Although I am fairly happy with my G35 Coupe and Nav so far, I do have a few minor complaints. My friend has a new Honda Accord with Nav and I am constantly comparing his and mine and I find that I like the Honda Nav better. My complaints about the Infiniti Nav so far are:

1. The Destination feature of the Nav is locked out while the car is in motion and only lets you enter addresses when the car is COMPLETELY STOPPED. I understand that this is supposed to be a safety feature and they don't want people getting into accidents because they were trying to enter addresses while driving but I disagree. Why can't I have my passenger enter an address while I drive?? The Honda Nav system doesn't do this and I find it very inconveinent in the Infiniti. There has to be a way to bypass this lockout and I'd love to hear about it if anyone has done so.

2. When I'm driving around looking at the map I like to scroll around me to see what is nearby. When I try to scroll around the map with the joystick, the Nav system locks on the first street I scroll over and doesn't let me continue my scroll until it gives the info of the nearest street (which takes forever). Is there a way to turn this "street-locking" feature off?

3. Once a destination is programmed into the Nav and a route is plotted all upcomming turns are displayed with an arrow taking up the full screen and stays like that regardless of how far away from that turn you really are. You must hit the Map button again in order to see the map view. What would be better is if the turn arrow was show in a split screen mode ONLY when the turn is near. (This is exactly what the Honda system does)

4. The joystic is a pain to use and takes forever to type in addresses with it. I think they should add touch sreen and keep joystic so you can use either one depending on your mood. (The Honda Nav has a touch screen)

04 G35 Coupe 6MT, Diamond Graphite, Premium Package, DVD Nav, Aero

 

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

1. The Destination feature of the Nav is locked out while the car is in motion and only lets you enter addresses when the car is COMPLETELY STOPPED.

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There IS a fix to that one. If you seach on this site for the navigation mod, you will see that you can splice into the speed sensor wire of the NAV system, add a switch, and then you will be able to control the ability to enter directions while driving. This is a VERY simple thing to do, and works great. Your other issues I would agree with. However, while perhaps not the very best system available, our NAV system generally works very well and is vastly superior to most out there.

Let me add one more beef:

I recently drove from Westchester NY to Southern Florida and back. The nav system tried to plot a course that would avoid the NJ turnpike between the GW Bridge and the Lincoln tunnel. While this is unquestionablly a nasty stretch of traffic prone roadway, the alternate route it planned added more than 100 miles, taking a route much further west. At one point on the return trip, when the car was shut off at a fuel stop, at start up recalculation (when the nav system finally figured out I wasn't paying attention to its crazy route) the projected time to destination dropped more than 2 1/2 hours! If the system is trying to plot the fastest route, I could understand it taking you on a longer route, (altough 100+ miles out of the way is screwed up!) but if both the time and the distance are longer, there is really an issue.

04 G35s 6MT BS Aero Kit/Nav/Prem
Warning: Objects in Mirror Are Losing!

 

Thanks for the tip RacerX. However, I searched this site for "navigation mod" and didn't find anything like you described. Maybe you can point me to the link. It sounds like a nice weekend project.

04 G35 Coupe 6MT, Diamond Graphite, Premium Package, DVD Nav, Aero

 

I just did it a couple of weekends ago and took some pics. I'll write up a quick DIY and post the pics.

Russ

Black 6MT Coupe
Jax, FL
PS2 and Headrest Monitors Thread

 

1) VSS Hack for navigation input while driving
And another tip for searching for things is to make sure you select "AND" instead of "EXACT PHRASE" for your search results.
Also, if you do this mod, make sure you turn the wire back on after entering a destination.. the Nav system won't be very responsive in updating your vehicle position if it doesn't know how fast it's travelling.

2) That is annoying, isn't it?

3) It's not really that hard to switch between the two modes now, is it? Although, it would be nice if it acted like you described.. because when you hit the map button, the turn mini-maps don't come up again until you hit the map button again.

4) Yes, it is a pain. However, a touch screen probably wouldn't be effective on a tilting display. Or at least it would be annoying with respect to tilting back all the time. What it really needs is voice-recognition.

One of the features I do like about the Infiniti nav that other systems don't have is the BirdView. I like that much better than top-down 2d map displays when I'm driving.

Also, on destination entry... it is possible to enter an address from the first 5 entries in your address book while moving. First five, only because you can't scroll the display while moving.. however, if you come to a stop, you can scroll the display down, and when you start moving, you're locked into whatever 5 address entries happen to be on-screen at that moment.. but you can pick any of those 5.

 

One more thing I want to add to this list. I wish POI (and streetnames for that matter)were listed (or at least an option available) by distance from current position rather then alphabetized by city. Some POI have hundreds of solutions. Many of which can be 100's of miles away.

-ICE

p.s. Best "searching" and "drive routing" GPS system I have seen is the little garmin hand-held PDA (3600).

 

BIRDVIEW was the decision breaker for me between the G and the TL!! Yeah there's a few tweaks the G's nav needs, but have you ever seen another system with birdview?!? It makes things way easier to visualize on the map!

 

Thanks for the link ryoken. From that thread it sounds like puting a switch on that wire also disrupts the speed input to the trip computer (what a pain!). The lockout seems to be some sort of firmware function which would make it much more difficult to modify. I am an electrical engineer by trade....too bad Infiniti doesn't post their schematics and code! I'll keep tinkering with it and see if I can figure out how it works and a simple way to bypass it.


04 G35 Coupe 6MT, Diamond Graphite, Premium Package, DVD Nav, Aero

 

Why is it a pain? How long do you need to operate the nav while the switch is off? You might lose 1-2 minutes of trip time. It took me less than 30 minutes to modify mine and you won't even notice your lost time. As soon as you flip the switch back on it starts tracking again and it's going to update your time remaining.

Russ

Black 6MT Coupe
Jax, FL
PS2 and Headrest Monitors Thread

 

I agree with TrentaCinque, i too have the VSS hack installed and love it. Takes me just a about a minute to make entries... even less if a passenger is doing for me.

As far as the POI stuff, I wish it would just realize you are in a city and need stuff, say in 10 - 30 mile radius. It's such a pain to have to keep guessing.

It's not an exact science, but it gets the job done trouble-free 85% of the time.

cheers, ted


'03 Sedan 5a: BS/G, Prem, Aero/Body, Sport, Nav
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