done or it it means each time the app is opened that is considered a login.

I see an update issued version 19.1 from devs ‘bug fixing and optimisation‘ time will tell if this solves the crashing, I’m still seeing blurred images on lower zoom. Not very reassuring.

 

[bitbaltic]

Having a read a bit through Boating /Navionics app reviews on App Store a few have confirmed what I thought I’d imagined. I’m not off shore when using the phone app but signal strength can be poor often 1 bar of 3g. At those times (but I think other times also) the app would crash

Replies from app developer going back a few months here and there say ‘you must have an internet connection to login to app‘. Don’t know if that means logging in once with signal and then you’re done or it it means each time the app is opened that is considered a login.

I see an update issued version 19.1 from devs ‘bug fixing and optimisation‘ time will tell if this solves the crashing, I’m still seeing blurred images on lower zoom. Not very reassuring.

Had a similar problem two days ago, opened the app while at a beach (walking not boating) and out of signal range. It told me that there was no internet connection to check for chart updates and subsequently froze with nothing able to persuade it to show me the downloaded, offline cartography I’d paid for. Used to consider it a backup solution for sailing but it’s now off the list.

 

[GunfleetSand]

Feedback much the same from reviews not a reliable bit of kit at least on the phone. Have also discovered Water Level Correction on app in settings which gives a ‘live’ depth sounding based on current tide state - does that work if no signal? I’ve turned it off

Garmin taking over is a good or a bad thing? Monetising it further or making improvements to make it better

 

[Refueler]

I use it on Samsung Phone and Headwolf Android Tablet ..... guys who crew with me have it on Phones and one has it on iPAD ....

That's my 2 plus their 3 installs .... we used all 5 delivering my new boat across Baltic - the Garmin on-board only had Swedish charts ... so once we passed Gotland - Garmin crapped out.

The Navionics app though ran faultlessly on all 5 with no internet etc. - the only item to pay attention to was the power consumption of the phones / tablets - so needed to have charge available.

I do have a serious issue with Garmin though. To be honest - I have a serious dislike of Garmin's business model. Navionics until Garmin got its grubby mitts on it - was simply Navionics. Now we have 3 forms of Navionics ...

1. The App downloaded form for phones / tablets ... and cannot be separated and transferred - ok - accepted as they allow you to use registered access to multiple tablets etc. I have it installed and charts downloaded to 3 devices.

2. Navionics for plotters except Garmin - which does not work on Garmin

3. Navionics only for Garmin - that cannot be used for any other plotter.

Now please can someone explain the 'logic' of that crap ??

I went to add Eastern Baltic to the Garmin MFD Plotter I have .... luckily noted at bottom of page - NOT SUITABLE FOR GARMIN .... so I found what will run ... YOU ARE HAVING A LAUGH GARMIN ...