Review: Detecht

As someone who loves data, having a app that lets me track or plan my rides sounds amazing. This started a journey to look for the best motorcycle tracking/planning app for my phone.. 

This had lead me to try a few different ones in the app store. The one I liked the most was Detecht so I used it the most. If your just interested in if I would recommend the app the answer is NO! I wont make you read the whole blog just to find out I don't recommend the app and in fact I ran into very serious issue with this app and have told some of my friends that had the app and they uninstalled the app. We will cover this a little later in the blog.

Detecht what is it and why would I use it? Detecht is a GPS for  motorcycles that offers route planning, random round trip generator, safety alerts, and its own social media platform that lets you share photos and information about your ride.

lets start off with the Good and what I really like about the app.

there are two plans, there is the free one and there paid version that cost $60usd a year as of this post. with the free version you get GPS tracking/Navigation, route planning, Safety alerts to one of your contacts. With the paid version you unlock Auto-generate the most curvy route to your destination, Safety Tracking (lets your emergency contact track your location real time.), navigate other users top routes, and Import/export routes with GPX support.

I really like how clean the interface it. after the initial setup the main screen its really just four buttons that you will interact with. "start ride" is  your tracking. there is no GPS turn by turn it just tracks your ride. Than we have the "Plan Route" here you can plan a future route that you would like to follow. next there is an road "hazard" button where you can let other Detecht users that there is a issue with or on the road. lastly we have the "Round Trip" where it auto-generates a route for you.  

For me one of the best feature is the Round trip. I love just to ride and most days I don't have a destination  in mind. Hit that Round trip button and you are brought to a number of options. 

here you select how many miles you would like to ride and pick a direction and the app will auto-generate are round tip route and provide turn by turn directions for you to follow. 

lets talk about route planning. Detecht does OK in this department, route planning is done by picking your start location (you can use your current location or pick a different location all together) and a destination. after that you just add "stops" to the route. you can ether add stops by the address or pick a location in the map. picking the location via the map can be a little problematic that if you don't place the pin just right on the road you might end up going into a cul-de-sac or driving around a block before heading back on the main road you just turned off of in the first place.

 

Next we will cover the "start" ride. this does just what you think it does. it tracks your ride. the amazing things that I really like about Detecht tracking is the data it collects. while tracking your ride the app will display the miles traveled, the current speed you are traveling, and the time you have been riding. when you come to a stop or grab a bit to eat this app will auto pause and not count that in your trip.   

Now I can already hear what you are saying this is very basic for a GPS system. After your ride is done and you complete it in the app you will be presented with a TON of data.

here we can see we can see all the information of the ride from the total distance, ride time, average speed and elevation. you can even write a little about the ride to tell others how it was. 

now if your scroll down a bit you will see the full statistic of the ride. the speed relative to time of ride the altitude relative to the ride time.

scrolling down just a little more will should you your acceleration over the course of the ride. 

lastly I want to talk about the road hazard  button. This has to be one of the best way I have seen it implemented. when your out on your ride and you are stopped say in traffic and you hit that road hazard button to alert your fellow riders you are given a few options to choose from. 

now when you are riding and your see a road hazard its skips the option menu and just places a alert that something was seen. this way with your riding you don't have to try and select other nonsense. 

Now if you stayed with me so far you are asking this sounds like a great app why wouldn't you recommend it. Well lets get into some of the issues I have with this app and why I cannot recommend it at all.

Like I have said before I love just riding with no place in mind. so my past time I like getting lost. I'll start the ride tracking and just see where the road takes me. Ill get so far into the ride and have not idea where the heck I am. There is no way in the tracking side to say TAKE ME HOME. you have to stop the trip than go to the search bar and hit home. ok ok not really a big deal other than you now have two routes to cover one trip and there is not way to combine the two trips.

Next this app is not very popular in my area so the road hazard is kind of pointless. think I seen one alert for a road hazard but it was over 3 months old. so while this implantation is pretty amazing if no one uses it than is it worth it?

Now here is where things got really really bad. Remember this app has Safety alerts . Well Safety alerts is a very cool option. If you are out on your bike and you lay the bike down or you get into an accident Detecht will alert your emergency contact. This to me is an amazing future as my wife always worries when I am out at night riding and if something where to happen to me she would get notified and be able to call emergency services to my location. this all sounds amazing right? 

My problem happened on my last ride. I was putting in the miles just enjoying the night air. I was at the end of my ride out so I turned around and headed home. knowing where I was I didn't need the app open on my phone so I turned off the screen and went about my drive home. due to friends always texting me at all hours of the night I have SMS notifications turn off. I was about 40 minutes from home and I turned on my screen just to see if I had any messages that I might need to pull over and respond to what do I find. that there is a message on my screen that Detecht detected I wrecked on my bike about 10 to 15 minutes before I turned my screen back on.. I didn't wreck and this was a false alarm but the damage was already done. My wife got this message on her phone

well my wife was sleeping at the time this message came through. My 9 year old daughter was the one to see this message and through her mind she just lost her dad. and started crying. My wife woke up and finally got out of my daughter that she was crying because she seen that text.. now my wife has not seen the text at this point because she was trying to find out why my daughter was crying. Well when my wife seen the message well she thought I was in an accident. Lucky by the time I seen this and my wife finally got to see this message I was already calling her to tell her I was ok and safe and that the sent that out by mistake. when I finally got home I had two very emotional girls waiting for me.

I get that false alarms can happen but its completely NOT ok for the notifications to not show up on my phone when its about to send an SOS alert so if it is false alert you can stop them. There is also no way to turn this feature off that I found. you can remove the contacts from the emergency contacts but than you also lose the live tracking feature. 

Riding motorcycles is inherently dangerous but my family does not need the extra stress of false alerts going to them saying I wrecked. For this reason I will not be using the app anymore and I will not recommend it for these same reasons.

if anyone has a motorcycle GPS app that is worth checking out please let me know I'll be testing more in the coming months.

Stay safe and keep the shiny side up.