Navionics Mobile App -- Crap

temptress

temptress

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Just wasted my money on a chart set for Navionics. Paid for the charts and when I try to download them I find you can only download then in tiny chunks. Thought this can't be the case so contacted Navionics and got this reply:

[FONT=&quot]Dear KevinHarris,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
Unfortunately,there is no possibility of having the tiles pre-installed/downloaded on mobileapplications.

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]We can onlyrecommend you to download all the tiles for your coverage "Indian Ocean& South China Sea" as soon as you have high internet connection.

[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Then, the tileswill remain stored on your device unless you uninstall the app with a filemanager app[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Best regards, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]xxx xxx[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Navionics Technical Support Team [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Really Navionics -- Just NOT GOOD enough. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]So you have to manually spend a day or so downloading the charts you have paid for, you may miss some areas and if you don't have internet then you are stuck.[/FONT]
 
How else do you expect them to send you the data, floppy disk?

We are a minority group of internet users, in remote places with flaky connections, Find an internet cafe and download what you need on a fast link, simples.
 
A day or so? Not sure how many Mb the Indian Ocean charts are but I downloaded the whole of Europe in less than an hour. A perfectly workable system.
The intrusive adverts on a paid-for app though... that's a different matter!
 
I don't really understand your problem - Even if the tiles were pre-installed in the app, this would mean the app itself would be much bigger and it would take an equivalent time to download anyway:

Small app download + tile download = Large app download including tiles

In fact, the separate tile download mechanism is much better, because you can choose to only install the tiles you need.
 
As Aussi says, what is the issue? Unless you have a magic fairy to deliver the data to the mobile device it does need to be downloaded. Doing in chunks is easier to manage on a scarce data allowance or slow wifi than a huge one off download of everything, including areas that you may never need. Seems like sensible app design, in this case.
 
I think I did not explain myself well enough. I have a large area to download -- Tiwan to Arabian sea and down to Australia. You can only download a small area at a time, which you have to setup manually, then you have to wait, then you have to select another part of the area manually, download, wait and so on --- this whold process has taken me the entire day and still carrying on. I have to manually select each 'tile', download and then manually create and select the next one.

What I would expect to be able to do is say - download all of it then let the 6 or 7 gb of data download - mow i need to manually arrange to download in chunks of max 200mb!
 
temptress said:
I have to manually select each 'tile', download and then manually create and select the next one.
Click to expand...

Ah I see. So even if you zoom out on the map, the tiles are still too small and you need to select many areas. Fair point - the Garmin app is much better in that respect, but the cartography (IMHO) isn't. I think you're just going to have to persevere, is there light at the end of the tunnel?
 
I've used Navionics on my iPad for years and not been inconvenienced by this 'problem'. Just tried to download a new bit of map and found I could select an area bigger than the size of Spain to download in one hit. Is that the size of tile you are talking about?

PS just to give another opinion to balance things up, I don't think Navionics is crap at all. Far from it. It's great.
 
Last edited:
richardm47 said:
PS just to give another opinion to balance things up, I don't think Navionics is crap at all. Far from it. It's great.
Click to expand...

+1. I have it on my iPhone and iPad and use it all of the time to passage plan. I have downloaded Europe down to Portugal so far with no great inconvenience. I am surprised that the download is taking so long - the only time mine takes a bit longer is the rock strewn Brittany Coast. Great bit of kit.
 
richardm47 said:
I've used Navionics on my iPad for years and not been inconvenienced by this 'problem'. Just tried to download a new bit of map and found I could select an area bigger than the size of Spain to download in one hit. Is that the size of tile you are talking about?

PS just to give another opinion to balance things up, I don't think Navionics is crap at all. Far from it. It's great.
Click to expand...

I don't think its crap either, but I do find this aspect highly annoying. You cannot download the entire british isles in one tile, so have to do two selections. Its a fine idea as an option, but why not also allow us the option of downloading larger chunks, or even the entire chart, if we have the connectivity and the data allowance to do so? Being constrained like this is needlessly irritating.
 
steve yates said:
I don't think its crap either, but I do find this aspect highly annoying. You cannot download the entire british isles in one tile, so have to do two selections. Its a fine idea as an option, but why not also allow us the option of downloading larger chunks, or even the entire chart, if we have the connectivity and the data allowance to do so? Being constrained like this is needlessly irritating.
Click to expand...

I suppose it might be to flatten the load on their servers.

Mike.
 
I think the way they do it is sensible. If you select the whole area, the actual download time would be the same as doing it in tiles. But if it gets 80% of the way through, and your connection drops out, the whole download might fail. Now after a period of time, that would be annoying.

Are you trying to download the user-created sonar charts at the same time? That more than doubles the data size for the UK charts.
 
Just my opinion but having various chart types on my iPad/iPhone I find iSailor to be superior to Navionics..
The charts you want can be downloaded from their app.

 
aussi said:
Ah I see. So even if you zoom out on the map, the tiles are still too small and you need to select many areas. Fair point - the Garmin app is much better in that respect, but the cartography (IMHO) isn't. I think you're just going to have to persevere, is there light at the end of the tunnel?
Click to expand...

Bought iSailor and downloaded the whole area in ome go.... Unfortunately means I will have to use an ipad.
 
I use memory map charts on an iPad. I wanted ais receiver facility on the same for a trip to Shetland this summer. Decided on using Isailor as I could link it to a wifi ais receiver from Quark elec. works ok, but discovered that in zooming in on Stornoway harbour, detail was missing. I notified Isailor and eventually received the following reply:

"It is strange but we never have had BA chart 2529 for Stornaway in our collection.
Seems we have just missed it. That’s why there are no buoys in this area, our chart is too small scale chart.
There is official UKHO ENC cell for this area, which is based on BA chart 2529 and we will include it into our collection ASAP.
Will be definitely available on the next WF (from July 2017)"

Considering that the charts are expensive I am somewhat perturbed, to put it mildly and politely, that I can't rely that coverage is complete for the areas I have bought, as I don't know what other charts may have been "missed". (On top of that I have discovered I'm not keen on vector charts, much prefer the raster.)
 
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