I just purchased/leased a 2008 G35x with premium/nav. I think the following improvements to both would be great (or maybe I just haven't figured out how to do it):

1. Points of Interest: need to be able to find POIs that are not just near where you are. If you are driving, it only gives you one screen of nearby and you can't go to additional pages so even on nearby you can't always locate the particular POI you want. Example, yesterday I was driving from Riverside to Anaheim, CA and I was going to the Disney Hotel for a conference. On the way down I thought I would use the nav and pull up the Disney hotel. No such luck. Then as I was within a mile I thought I would try again. Again, I get 6 entries but none are the Disney hotel and I can't go beyond the first 6 while driving. This is a terrible design. One should be able to pull up POIs at any location, near an intersection, in a city, near a destination, etc. Only nearby is lame and almost useless. By the time it pulls one up you can see it and don't need the navigation to get there. My cell phone Telenav does a better job. They need to look at Magellan and Garmin as well as Telenav to see how a system should work. The graphics are great though.

2. The phonebook structure is archaic as is the voice dial mechanism. Here they should look at BMW or the way it works on the Blackberry 8310 with Voice Signals. Maintaining two address books is just plain dumb and the auto method used by BMW to link to your address book resolves the synchronization issues.

I'll follow up with more as I get more experience.

 

Yeah.....I would love if the G integrated my phonebook from my phone.

 

I agree on both points. I don't use the nav system because there was no way to transfer my waypoints and routes from my NUVI 760. I installed my 760 on the dask low so it doesn't interfer with my vision.

And on the phonebook that is sure '60s technology. In my '06 G the blue tooth was so bad I installed the Parrot CK3100 and that worked directly through the phone fo rthe contacts. This was great. I won't do the same on my '08 since the voice recognition/bluetooth work much better IMHO.

Rich Dunklee

 

With the exception of the stupid iDrive instead of a touch screen, the BMW does not lock you out from making any entries and has a wide range of voice recognition capability (better than the G5). They really need to get rid of the self imposed limitations if they want to compete with BMW or when my BMW lease is up in 6 months it will be another BMW replacing it. I will enjoy my G35x for the 2 year lease and see what happens at the end.

 

Interesting. I'm surprised to hear that. I find the G's nav etc. very intuitive. I've never used iDrive, but every review I've ever read that compares the two (Car and Driver, Automobile, Road and Track, Consumer Reports), berates the iDrive badly, and is positive about the G's system.

But at the same time, I recognize that there is a big difference between test driving a car and living with it day to day, and journalists never really have an opportunity to get used to either system, whereas you own both, and have gotten used to both. I'm a techie, and I imagine I would get used to iDrive pretty quickly.

I do agree with you about the shortcomings of the G, although they don't bother me that much for the most part. The only one that really bothers me a lot is the fact that they disable so much while driving. That drives me nuts.

I had an '06 330i that I traded for my G because of reliability issues, and my local BMW dealer being really bad on service (3 to 4 weeks to schedule an appointment for bad bearings), but I didn't have iDrive on mine.

Cheers
Tamir

 

The early version of the iDrive was terrible; however, the newer version is pretty good.

The voice recognition is context sensitive so depending on where you are in the menu screen, the "Options" voice command gives you a different set of possible commands. Then the screen menu items are the voice commands making it real easy to know what to say without having to memorize hundreds of voice commands. It also recognizes numbers spoken as digits or as English words such as Eighteen Hundred instead of 1 - 8 - 0 - 0. or twenty-four thirty instead of 2 - 4 - 3- 0. Radio stations, cell phone address book and more are all voice controllable. Speech recognition while driving is not bad. The newer one (newer car) is quite good as they obviously improved the processor speed over the one that is a little slow on my 2006. It is very slick the way it makes the complete address book available and gets it anew each time so there are no synching worries. It pairs up quickly and you can voice dial any entry without voice tags. It also lists the type of number where you have multiple entries for a user such as mobile, home, work, etc. All is available while driving and even the initial OK button automatically proceeds as if pushed by you after a slight delay.

Sometimes I feel like the G35 navigation system is:

 

I agree with the G's navigation lock out is horrible. I go on road trips throughout California about twice a month and I find it very annoying that we have to stop to try and find stuff that's round us.

Personally, I am semi-ok with them locking things out, because lets face it, people are stupid and would probably cause a lot of crashes. But I think there SHOULD be some sort of override. IE, tie it into the weight censor for the passenger seat or something. We typically end up taking a Garmin along with us so that we can just leave on saturday and drive somewhere and explore as we go...

 

That's a great idea - to have the lockout switched off if it senses a passenger. The system I beleive automatically disables the passenger airbag when there is no one seated there, so they already know that someone is there - it can't be that difficult to extend that to not locking out the functions when there is a passenger with you. The other point about only the 5 nearest places showing up and not being able to go to the 'next page' of hotels or atm's, or whatever, is a bug in my opinion. They really ought to fix that.

Still, I do use the nav a lot and get by with it relatively well. I did prefer my old Garmin interface, but I love that this system is integrated with the car and not in a separate screen - ie. it lowers the music volume to give me instructions, etc. as compared to a portable nav which would not do that. Also, my wife has an '07 Acura MDX, and while that one doesn't lock out at all, it also isn't perfect. It doesn't have birds eye view for one thing, and it's less intuitive than the G's nav.

Cheers
Tamir

 

Well..I agree with most of your comments...but I pose this: what tech gadget is ever perfect?

I mean, does iDrive automatically change the Nav Screen from sun to stars when the headlights turn on?



-s-

 

Rich - I don't use the nav system to it's full capabilities, and have never really used waypoints other than when I used them on-off. You mentioned that you stored way points in your Nuvi 760. Did you have a regular route that you took, and used those waypoints, or was there another purpose for storing 'permanent' way points? Just asking because I'd like to leverage more of the nav system's capabilities.

Thanks a lot
Tamir

 

There is not lock out on the BMW, Honda or Accord. I haven't seen or heard of a higher than normal accident rate for any of these cars so the assumption that you need a motion lockout doesn't comport with the facts. I would argue that having clear guidance to a destination is far better than driving around trying to find a place in the blind or with directions obtained from a gas station attendant or other motorist. Ever follow behind someone that is lost or trying to find an address and doesn't quite know where it is? That is an accident looking for a place to happen.

 

I agree with that sentiment. We should all contact Infiniti Customer Service to give that feedback. While it probably won't help, it's worth a try. I'm going to call them at any rate. I must say though that despite these few niggles, and every car has something, 11k miles into my G35x ownership, and I absolutely love this car - more so than any previous car I've owned, and that list is long and include an '06 330i, '05 Audi TT, '05 BMW X3 (my wife's), '02 M3 convertible, '03 Subaru WRX, etc. (Yes, I'm crazy and a car nut...).

Cheers
Tamir

 

Tamir, i ahve been driving the same route to work for 19 years now, you would think I would know the way!! Just kidding. To and from work it is just something to keep me awake. But I do have a route to and from Virginia Beach (from South Jersey) and I know the route but I have things like police speed traps stored as part of the route. The nice thing about the NUVI 760 is that you can have multiple waypoints unlike my previous NUVI 660. I stilll have the 660 that I use when I travel by air.

It is just a "toy" with the routes but it is nice on long trips, like down to VA Beach since I have short cuts and other POI's saved.

Rich Dunklee