When Garmin is still way better than smartphone navigation

[ActionableMango]

I just got back from a 6000 mile road trip and I had an interesting observation about cellphone navigation vs dedicated GPS units (specifically Garmin).

At home and around town, I exclusively use the cellphone for navigation. The UI is faster, up to date, includes fresh data, live traffic, etc. So 100% of my local navigation is via the iPhone. Probably almost everyone is doing this, so you know what I mean.

However, on the road trip, this changed to about 95% use of the Garmin and 5% use of the iPhone. I only used the cellphone once I was in a town and wanted to see/find what was in town. So even though the Garmin was slower, less sophisticated, and had no live data, it had useful "killer features" that I don't have in Apple Maps or Google Maps.

These two "killer features" are:

1. The ability to call up several predefined, saved routes. On a roadtrip there were specific routes we wanted to take in order to see specific sites and to drive on wonderful roads instead of the Interstate. I don't think Apple Maps can do this at all. Google Maps can, sort of, but it's a really convoluted process and didn't really work right.
   
   
2. The ability to search for food, gas, lodging (or other POIs), but specifically "along the route forward" or "at the destination". With just a few button presses, I can see (for example) a convenient list of every gas station along the way on my route from closest to farthest, all the way to the destination. I can then compare that to how many miles I have left in the tank, and can make an educated decision about which I should to stop for gas. Then I can pick that gas station, and have it added as a required "via" destination along the way. Same for food, based on hunger level. Same for lodging, based on how tired I am.
   
   In contrast, with the smartphone, I'd have find the next town on the route, do a search there. Repeat for the next town, and so on. Then I'd have to remember all of these in my head, and make a decision. Once the decision is made then there's no easy way to insert that POI into the existing route. This is, no exaggeration, a difference of about 20 seconds vs. 15-30 minutes.

If I could just get these two specific features into a decent navigation app on the iPhone, I'd feel like I have the best of both worlds. But I find it difficult to search for these things because I don't really know what name these features would be called.

So I ask you, does anyone know of a navigation app that's great for navigation AND has the above two features as well? These two things are the only features left that keep me tied to having a Garmin around, and they are extremely compelling to me for road trips.

 

[sparksd]

I'm the same - I far prefer using my Garmin nuvi 3590 LMT over any other device, including my in-car GPS and Android and iOS devices. I've used Garmin devices since the 12XL in 1997 and still like them.