Connected living
YAMAHA TRACER 9 GT+ 3770 MILES So you can connect your phone to your bike. But what for?
I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to tech. I like pushing buttons and making things do stuff. But when that tech doesn’t perform a function that enhances my life, I can turn all ‘grumpy old man’ about the unneccessariness of it all.
Neevesy (Kawasaki H2 SX SE✚), Rich (Ducati Multistrada V4 Rally) and I have all talked about this year’s must have whoosit - radar cruise. And while you definitely don’t need it, it’s a ride-enhancing device with genuine safety benefits.
But what I hadn’t done until recently was connect my phone to the T9GT✚’s excellent TFT dash (a huge upgrade over the standard Tracer’s display). And I’m a bit disappointed.
I’m a biker who enjoys the meditative isolation of being the sole occupant of a helmet, and it’s been several years (and children) since my wife and I had life-space for any two-up touring. So I no longer use a Bluetooth headset when riding. Meaning that being able to connect my phone to easily, if a bit awkwardly, navigate a Spotify playlist or my phone book through my bike is of no benefit.
Yamaha’s MyRide app lets me check the weather, but
I’ve generally done that before leaving to make sure I’m dressed appropriately for the ride.
What I’d most like to do is put Google Maps, with its excellent navigation and live traffic reporting straight onto my bike’s 7in telly. But it doesn’t do that, and while it does have a very attractive nav option, it’s only with a Garmin subscription. So I have my phone in a ’bar-mounted waterproof case, which works perfectly fine but means there’s a chunk of my bike’s functionality I get zero use out of.
Something else I’ve been frustrated by is not having a range calculator - especially on a tourer. There’s a ‘Trip F’ meter on the main display (centre left) but it shows as dashes until you hit the reserve and counts up when the fuel level’s last bar starts flashing. I’d swap all the phone connectivity for that to tell me the distance to empty.
Nothing’s ever perfect and these small observations don’t really detract from what a bloody brilliant ride the GT✚ is. But they are the small chinks in the Yamaha’s seemingly flawless armour.