FLkiwi

Out of interest, have you compared this to the current Google Maps offering that lets you store offline maps for your planned areas of travel? Is it significantly different? I find the Google Maps function for this works flawlessly if you're in, say, one city (which I am most of the time) - but if you're driving across several countries (a la ED trip) then downloading all the areas is a pain.

superswiss

Yes, I have and it's significantly different. Even for a single country you don't have to think about where you are going. You just download the entire country. Larger countries you can download more granular. For example, for the USA you can download individual states. For the UK you can download England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales individually or the entire UK. Similarly for Germany you can download the individual Bundeslaender. For example I'm going back home to Switzerland over the holidays and visiting my sister-in-law in London, so I already prepped my phone by downloading Switzerland, Lichtenstein and England, so I can navigate anywhere in those countries completely offline w/o having to first plan which cities/areas I'm gonna go to.

rccoleman

I'm dredging this topic up again in case anyone has any new back-channel info. I have an order in for a new 2018 S5 SB and I've been quizzing Audi through every channel available to me (chat, email, Twitter, dealers) and haven't gotten a straight answer about what, if anything, is actually happening in the MY2019 models. The gist has been "don't assume anything about anything", including the following Twitter exchange:

I suspect that the "new hardware" is the new MIB2+ that's going into the A8 along with the switch to a more touch-oriented UI, and I don't think that the relatively-new S4 or S5 are in line for a refresh for MY2019. The key part of that exchange to me is "However, please keep in mind this does not necessarily indicate that 2019 and newer model years are guaranteed to be compatible with Google Earth", which could indicate that they'll update the disclaimer to include "MY2019 and older" when they actually announce the MY2019 vehicles that still use MIB2.

There's nothing wrong with my 11 year old Lexus IS350, so waiting a few more months to get future-proof MY2019 S5 is certainly a possibility. It's just not clear that I'll know enough to make a decision before my April delivery date.

Rob

Obsidian3K

If anything happens in MY19, I'd expect it to be a switch from Google Earth to HERE for satellite overlay. Since Audi is a part-owner of HERE, they can presumably ensure that it stays compatible with their current MIB2 system.

My guess on refresh is MY20. The B7 only lasted 4 MYs, and B8 went an identical 4 MYs before its mid-life refresh. With sedan sales decreasing in favor of CUVs we probably can't expect a B10 already, but a B9.5 for MY20 doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

IIRC order sheets tend to come out around May, so there may or may not be press news on the MY19 by April.

rccoleman

Yeah, that's what I'm specifically asking Audi about (remove or replace with something equivalent from HERE). If it's compatible with MIB2, then it should also work on MY18, though, but they've said several times that it requires a hardware upgrade. Since there's nothing hardware-y about it, I assume that they just don't want to backport any changes to MIB2.

Agreed, and that's probably enough for me to pull the trigger now and contemplate the future when it comes. It looked like the order sheets for MY18 came around April of last year, but maybe somebody will hear something in the meantime. I'm waiting to hear back from the factory rep via the dealer.

FLkiwi

Thanks - this is definitely an advantage, will have to take a look!

rccoleman

Here's what I got from the factory rep about the loss of Google Earth:

Fingers crossed that they actually replace it rather than just get rid of it.

marz1

superswiss

I don't think it's a feature that's listed with the model. It's there on the services overview page. Second row, third item. I'm noticing that they actually have services that we don't get in the USA. For example you can plan entire routes on the myAudi app and then sync them with the MMI, or create your own personalized POI database and upload it to the MMI and even start route guidance on the phone and transfer it to the MMI navigation to take over the routing. Wondering if any of that stuff makes it to us eventually. We seem to be getting a little shortchanged.

https://www.audi.de/de/brand/de/kund...e/myroute.html

marz1