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Bought one of the from Halfords at the weekend as it seemed to be a better option of shelling out £80 to update my Navigon 70, or £100 to update the mapping in my alpine head unit.
Anyway, didn't use it first but just updated the firmware to 4.30 and other updates along with latest maps.
Have to say, after a week travelling up to and around Edinburgh and the surrounding area and back to Leeds, I'm well impressed. Had no problems with grey blocks/screen, updated screen smoothly when I forced refreshes whilst 'playing' with the options.
The cyclopse camera alerts were pretty accurate too.
One thing it did struggle with is the centre of Edinburgh. It seemed to lose its bearings one particular area. That said, built in unit did the same thing in exact same spot. My Navigon did it last year too so I'm putting that down to satellite loss.
All in all, a decent bit of kit.
Hi
I've had my 3598 for about six or seven months now and the only problem I have had is the grey screen problem on the first two trips I did with the unit. No problems whatsoever since then and it gets used a fair bit with some long journeys involved too. I even use smart link with it and no probs there either. Top unit in my book.
mine has been ok since the last firmware upgrade, however the fault manifests itself during (I think) heavy processor load.
Mine usually plays up during bad weather & heavy traffic, when there are lots of traffic reports flooding in I guess. Deviating from the planned route during these periods would always cause grey screen issues, sometimes only resolved by power reset.
As yet I have not been in the situation as described above with the new firmware but am waiting for the opportunity, to see what happens.
Joined: Oct 21, 2009 Posts: 494 Location: South Yorkshire
Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2014 6:35 pm Post subject:
wibbley wrote:
mine has been ok since the last firmware upgrade, however the fault manifests itself during (I think) heavy processor load.
Mine usually plays up during bad weather & heavy traffic, when there are lots of traffic reports flooding in I guess. Deviating from the planned route during these periods would always cause grey screen issues, sometimes only resolved by power reset.
As yet I have not been in the situation as described above with the new firmware but am waiting for the opportunity, to see what happens.
on the 3598 I had, you could be doing less that 20mph and the screen would still grey block (even on simulation it would do it) - it is this that really lets that unit down - I don't want the unit grey blocking on me when i'm in a location I'm not aware of or how to get to certain places.
The unit is a navigation aid and should be capable of doing that without the issues it has - I have a Nexus 4 and HTC One X which are both older devices that the 3598 and they have no problems running Sygic (3D maps) with full voice navigation/notifications/traffic incidents and Cameralert running in the background advising of all speed cameras. This was on top of the usual jobs running in the background and Bluetooth and GPS constantly on.
Now these devices are mobile phones not PND's, so a top end dedicated PND that cost's £300 should be able to perform better than a mobile that costs £200. There should be no artifacting or grey blocks on the 3598 and surprised that Garmin have still not resolved this issue a year after release.
In my view Garmin need to fix a few things
1) - Grey Blocks - improve the software to prevent this from happening - if needed recall the units and replace as it's random who is being affected
2) - Remove features from the device which are not available in your country (or hide them) - ie (Photo-Live Cameras and Fuel Prices are not available in UK so why advertise them)
3) - Improve routing - stop using layby's as routes and telling drivers to go off-road, stop redirecting you back into traffic or divert which is longer but, give better readings of arrival time (ie add delays to the time instead of ignoring them)
4) - Provide better support to end users and also acknowledge there is an issue with the 3598
mine has been ok since the last firmware upgrade, however the fault manifests itself during (I think) heavy processor load.
Mine usually plays up during bad weather & heavy traffic, when there are lots of traffic reports flooding in I guess. Deviating from the planned route during these periods would always cause grey screen issues, sometimes only resolved by power reset.
As yet I have not been in the situation as described above with the new firmware but am waiting for the opportunity, to see what happens.
on the 3598 I had, you could be doing less that 20mph and the screen would still grey block (even on simulation it would do it) - it is this that really lets that unit down - I don't want the unit grey blocking on me when i'm in a location I'm not aware of or how to get to certain places.
The unit is a navigation aid and should be capable of doing that without the issues it has - I have a Nexus 4 and HTC One X which are both older devices that the 3598 and they have no problems running Sygic (3D maps) with full voice navigation/notifications/traffic incidents and Cameralert running in the background advising of all speed cameras. This was on top of the usual jobs running in the background and Bluetooth and GPS constantly on.
Now these devices are mobile phones not PND's, so a top end dedicated PND that cost's £300 should be able to perform better than a mobile that costs £200. There should be no artifacting or grey blocks on the 3598 and surprised that Garmin have still not resolved this issue a year after release.
