Why is navigation on Edge so complicated and poor? ‍

1. Tienes razón. Por ejemplo, no es lógico tener que finalizar una actividad y empezar otra si en medio del recorrido decide modificar la ruta con komoot para seguir otra porque no es capaz de sincronizar si hay una actividad en curso. Eso quizás sea lo más traumático e incomprensible. Es decir, tengo el iq de komoot pero no es completamente operativo porque no deja sincronizar rutas en marcha si hay una actividad en curso

Smartphones are much, much faster. Routing on Google maps is using even faster computers (with an internet connection). So, given the vast resources available to these alternatives, it’s not surprising they will do this better.

Many people use pre-planned routes downloaded to the device. This works pretty well. 

GPS devices with excellent navigational features existed before Noe - and well before Edge 1040.

now, I see 2 reasons why the navigation is so restricted / badly implemented / buggy / non functional here

1) bad management (requirement setting) and engineering 

2) intentionally bad 

as garmin is famous for razor edge thin targeting of devices (and heavily restrict any other user scenarios), I'd bet the 2nd option.

honestly, at this point I'd simply remove all the navigation features from the Edge, because all it does now is to lead to unwanted "recalculations", lock ups and tons of bugs, even when all navi features under the sun I've disabled already.

and yes, I disabled it because it was so bad to begin with.

pxl said:

GPS devices with excellent navigational features existed before Noe - and well before Edge 1040.

“Noe”?

I’m guessing you are talking about devices for cars.

These have unlimited power (they are plugged in). This lets them use faster computers.

The address search function for these is much worse than with smartphones.

The nav in smartphones is better too.

=============

Certainly, things shouldn’t be buggy.

pxl said:

intentionally bad 

as garmin is famous for razor edge thin targeting of devices (and heavily restrict any other user scenarios), I'd bet the 2nd option

???

So, how would that be useful for Garmin?

It's not poor, it just works differently. Bike computers are designed to follow pre-defined routes while consuming the least possible amount of energy.

A few weeks ago, I had to support a group of cyclists with a van. I tried a few navigation apps on my phone, including Komoot. None of them were able to properly follow the GPX route and display the map. At some point, the phone overheated and stopped updating its location. I brought the Garmin as a backup and it just worked.

As for your questions:

• Nobody plans routes on the Garmin, but it's possible. If you like Komoot, connect your Komoot and Garmin accounts. New routes in Komoot will automatically sync to your Edge.
  
  
• You don't have to stop the activity for anything. Tap on the screen, the home button appears on the bottom. To go back to the activity from the home screen, tap the riding profile on the top of the screen. It probably says "Road".
  
  
• You can navigate to a city by its name. On the home screen, choose Navigation - Search - Search button on the bottom right - Enter the name of the place. You can also share a place from Apple Maps with Connect and it will automatically show up on the Edge. But that's not a common way to do it, because when road cycling, the destination usually matters less than the specific route. You should plan your routes in your preferred tool, e.g. Komoot.
  
  
• It sounds like you want your Garmin to display the estimated arrival time and distance left. There are data fields for that. If you don't know how to configure screens, read the manual or watch a video on Youtube.
  
  
• U-turns: most people turn re-routing off, because they want to ride a specific route. User expectations for a sports device are different than for a car satnav.
  
  
• Different route options: good idea, but probably too memory/compute intensive for a bike computer. Even calculating a single route can take a while. It's better to plan the route on the phone and sync it to the device.

Hi,

dpawlyk said:

I’m guessing you are talking about devices for cars.

These have unlimited power (they are plugged in).

the most power hungry parts of these devices are the display and the GPS unit and not the computational part, so that is not the bottleneck here. also, I had a device that is 20 years old now, and I can assure you, it has much slower cpu than anything garmin has now. 

and it navigated brilliantly.

dpawlyk said:

So, how would that be useful for Garmin?

so that you are nagged to buy as much different device as much as possible. 

examples: both the garmin's gpsmap and fenix do have ETA fields, and auto stop functionality but they work very differently, so much, that the fenix is almost unusable for hiking (if you want use these features). 

sadly the gpsmap do have critical issues (it saves corrupted fit files), so it is also unusable for hiking ^_^

also, garmin's small forerunners (265/570) do not have maps, while the larger ones (965/970) do have. but it is not the size, because a small fenix do have map.

the problem here is that the large forerunners and even the small fenix is too heavy and thick to sleep with. well, it is doable, as I do with my large epix pro gen 2, but it is not ideal.

so, at this point, you'd need 3 watches to cover as an everyday watch (570), a runner's watch (970) and an outdoor watch (fenix)

would it be possible to do it in one, relatively small device? yes, but sadly garmin does not want that.

the most disgusting part of the story are the hidden parts (such as data fields and other tricky parts, such to disable to wrist HR sensor during an activity while having a chest strap, not to corrupt the strap's data with garbage whr hallucinations) that you are not even aware of until you do want to use the device as intented.

it is a dirty game and when you run into issues that does not make sense at the first sight (e.g. the toy like interface of the forerunners or the much dimmer AOD during activities with the FR265 vs Epix, or the dropped SW support for the last gen epix/fenix while having a model that has exactly the same HW as the older ones), you can be absolutely sure that it is not there because having insufficient calculation power for example.

pxl said:

the most power hungry parts of these devices are the display and the GPS unit and not the computational part, so that is not the bottleneck here. also, I had a device that is 20 years old now, and I can assure you, it has much slower cpu than anything garmin has now. 

The CPU speed matters too.

pxl said:

so, at this point, you'd need 3 watches to cover as an everyday watch (570), a runner's watch (970) and an outdoor watch (fenix)

I suspect a tiny number of people are buying more than 1 watch.

The problem is you. 

If you are not able to setup or manage your device it's not the devices fault.

There is a German proverb for that:

Wenn der Bauer nicht schwimmen kann , ist die Badehose schuld.