Royal Enfield, is ushering into a new era of technology with the launch of New Himalayan 450. This is easily the most technologically advanced and feature-packed offering from Royal Enfield ever. Part of this tech fiesta is the new Tripper Dash which received an FOTA update on Feb 21st. Let’s take a look at how it works now.
Before embarking on what the new FOTA update has brought to this package, we have to understand what Tripper Dash is and how it functioned before this update. Royal Enfield has developed a new circular TFT display for New Himalayan 450 that will make its way to other RE motorcycles like Scram 650 which was recently spotted testing in India.
There is a dedicated app for Android and iOS that overlooks the transmission of data between smartphone and Tripper Dash unit for call and notification alerts, maps and even music controls. When I first collected Royal Enfield New Himalayan, the Tripper Dash was one of the main negatives I faced with this motorcycle and I mentioned the same in our first impressions review as well.
Simply because it didn’t work. Both with Android and iPhones, the Bluetooth connection was established, but maps and music control never worked. Since then, there have been a couple of updates to Royal Enfield mobile app and there was a FOTA update from the company for Tripper Dash too.
The Royal Enfield app on my phone notified me about this FOTA update on 21st February, 2024. I was away from the motorcycle and couldn’t install this update till 25th Feb. It was a package of five different software patches and took around 10 minutes to fully install. I am happy to report that my unit has been responding pretty well after this update.
Both Maps and Music Control are now working which wasn’t the case before. But do they work without any glitches? No. There is still wiggle room for Royal Enfield to improve and I am hoping the company will fix these issues in the near future. For starters, both Google Maps and Music Controls have shown glitches in just a day I saw them working.
They only work sometimes, but it is still better than not working altogether. When they work, Google Maps has four zoom settings to choose for trajectory view. In music controls, I could increase and decrease volume or skip a song forward or go back to previously playing song by pressing Up, Down, Right and Left buttons on the 5-way clickable D-pad.
When navigation is on and map data is moved to Tripper Dash, the phone’s screen stays on for some reason. Despite having big hands, I prefer small phones and my small Samsung S Series phone has a small battery too. For Maps and Music to work on Tripper Dash, my phone’s Wifi, Bluetooth, Mobile Data, Location and 1000+ Nits screen have to be on at all times, draining battery in just a couple of hours.
Sure, there is a Type-C charger below the handlebar to charge my phone on a mobile stand. That brought different issues because now the phone is exposed to direct sunlight and screen brightness is 100%. The phone gets extremely hot forcing Google Maps and music to stop working. I wish Tripper Dash had a built-in GPS, compass and accelerometer along with a tiny built-in storage to store off-line route data set from the app. Or at least the phone screen to turn off when connected.