Bringgo

Anyone purchase the Bringgo GPS app. Is it worth the $59.99 Google is selling it for.

I tried the $0.99 trial but it uses my Phone's GPS which is wonky right now. The interface seems like a reasonable in-car navigation system but it does draw a lot of power from your phone and is based on that accuracy rather than the car's GPS. Right now I just use on' star's in dash nav system.

I've spent some time playing with BringGo and my Moto G 1st Gen ($90 new unlocked on Amazon).

Day 1: Connect to my 2014 Spark EV via Bluetooth. The BringGo opening screen on the Moto G says "this device has not been tested and BringGo may not function" or something like that.

On my first attempt at using BringGo for navigation, it had frozen on my start point; the map did not track my movement. But after a disconnect and phone reboot, it hasn't happened again.

Day 2: Left the phone "on" in the car overnight, hidden away from sight, but plugged in to USB for power. Turn on the car, phone begins to charge, boot it up after a few minutes. Another 30 sec or so it activates its Bluetooth connection, and MyLink shows active icons for BringGo, Pandora, TuneIn. Tap the BringGo icon, and up it comes, connects instantly and quickly orients itself. Drove to work and BringGo follows my moves.

Day 3: Get ready to drive to work. It's only a 1.4 mi drive (to a shuttle stop, actually), so I don't have much time to fool with this. However, this time I turned off the phone last night before retiring, so this morning it took less time to boot the phone since the battery had partial charge. Same result as yesterday.

This is what I wanted in a navicomputer in the Spark EV. Pseudo "onboard", if you will; the in-dash display is good enough. I don't care about the phone's battery state as long as it has juice and/or a connection to power, so I can tuck it away where it is out of sight.

The connection seems solid. I bought the Moto G (new) for $90 on Amazon.com for the specific purpose of using it in the car for Nav + music playing. It has 16Gb of storage, so there's plenty of room for maps and tunes. No SD card slot. However, SD cards are so cheap these days, a 32 Gb microSD card for $18 on Amazon holds a ton of music. I bought one with a USB adapter and will try that if more music is required (for road trips!).

I'll test BringGo this month until a late Oct. Spark EV road trip from Atlanta - Charleston, S.C. Only two CCS charging stops (Athens and Augusta), so it will be slow going for part of the journey. I've already driven between three Georgia cities in one day (Atlanta - Gainesville - Athens - Atlanta), fast charging at each stop. The Spark EV doesn't even break a sweat.

I'm on my trial period with BringGo on my iPhone. I'm really impressed with it so far. very configurable, and even has EV awareness and will draw a map of where you can get to based on your current estimated range. I've used Garmin GPS units and Garmin and Navigon software on my iDevices, I'd say this is as good or better. Reasonably up to date maps. For sixty bucks, I'm not expecting the map sets to update very often.


given that you can trial it for 99 cents, I'd recommend doing that to see if it feels worth it to you.


I'm still looking for a holder for my phone, speaking of.

and, any GPS app will draw a ton of power from your phone and it will run warm, the GPS radio uses a lot of power. I'm surprised that the GPS app would work over bluetooth, it is certainly happier all around being plugged into the USB port.

Tried Bringgo on two trips up to wineries in the hills - both times the directions were very poor. Looked through the setting to make sure it wasn't "operator error" (once, driving to San Francisco in my other car, I didn't realize I had my Garmin GPS to "avoid toll roads" - coming in to San Francisco from the east it wanted to to swing all the way down to San Jose and back up through Pal Alto to get to San Francisco). Nope, there was nothing in the settings that would have made it detour out so far.

To me it isn't worth the price, since my Spark is an around-town and local car and I know the area pretty well - and if I don't, there is always my phone. And I do have a Garmin I can plug in if I think I need it.

We bought the 99 cent trial and it worked for several months. It was OK but I preferred the old standalone Tom Tom that I have in the Prius. We noticed we weren't using it often enough to pay 60 bucks. For the few times we need it in the Spark we either move the Tom Tom over or just use Google maps on the phone.

Bringgo is pretty good. I have the full version. Some cool bells and whistles like incorporating charging and range info. I think it's worth it but I still use Waze often. It's so simple and quick to use compared to every other gps app I have experienced.

I mostly use Waze my self, as I'm more concerned about traffic than with finding addresses. How is the traffic function of Bringgo?