Specialized 4+

I’ve been riding my Specialized Turbo Vado and putting up with the old Mission Control app for two years. I’ve sent helpful, constructive, and ultimately snarky feedback after seeing version after version of no new features.

But here it is! And wow, they nailed almost everything on my wish list: Apple Health integration! More intuitive Turbo tuning! Auto Lock when powered off! Updated maps with Apple’s native base map! (Sadly, still no turn-by-turn navigation yet, but you can’t win ‘em all)

Congrats and a big thanks to the app team at Specialized. Thank you for listening to your riders and making the app experience just as good as the bike itself.

Thank you for the kind words, Brian - we really do listen and are very glad to hear that you love the new app :)

A few issues: 1. Map is too large making it difficult to read ride data. How about options to hide the map and increase text font size. 2. With units set to imperial, data shows imperial in the app but data on bike shows metric. 3. Option to change the clock from 24 hour display to 12 hours. Is this related to #2? 4. A toggle to turn on/off light. 5. Alarm volume is laughably low, almost inaudible. Reminds me of the extremely low volume of the tones you hear when taking a hearing test. I just wonder if a thief would even hear it. Certainly no one nearby would. Why bother? In response to your questions, yes the light is reference to item #4. I ride a Turbo Vado SL 5.0 EQ
UPDATE: I’ve resolved items 2 & 3 on my list. Took my bike to a Specialized dealer. The mechanic showed me the settings menu on the TCU on the bike by press both the + and - buttons at same time on the power assist remote on the handlebars. Use the + - buttons to scroll up and down and the top and bottom buttons to set new settings which include Units, Date/Time, Sensors, Altitude and Regulatory. Hope this helps someone out. I did not see this information in the manual although the mechanic said it was there.
ANOTHER QUESTION: If using a heart rate monitor, will the Specialized app display live heart rate during a ride?

Hi tterrierr - Yes, if you pair your heart rate monitor with the Specialized app you can select heart rate from the list of metrics on the Record tab. Enjoy your next ride!

The new app is draining my iPhone battery at an alarming rate! During a 44 mile ride today my phone went from 100% charge to completely dead in a little over two hours! I’m wondering if this is just bad battery management by the software or the fact that the GPS screen is showing 100% of the time? No other apps were running. Screen on 100% of time. Like other reviewers have stated, I would like the ability to remove that GPS screen and have more/bigger stats. Also as others have requested, I really want those assist mode personal presets back! I used those all the time as my rides vary considerably in elevation and effort.

Update: On the last few rides the phone battery not only died after 2 hours, but the software map shows the full ride but only part of the distance. Which messes up my Strava training stats. Why not bring back Mission Control until someone gets their act together? My guess is they outsourced this or changed vendors and they started over without a clue as to how riders are using the product. Continuing to remove stars until there is some action.

Thanks for the critical feedback. Did the ride metrics stop when your phone died?
If your phone isn't in dark mode already, using dark mode may help preserve battery life if you want to ride with your screen on 100% of the time.