Tomtom Rider 550 issues and suggestions for FW updates

I was positively surprised when I saw the first reviews of the new rider 550. It seemed to have a quick response, track imports, WiFi for updates and synchronizing tracks and POI's, and other new features.

I've been using Garmin Zumo's for over 10 years (550, 660, NAV5) and even got the new 396LT-S also with WiFi and etc.

First the issues that I have:

• My 550 connected to iPhone X and Sena S20 are troubled. Need to hard turn off the 550 or/and phone and headset to get things working.
• Streaming audio from the iPhone sometimes is stuttered.
• Streaming audio from the iPhone seems to stop the 550 from giving navigation instructions (from time to time).
• This also happens in my case when using "speak after tone" instruction to iPhone X. the 550 stops giving nav instructions.
• Overall I think the bluetooth is to unstable for me. Needing to pair 3 devices in different directions it gets hard to detect the issue as a customer.

After paring a Jabra Street 2 (small hanger with in ears used in helmet) I must admit that the BT connection was more stable and I had A2DP nav instructions and could play songs from my iPhone X all together but with this device I loose intercom and phone options and can not give cmd's to my iPhone.

Next the things I discovered and could IMHO be improved in future firmware updates.

• Recording while driving should be always "on" and split into day trips automatically. It's rather stupid to have it set to "record" or "stop".
• Next recorded track can NOT be synchronized with other devices or TT MyDrive webapp. This I can not get! Recorded tracks when shared have to be exported via the sd card. Why, the new Rider has internet cloud connection !
• working with gloves is rather difficult because some buttons are pretty small. TomTom seems to stay close the the look and feel of all systems but I think improvement on some points to use a Rider with gloves could be made.
• Internal MP3 player would be nice. Zumo's have it for years. Also memory is no longer an issue with available sd card storage.
• Sharing routes, recorded tracks, POI's, location, etc should be handled via the MyDrive app on the phone. The new Zumo does this. When you choose to share something on the Zumo it is exported to the app on the phone and you get to have all the tools to share (all apps that send mails, sms, messages, etc).
• Using the 'plan exciting route' tool I can not find a way when adding stops to tell the Rider 550 to make a one way route or round trip route. It would be nice to add this in the ... menu (alter order and set destination). I my case when selecting a stop on the map, the rider starts to make a round trip immediately.
• In "drive statistics" it would be great to have a function to share (export) the daily trip setting. As the 550 knows where you have been, a track has been recorded (strange since own recording has to be set on or off). Since the function is already there, make auto recording tracks possible and use this function to show tracks based on dates recorded.

These are my first (and personal) impressions after a week of testing. The 500 has some very nice features and does a great job in finding curvy and smaller roads. It does it far better than the Zumo. The Zumo is more feature rich and has some nice advantages via the app on the phone. Since price is in same range it depends on what maps and extra's you want. The rider has an active car adapter and better speakers built in. The Zumo has very small speaker and passive holder for the car, you need to open the usb connector all the time.

I really like the new 550. I just hope the option for sharing will be improved rapidly and auto recording and sharing is added. With some BT stability improvements for some cases (like in my case) would be great.

Enjoy riding.