Turn-by-Turn navigation and battery consumption feedback

[adriancostin6]

I mainly use OsmAnd for navigation when doing my trail runs.

My process is that I map out a trail and use the turn-by-turn navigation to mostly keep me on track so that I don't get lost, but I do so by relying mostly on voice directions from the app, as I do not wear a watch and keep my phone in my running belt. Worked out great so far, as the trails on OSM are marked pretty well for the area I live in.

I first gave it a try with some pre-made GPX files for a local race I will be doing in a couple of weeks and it behaved fine, albeit the voice directions were a bit confusing, but I was really impressed that the app kept me on course. Being a trail track made specifically for a race it was pretty straight forward, with no tight turns, more of a circle.

The next week, I made a track myself through one of the local forests, this time a bit more complicated, throwing a bunch of turns in the mix to reach my final desired distance by visiting multiple trails in the forest. What I noticed is that I think I brought the app to it's breaking point. I kept missing turns and had to turn back to find my route (which is where the off-route voice notification in the app came in real handy). Nevertheless, getting increasingly frustrated with the directions I took it a bit slower and noticed that the app gave voice directions with incorrect distances ("in 20/30m turn left right" were actually immediate turns). I also noticed this while trying it out for the first time, but since the route was more straight forward I could figure it out. Another thing I noticed was that sometimes the app gave me prompts to turn after the turn was supposed to be taken, only making me have to turn back after I heard the "you have been off the route for x meters" prompt. While this is great for my fitness and distance, it is bad in terms of making my runs predictable.

Another bad point I wish to raise was that I noticed that the app drained my phones battery very quickly. After using the navigation I dropped from 80% battery to 20% in a bit over an hour. I did not expect this, since the app works mostly offline. Is it normal?

Can I do anything to improve my experience?

[tommycrock]

Hi - regarding the timing of direction announcements, I wonder if you looked at your phone while this was happening? You were in a forest so it's possible your GPS was struggling to position you accurately - mine often does, especially in dips.

Yes, I can find navigation eats through my battery. I don't know how common that experience is.

[adriancostin6]

I did keep looking at my phone, to put myself back on track out of frustration 👍

Might have been that, but otherwise I just kept it in my belt and listened for directions.

I agree that the GPS might have been having a bad time, due to the trees.

[tommycrock]

Sorry, I wasn't clear about the looking at the phone - I was meaning did you see that your icon was in the right place but the announcements were late.