Traveling from Inverness to Skye to Edinburgh via rental. How is cell phone coverage along this route, particularly in Skye? Can I depend on Google maps to navigate or should I spring for the rental gps?
Posted by
Duluth 🛶
8065 posts
Cell phone coverage is excellent all over Scotland, including Skye. I even had good coverage when I was on a boat in the ocean heading to Staffa. I had a rental GPS with my car, but I used Google maps exclusively to navigate and never had any problems.
Posted by
OP
21 posts
Thanks! Much appreciated!
Posted by
TX, USA
4854 posts
I also just used Google Maps. However I took the extra precaution of downloading an offline map as a back up. That will work even without cell coverage and data use.
Posted by
4 posts
Agreed! We had a GPS through our car rental but defaulted to Google maps on our phones. Data access and map accuracy was excellent on Skye and elsewhere. The only issues were with our (human) navigators. :)
Posted by
San Diego
12 posts
I'm not a fan of Google maps in the United States. I rented a car in Germany and I really liked the car's navigational system. The reason is that if there are two exits very close to each other, it will tell you to take the 2nd exit. It shows you the 2 turns and grays out the first so that you don't accidentally take the first exit. Google maps doesn't do that for me. I'm renting a car in the Highlands with GPS. Can anyone tell me if this feature is available on those cars? In addition I found the GPS nav system to be much more accurate than Google maps. Comments?
Posted by
Duluth 🛶
8065 posts
I'm renting a car in the Highlands with GPS. Can anyone tell me if this feature is available on those cars?
That will vary depending on the company you choose I would imagine. My car came with a plug in GPS, but I didn't care for it, and elected to use Google. I never had any problems on the roads. And the best thing is that with the prevalence of roundabouts in the UK, if you make a mistake, you just keep on going around the circle till you figure it out. 🤣
Posted by
San Diego
12 posts
Haha, as long as I remember to go clockwise on the roundabouts I think I might be fine. Re plug-in did you have to look at a different display (like Tom-toms) which are a lot smaller than the car display. So it might be the same or smaller than phone? I want to be able to look at a big display so thought it worth it to pay the extra $8/day, especially if guidance is better, but guess I won't know that.
Posted by
340 posts
Like the guy who wears suspenders and a belt, we (my wife and I) use Waze and Google Maps when we travel because we just don't know which one will hold up my pants -- and did so in Scotland. Also our car came with great nav. Never a hitch with any of the nav help.
And the satellite/cell connections we had throughout the country were better than we have in the Bay Area. We were sitting next to an iron age edifice on the edge of the Isle of Skye. I googled our location and in a second had all the information I was looking for about the edifice.
We use What's App -- and have T-mobile (which is not great in our home town). We got calls on both systems in places where sheep outnumbered people 100 to 1.