Drive Smarter
The essential in-car companion for select Cobra and Escort Dash Cams
Total ratings
4.31
(Rating count:
5,048)Review summary
These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews.
Google Play Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate,
spammy, or outdated. Pros
- Offers ability to navigate within the app.
- Can change some settings on compatible devices.
- Alerts can be read over car speakers via Android Auto.
Cons
- App frequently gets stuck on 'syncing emergency data'.
- Poor connectivity with radar detectors, often shows as 'out of range'.
- Inaccurate location tracking and speed limit detection.
- Long loading times, taking several minutes to access features.
- Requires excessive permissions that users find intrusive.
Most mentioned
- Connectivity issues with radar detectors.
- Problems with syncing emergency data.
- Slow loading times preventing app use.
- Inaccurate GPS/location tracking.
- Lack of important features compared to previous apps.
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User reviews
Recent rating average:
1.90
All time rating average:
4.31
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| Date | Author | Rating | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-12-12 |  | | Bugs, So, Sooo Many Bugs! There is not even room to cover everything here, but top contenders include GPS issues, UI issues, stability problems, and lockups. Application sometimes hangs for 4-7 minutes at launch ‘syncing emergency data’ when you open it. Sent bug report to Support. GPS is super buggy often showing me going 43 mph when stopped, and 6 mph when driving on a highway at 70 mph. UI has numerous flaws, including default zoom being way too far in. The old App was 1000x better. |
| 2024-12-09 |  | | I bought Cobra RAD 700i. My excitement wasn't lasting too long : first, the app is stuck at "Syncing Emergency Data".. eventually got past that. Next, it wasn't connecting to my radar.. Now at this point I opened a service ticket and got a link suggesting to turn on developer mode and adjust some animation scale settings. Cool. That allowed the app to detect the radar, but it does so only one time out of many attempts. Then if it shows the radar in the list - it always fails to connect to it. |
| 2024-12-04 |  | | It's good for changing some settings, not all, on my SC 400D or my RAD 700i. That's about it as far as usable features go. The iRadar app is more useful overall but also flawed. iRadar never seems to know the correct speed limit. However, the map itself seems to work.... Edit: Seems this app is going to be perma beta. It's never going to be of professional quality at this rate. The app takes minutes to load, if at all, on my Note 20 Ultra, S22 Ultra, S23 Ultra, and my month old S24 Ultra. Junk |
| 2024-12-03 |  | | Glitchy on many levels. I've experienced the same issues regarding playing music via the phone into the head unit mentioned by another user. The other day, the map never stopped moving around and around. It never zeroed in on my location correctly. Definitely not ready for prime time. Escort Live is much better... As of Dec. 2nd, 2024 - DS is still not ready for prime time. I like Escort Live better - the layout is better and I like how the vehicle icon is positioned lower on the screen. |
| 2024-11-30 |  | | I love the app. I do wish the app would center my location on the map in Android Auto when I first launch the Drive Smarter app. I have to do it manually every time Android Auto launches, which is a bit annoying. Update: 11-29-24. I no longer need to re-center my map when I launch Android Auto. I've been receiving the "syncing emergency data" quite a bit. Probably 1 out of 5 times. Seems like it stays hung on that screen for quite a while. Aside from a few bugs, I love it. |
| 2024-11-29 |  | | Right now the app doesn't display (or doesn't know) the speed limits for a very large amount of roads, and therefore the overspeed alert can't work on those roads. Escort Live is by far more useful but you can't set a destination with escort live. I wish that there were options for route planning, such as avoid highways, toll roads, dirt roads and ferries like in garmin. |
| 2024-11-19 |  | | Medicore replacement for Escort Live. Pros: Speed limit display works again, no issues with having to force close the app to actually get it to stop running, auto reporting of Ka and Laser hits works again. Cons: No landscape mode, auto map zoom is uselessly too close at highway speed, no alert prioritization and poor display function with multiple alerts, frequent freezes on opening for various "data sync" events, minimal control of anything other than current gen Escort/Cobra products. |
| 2024-11-15 |  | | While it offers the ability to navigate directly within the app as opposed to using wayze or another program in the background, the app regularly requires a phone and detector restart to get past the "syncing emergency contacts" step, rendering it useless about 20% of the times I open it. A severe step down from the previously supported app, not happy that the companion app to an expensive detector is absolute dog water in terms of reliability. Would not recommend. |
| 2024-11-14 |  | | App will not load half the time, it just gets stuck in "syncing navigation data" indefinitely. Then when it does work it won't actually connect to my radar detector it says "out of range." Detector itself seems to work fine but the connectivity with the app is very poor. Needs to be updated or something because the app itself is basically useless right now as far as I can tell and very confusing. |
| 2024-11-13 |  | | When it works, it's decent. I like the Android Auto integration, and that alerts are read over the car speakers. My biggest complaint is that most of the time, it'll get stuck on syncing emergency data and never properly run. When it does run, I can mute radar warnings, but it won't store those lockouts like the previous app (iRadar) for future trips. It would be nice if, like the previous app, I could switch between a map screen and a speedometer screen. |
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