ICE vs charging on depleted battery at low speeds

That is so true. I was guilty of overdoing the fiddling on our last trip (not as a safety issue) and both my Garmin and phone are going to stay out of sight during our upcoming trip, unless I just get so frustrated I can't stand it. I played with the nav some today and was surprised how well it works. The voice is much nicer than my Garmin and I liked how it overrode the radio filling the cabin with sound. I was also surprised by how much I could still do using touch, unless it's different when I'm actually moving and not just stopped in Drive. Most of what's locked out seems to be anything that uses the keyboard, which is okay with me. Still a lot to learn though about looking ahead for POIs, etc., to see how that differs from the Garmin. I don't just drive and look for a place to eat when I get hungry. We both have to eat meals on a fairly consistent basis, so I need to figure out about where we'll be at lunchtime and then look ahead to see what's available. My kidney diet is such that I have to be particular about where we can stop and this will be our first trip with my new diet. Believe it of not, but something like a small Sprite has a big impact on my nutrition goals.

 

Doesn't your co-pilot run the phone/GPS? It makes things a lot simpler.

 

You obviously don't know my co-pilot. Her involvement on our trips is taking photos with her phone and posting them to Facebook so our family and friends can follow our progress. It's amazing how many enjoy them and complain if she doesn't post something for a couple of hours. She has no interest at all in learning the GPS, though she might get more into it now that it's built-in. She will play with Maps on her phone once in awhile, but she's pretty content to just sit back and enjoy the ride doing Sudoku, crochet, etc. Part of it is we plan so much before we leave that we don't need to look for much. I just like looking ahead at gas prices, visitor's centers, restaurants, etc. She will google various advertisements we see along the way to see if they might be worth a detour, but she leaves the getting there to me. If need be she'll drive for a bit to let me figure things out, but I drive 99% of the time, including all 18,700 miles of our 2009 road trip.

 

I love these phone magnets: magnetic cell phone holder Manufacturer & Supplier

But there's enough misinformation out there to convince some people that they are bad for your phone. Not true at all; there's nothing in a smartphone that can be damaged by these magnets, I've been using them or over 5 years.