Hi all. One week of driving my new Smart #1 Premium and already I've got a few issues with the thing. Let see if any of you other new drivers have others to add to the list...
1. Heated Seat Icons - The icons are quite small and show a seat with 3 wavy lines over the cushion. When you press the icon the individual lines change to red to indicate heat levels 1, 2 and 3. At least I'm told that's what happens because I'm red/green colourblind and wear glasses. I literally can't see any difference. A better design would be the heat lines appearing as you press rather than changing slightly.
2. Automatic Day/Night Display Mode - This changes the display from light mode to dark mode to stop blinding you at night with the bright screens. I'm guessing it's linked to the clock or something because it certainly doesn't detect light levels. Here in Scotland in the winter it's gloomy all day and effectively night from 3.30pm onwards. Screen doesn't change until it's actually evening on the clock. I have to manually set it to dark mode.
3. Warnings Warnings Warnings - I know this is sort of universal but man is it bad in modern cars. The car is never done nagging me or 'alerting' me with its systems. Lane keeping physically wrestles the wheel from me to stop me returning to my lane after overtaking. There are warning beeps ever 30 seconds or so for being too close to a kerb or a vehicle or I'm not looking dead ahead long enough or a myriad other bleeped alerts I can't actually identify. You can only turn off the most intrusive of these when in drive mode and you know they're going to reset. It is clearly designed to work on a dead straight, well lit, clearly lined autobahn or US highway. It loses its mind on a pitch black twisting Scottish back road with muck and salt over what lines might be there and with traffic passing inches away on the other side of the road. Thanks for the constant distractions, Captain Safety!
4. The Smart App - The phone application is designed to let you remotely check on your car and do things like turn on the heaters before you get in, see battery levels, etc. It's awful. Compared to the actual Mercedes app or the Audi app it's very limited and very awkward. Trying to set the heating only allows you to turn on the drivers seat and set a temperature. You can't turn on the screen clearing buttons to deice the car or anything else useful like that. It's very slow to act and often takes 2 or 3 presses and a bit of a wait to get any action. Checking your battery level only updates if you go to other pages first and then go back. It's crap.
5. Cluttered User Interface - While I'm griping, who the hell designed the user interface? Why is most of the screen taken up with some sort of cartoon planet and a sleeping fox? We have that big screen that we often have to touch while on the move and you give the actual buttons less space than the decorations?
UI Issues and niggles
re the colour blindness - get in touch with smart and ask them to pass upto the deveolpers and see if they'd be willing to make a software option to address this in a future software update.
Re the time of day and lighting it could be another feature to ask for?
I havent got mine yet, so will no doubt add to the features or lack of, list
Re the time of day and lighting it could be another feature to ask for?
I havent got mine yet, so will no doubt add to the features or lack of, list
Hi, I would love an option to silence all the bings and bongs. The one you didn't mention, and may be the one you didn't realise, is the bong every time the car sees a speed limit sign which changes the current speed limit. It may also be doing it based on the speed limit registered in the SatNav. Ugh!
Yeah, I finally figured out it was the speed limit triple-bong thing that was doing my head in. Another button to deselect when I start the car for work in the morning. I'm hoping that Smart read these forums since I'm guessing they actually set them up, given it's mainly full of marketing material and almost no users. I'm surprised that things like not taking colour blindness into account in the design have happened, but it is a brand new design I guess.
