superswiss

Not specifically with the iPhone, but yes I regularly use addresses stored against my contacts for navigation. It is subject to the same constraints. The address has to be formatted properly, so that the MMI can successfully parse it and turn it into a navigation destination and store it against the contact. Once you have parsed and stored and address for a particular contact, you can directly navigate to it by saying "Navigato to" followed by the contact's name and optionally specify "business" or "private" if the contact has a work and home address, otherwise the MMI will ask you which address you want to navigate to. If you haven't previously parsed a contact's address, you can say "Find contact" followed by the name of the contact and then select the address, which will parse it and you can directly navigate to it.

Unfortunately, the main constraint is the parser. In my case the parsing fails if I have an apartment/suite number in the address or anything else other than house number and street. In cases where the parsing fails it still recognizes the city, but I have to manually enter the street and house number before saving the navigation destination. Minor inconvenience, but once the navigation destination is stored it just works.

The more annoying part is that once you parse an address and save it, it creates a shadow copy of the contact in the MMI's directory and it links that shadow contact with the contact coming from your phone. That's all good until you update some of the data for that contact on the phone. At that point it breaks the link and you end up with a duplicate contact in the MMI. It's easily fixed, though, by just deleting the shadow contact. It has a different logo next to it, so it's easy to recognize, however, after that you have to parse the address again if you want to continue navigating to that contact's address.

It generally works pretty well for me. I don't have many contacts that live in apartments and my contact data doesn't change that frequently for existing contacts. I mostly add new contacts.

The MMI reroutes automatically if it finds a faster alternate route. If it doesn't reroute, then the detour will take longer than the traffic delay on your current route. There is an option in the settings to display alternate routes upfront with relevant information like distance and projected arrival time. You can then choose the route that's best for you.

As for avoiding certain streets, that's not an option, but you can tell it to avoid the next x miles of your current route, which is somewhat similar. An alternative is adding a stopover to your current route that will cause it to route you around the problematic area.

EDIT: You have to enable dynamic rerouting in the navigation settings. I believe it's turned off by default.

HaveBlue

Another annoying thing is when you arrive at your destination it simply says you have arrived. It should display the address without fumbling through menus to find it again. The last few hundred yards are now a mystery of where to stop.

NoahWeb

Using Google Earth/Audi Connect, it displays a photo of the destination as you approach. I found that to be quite helpful!

snagitseven

A photo of the detinarion works very sporadically at best. Street View seems to be more consistent.

Richard Solomon

The photo shown when I reach home IS a google street view image, and amusingly enough, includes my beater truck parked on the street

Alphatero

You should never input your exact home address into your NAV. If someone has your car they now have your exact address and your garage door remote.

superswiss

This point came up in another thread recently and I say the same thing here. Unless that someone has one of your keys they don't just power up the MMI to extract your home address. Everything in the car is coded to the chip in your keys. Much easier to look at the registration in your glove compartment if they wanna know where you live. Same goes for the homelink module. Unless they manage to bypass the ignition lock, they would have to remove the proper parts from the car and power it up with an auxiliary source to open your garage. I hope you have a rolling code garage door opener, so you can simply delete all the remotes from it and render your homelink module useless.

Much more risky to have one of the old fashioned remotes clipped to your sun visor. Then somebody can just break in, take your registration and the remote and walk up to your house. Now if you are concerned that a sophisticated hacker gets a hold of your car and manages to boot up the MMI, then simply go into the settings and enable encryption to encrypt all the data stored in the MMI.

Richard Solomon

If they have my car, they probably took the keys, and my wallet, watch, and cell phone all at gunpoint. So you make a fair point, but I suspect by that time it's moot.

It's certainly way more convenient to pull into my garage than to park two blocks over and walk in to "thwart" any robbers

FWIW, the door between my house and garage is locked unless someone is passing through it, so I hope the SOBs don't take all my car care products too! Oh wait, they got my keys at gunpoint also there go my etchings.

patg1964

Does anyone know how to store contacts in Google Contact so when transferred to the MMI it then parses the address correctly?

HaveBlue

Best I can tell, being in the USA, if you enter/edit them from the web with the full address including the zip, it will parse correctly. Doing it from my Android phone was hit and miss. A partial address seemed to mess them up and put the whole thing in the address field.

When you go to gmail.com and into contacts, click the three little dots ... next to the address and check to see if they are formatted correctly.