V70: Stereo/SatNav/Phone Satnav... Postcodes?

[andykem]

Hello,
Not long had this 2010 V70 and got update DVD from: www.satnavdisc.co.uk. That all loaded fine but took an age. And the satnav can now be activated.

However, to me at least, the whole business of actually entering a destination seems extremely laboured. Further, there appears to be no way to just enter a postcode as a destination. How can this be as the destinations available are too broad I think. I have always used postcodes as destinations in my phone apps.

Is there some way of doing this on our satnav?
Andy 😎

[Simon Jones]

When on the address entry page, select the postcode button on the top left to open the postcode entry screen. The button will change to then say 'city' to get you back to address mode. I believe the RTI manual will provide full instructions .

[volvoski]

The system is one of the worst I have ever come across. The steering wheel or remote operation smacks of a toy. Once you get it running you discover your apple phone is better. Good luck with it.

[Simon Jones]

I'd agree its not a patch on my Tom Tom, but I find it does the job and you don't have to worry about someone smashing a window to nick it.

[volvoski]

If would leave the door open for someone to Nick it for all the use it is.

[apersson850]

I've used mine for six years, and it works good enough to take me to the destination each time.

By the way, my system is model 2012, so it's not identical. But it has eight different ways to enter the destination, and postcode is one of them.
However, I can't think of any single time I've actually used that. The reason is of course that when going by car, you have the advantage of getting to the destination precisely. If I enter a postcode, I may end up with 5 km left of driving to the actual destination, since some postcodes cover several square kilometers. My own postcode puts me more than 400 m away from my home.

[Simon Jones]

On my old Navman sat nav, it only accepted the first 4 of the 8 digits so you were lucky to even get to the right town!

[Tatsfield]

If I enter a postcode, I may end up with 5 km left of driving to the actual destination, since some postcodes cover several square kilometers. My own postcode puts me more than 400 m away from my home.

But that's because the Swedish Postal service chose a poor postcode system. Here in the UK the postcode gets you to within a maximum of 8 houses. This is because we use a full alpha-numeric system rather than a simple 10 base decimal system. The first two letters identify the postal town followed by two numbers which are the area in the town, the first number in the second group is the zone in the area and the last two letters are the particular block of 8 houses in the zone. This gives the last block a choice of 676 sub-divisions in the zone rather than the 99 that a decimal system would offer. So we can use postcodes for navigation much more efficiently. An address in the UK could be expressed by the postcode followed by just the house number and nothing more. For the UK a sat nav would just have to ask for the post code and the house number and it would be a totally unique location identifier needing no other input.

Sensus is a bit too Swedish for my liking. It insists on putting the definite article "the" in front of every street name it announces although in the UK we don't say street names like that unless it is a road named as going somewhere such as the London Road ie the road that goes to London or a numbered route such as the A338, but never the Smith Street, just Smith Street. This lack of attention to detail for specific countries and languages tends to undermine confidence in the system.

[apersson850]

Yes, I'm aware of that. The postcode system in Sweden was designed to simplify sorting the mail at terminals, not for final delivery. In some cases, it does define one single building, or a small block of buildings, but in a more rural area, several square kilometers could have the same postcode. Or one entire smaller town/village.

I've not thought about that it pronounces street names wrong when English is selected. In Swedish, you simply use the road name as it is, since definite article is included in the name, if it should be there, and not when it shouldn't.

My address is for example Prästgatan, which is the Priest road. But there's a Sven Lagers väg too (Sven Lager's road), which lacks definite article in the name. So the system simply says the name as it is.

It's probably somebody who wasn't fluent enough in English who desgined that. Can be tricky, I know. I'm no native English speaker either.

[SwissXC90]

Originally Posted by Tatsfield

Here in the UK the postcode gets you to within a maximum of 8 houses.

Not always

I was in the UK last October and was advised NOT to use the PostCode to get to the destination, because it would put me 29 miles / 45 minutes drive away from my wanted destination.

Because that one single PostCode covered a very large area

So just because you are used to accurate UK PostCodes in cities, doesn't mean that the same accuracy exists for every possible PostCode destination in the UK.

In my case, the streetname & housenumber was much more accurate than the postcode