I read this article a few months ago which concludes that the best place to mount a phone is the driver’s side window. That convinced me to try moving my phone there from where I previously had it mounted, near the center console. I do like it better this way. Where do you have yours?
I chose “other”: it’s in a CD slot mount. High enough to be seen easily, no vents are blocked (and the phone doesn’t get hot/cold from air blowing on it), the mount is easy to put in and remove without having to stick anything on/in my car, and the phone stays convenient to the charger in the center console. (I do sometimes use my CD player but I rarely change the disc, so that’s never an issue.)
Note that not only is the article almost 3 years old – there are several better mount options now – the “driver’s side window” conclusion was just their opinion; not a recommendation. They even noted some potential issues with that placement.
In a cup holder or on the passenger seat. I don’t use GPS navigation often enough to bother with buying and keeping a mount for that purpose.
In my pocket. In my province, it’s illegal to use a cell phone while driving.
Poll is incomplete.
CD mount but that is in the center console, so I chose that. It doesn’t block much, and what it does I rarely use. What i do like about it is that it is harder for other drivers and cops to see.
You have the phone in your pocket while navigating? So you just rely on voice prompts?
I would never use my phone while driving, and I am quite capable of looking up directions, memorizing them, then driving to my destination without a synthesized voice correcting me every 15 feet.
I don’t need my phone for directions; I need it for real-time traffic information.
My radio supports CarPlay, so I stick the phone in the console bin.
I keep it in my pocket, like Northern Piper.
My wife much prefers to drive rather than be driven, so on road trips where we need guidance, 90% of the time she is driving. So, my phone is in my lap.
Actually, her car has a built-in navigation system that frankly isn’t very good, and she has an older Garmin that works quite well, so I usually use the phone just to keep me up to date on our progress. Sometimes we use Google Maps when we weren’t expecting to need guidance and we hadn’t bothered to set up the Garmin. Works great for a short side trip or to find our destination as we get off the highway at the end of the trip.
I place it in a mount on the center of the dash to minimize any differential between looking at the phone and looking where I am actually going. Seems to me that a phone on the driver’s side window would have you wagging your head back and forth.
I am not capable of knowing what traffic conditions are five miles in front of me that would cause me to take a different route.
Sideways on the dashboard, propped against the windshield. I only have to dip my vision a little to see where Waze is sending me, and I still have the road ahead in my field of view.
I was surprised when I was reading Johnny LA’s thread last week, asking about phone mounts, that people still deal with needing to mount their phones. Especially in a Prius (which is what JLA says he drives), which I would think is pretty modern. I thought “why are the people who are answering just using the in-dash display?” In fact, the picture of a Prius dash that JLA links to in his thread, there’s a huge display right in the middle there.
I searched “Apple CarPlay Prius” and was shocked to find that CarPlay (which is where you plug your phone into your car via a regular iPhone cable and it shows some apps on your console where your radio is, such as Maps or iTunes or even SMS) was just now being introduced into 2019 Priuses.
I’m shocked because I have a boring 2017 Ford and CarPlay was standard on that. I really assumed it would be standard on most cars by now.
In some respects I think it’s a bad move by carmakers because it really does help put navigation front-and-center when you’re using a phone nav app, and thus is safer. In other respects I can see wanting to avoid doing it because having access to your phone like that can be unsafe (safest is in your pocket!) Then again, if these cars already have these big center screens on their dashes, the real reason they’re not including CarPlay and similar access has got to be the margin they make on offering the very expensive GPS packages from Garmin or whoever (IIRC it was much more expensive to get that on my Ford than just having CarPlay).
Anyway, speculation over. I don’t have to mount my phone. Prior to having this car I didn’t have a smart phone - I mounted my GPS on the windshield above my wheel.
I use the cup holder, as I was under the impression that it was illegal to use a window mount in my state. However, I have just looked it up and it is not illegal, but the mount is restricted to a small corner of the driver side windshield. The more you know!
Here is something I found listing state regs. It’s from Feb. 2018, so it could be out of date in some states.
Your mobile navigation device is far more capable at this than you are. That said, I also look up where I’m going before heading to an unfamiliar place. I want to know approximately where I am but I’m not interested in memorizing three or four street names I won’t be turning down in order to anticipate that one I do need to see plus one or two streets after so I recognize that the correct street had been passed. The nav is particularly great for those last few miles when I’m off the interstate/main roads and I don’t have to look at street names until alerted or count fractions of a mile.
I was doing industrial field service when GPS navigation began to become in reach of consumers. This job had me driving all over Chicagoland, often in very obscure areas (industrial parks, service drives, frontage roads, utility access roads) where signage wasn’t a priority. Switching from inch and a half thick map books to navigation devices must have been about the same difference as moving ships by sail vs steam. There was a component of luck using maps and memory. If I missed a turn, I’d often drive for a couple miles before realizing what I’d thought was a driveway way back there was the road I needed. Then, I’d have to get a truck turned around, haul out the map book, regain my bearings and try to find the street again. It totally sucked.
It’s that way with the latest Mazdas, too. I bought my Miata back in March, and it did not come with Apple Car Play, but apparently they introduced it midway through the 2019 model year. I could take my car to the dealer and have them install it for a few hundred dollars, but I’m not sure that’s worth it. I’ve already got my phone and a mount; I might as well just keep using that rather than pay to be able to view it on my car’s infotainment screen.
ETA: I don’t know about the Prius, but Mazda has gotten some flak from car reviewers for being slow to adopt Apple Car Play and it’s Android equivalent.
I keep it in my pocket sometimes as well.
My personal vehicle uses Android Auto, so even though I’m using my phone’s navigation, the map and directions are displayed on my car’s in-dash navigation system. The phone sits in a small cubby in the center console.
If I’m driving some other car, and using my phone for navigation, then I keep my phone in my pocket. The directions and navigation will be displayed on my Galaxy watch. So I can look at my watch as needed while driving without taking my hand off the steering wheel. If the vehicle has Bluetooth, then I will also feed the audio through the car speakers, otherwise, I don’t bother with the turn-by-turn audio. It’s not really necessary, since the instructions on my watch, and it will vibrate to alert me that a turn is approaching.
Ten years ago, when I actually needed to mount something to the windshield, I preferred for it to be in the far, bottom corner on the driver’s side of the windshield. I could easily reach the buttons with my left hand, the screen was easily viewed without taking my eyes completely off the road, and it was not in a location that would otherwise distract or impede my view.
Yep. I have a 2016 Mazda and it has a map( slightly shaky directions IMHO )which must be manually updated and has no real time traffic support at all. But I still mostly avoid using my phone. I’ll check traffic before I leave for somewhere and plan accordingly. Long trips I just suffer through the traffic if I hit it.
On the rare occasions I do use my phone because the crap Mazda directions are worthless, I don’t look at it. I route the audio to the car through bluetooth and use the Mazda dash map to glance at roads.
But what does “use” mean? Surely it’s not illegal to program in a destination before you start, and then passively follow the directions by looking at a mounted phone, provided you don’t mess with the phone while moving? That’s no different from using an integrated navigation app on the vehicle.