In my view Garmin need to fix a few things
1) - Grey Blocks - improve the software to prevent this from happening - if needed recall the units and replace as it's random who is being affected
2) - Remove features from the device which are not available in your country (or hide them) - ie (Photo-Live Cameras and Fuel Prices are not available in UK so why advertise them)
3) - Improve routing - stop using layby's as routes and telling drivers to go off-road, stop redirecting you back into traffic or divert which is longer but, give better readings of arrival time (ie add delays to the time instead of ignoring them)
4) - Provide better support to end users and also acknowledge there is an issue with the 3598
Well something has improved mine I have taken all the updates and now it just doesn't play up anymore (see my post above). strange but true
Changes made from version 4.30 to 4.40:
◦Enabled DAB traffic reception in Norway and the Netherlands.
◦Improved map drawing performance when receiving DAB traffic
Quick update.
2 weeks use of the unit and it's worked flawlessly. No amount of deliberate unplanned route changes, playing with menus at critical points en route etc have caused any problems with grey screens. Journeys have been a mix of moterways, country roads and city centres.
Only issue was Edinburgh city centre where it seemed to lose its bearings, but my built in unit did exactly the same and 2 previous units also, so would seem unfair to blame the garmin.
Only thing I have noticed is the journey stats show a different total mileage to the vehicle odometer. The garmin shows me travelling 3-4mph slower than than the speedometer shows but that I've travelled 4 miles further than the vehicle odometer indicates.
Joined: Apr 04, 2006 Posts: 10118 Location: Bexhill, South Sussex, UK
Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2014 10:04 am Post subject:
cubit wrote:
The garmin shows me travelling 3-4mph slower than than the speedometer shows but that I've travelled 4 miles further than the vehicle odometer indicates.
The vehicle speedo is designed to read faster than you are actually going. One of the reasons is to allow for tyre wear. When the tyre wears down, the wheel has to rotate more times for the same distance, thus increasing the speed readout and also the distance travelled on your odometer.
The satnav will definitely be more accurate as far as speed is concerned, as it takes your velocity (speed) directly from the satnav chipset which is probably accurate to better than 0.1M/s so long as you have a good sat lock. It is probably displayed after some smoothing to stop any minor 'jumping about'. Anything that you read about going up or down hills affecting the reading is a red herring, as the slope on hills (even if the satnav can't handle altitude changes, which it can) is so slight as to make no practical difference. Trust the satnav speed, not your speedo.
As to your car distance reading more than the satnav, this is a bit more difficult to explain, but remember that your speedo is an analogue mechanical device with total reliance on wheel rolling radius with the resulting errors as mentioned above. What sort of percentage errors are you getting? If it's 4 miles on a 10 mile journey, then there's a fault. If it's 4 miles on a 100 mile journey, it's 4% out which is probably acceptable.
↑^^^^^^^^
Thanks for the reply.
Yes, the speed reading I was aware of. If I'd thought more about it then the distance difference would seem obvious too.
Only noticed because my other other units didn't/don't have the feature.
The garmin shows me travelling 3-4mph slower than than the speedometer shows but that I've travelled 4 miles further than the vehicle odometer indicates.
The vehicle speedo is designed to read faster than you are actually going. One of the reasons is to allow for tyre wear. When the tyre wears down, the wheel has to rotate more times for the same distance, thus increasing the speed readout and also the distance travelled on your odometer.
The satnav will definitely be more accurate as far as speed is concerned, as it takes your velocity (speed) directly from the satnav chipset which is probably accurate to better than 0.1M/s so long as you have a good sat lock. It is probably displayed after some smoothing to stop any minor 'jumping about'. Anything that you read about going up or down hills affecting the reading is a red herring, as the slope on hills (even if the satnav can't handle altitude changes, which it can) is so slight as to make no practical difference. Trust the satnav speed, not your speedo.
As to your car distance reading more than the satnav, this is a bit more difficult to explain, but remember that your speedo is an analogue mechanical device with total reliance on wheel rolling radius with the resulting errors as mentioned above. What sort of percentage errors are you getting? If it's 4 miles on a 10 mile journey, then there's a fault. If it's 4 miles on a 100 mile journey, it's 4% out which is probably acceptable.
As the tyres wear the circumference of the wheel gets smaller and the distance travelled per revolution is less. As speed is distance divided by time this makes the speed slower.
I drive a car where the speedo is calibrated weekly and I can tell you that satnav speed is not that accurate.
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I have taken all the updates and now it just doesn't play up anymore (see my post above). strange but true 
