With the Display Audio Navigation system in my plugin base, I find that the traffic colors on the map don't appear automatically. Instead, I need to force the car to make a data connection by starting some other app. I use weather for this. Once I've started weather, I can switch back to map and immediately see the traffic-indication colors. If I just leave the display on map, traffic colors will not appear even after 20+ minutes of driving over the same route, so it's not a signal-strength/coverage problem. I've repeated these experiments numerous times with the same results. Is anyone else seeing this?
I never made a data connection where I didnt check the weather or something else first. I dont use the navi or traffic much. But I'll check it out next time I'm in the car. Somewhat related question.. how useful/timely do you find the traffic updates? I have a portable nav that came with lifetime traffic. I got burned on it a few times (taking the long route and later finding there was no traffic.. and also being told its going to be clear, only to run into traffic) so once I started to second guess it, I stopped using it for traffic.
i have the same thing on my garmin. i guess the reports are only as good as the info provided and around here, real time traffic info is almost non existent. they are usually way after the fact. it's easy to see if you ignore the report and travel the congested/accident route anyway. they are usually wrong 95% of the time. the only time they are right is when a fuel or concrete truck tips over or hits a bridge. then, the road is slow/closed all day.
Yes you do have to start the internet connection to start the traffic overlays. Just as well since it is using the phones data allotment is is probably something should be started manually and automatically shut off when the car shuts off. I find the internet traffic updates and rerouting about as timely as the XM traffic updates I had on my Escape hybrid. The XM tech said that XM is every 15 minutes and I'm guessing the internet is more real time, every time the traffic network posts new info to the third parties like XM, Google, Entunes, it updates.
If you select "Traffic" from the list of Apps, it should go ahead an initiate a connection to the internet to get the Traffic info. I have an iPhone 4S, which requires I tether via USB, so as soon I connect the phone to the USB port, it pretty much starts the internet connection, though sometimes I have to restart the Entune app on the phone.
