Posted on 08/19/2010 9:45:36 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Product Round-up Unless you spend serious time behind the wheel of your car and regularly need to drive to places you have never been before and couldn't locate on a map if your life depended on it, a satnav application for your mobile phone may well be all the guidance assistance you will ever need.
Apart from being cheaper than a standalone PND - Personal Navigation Device, natch - a GPS-equipped phone has the benefit of always being with you when you need it rather than sat in a box at home.
I've regularly set off into the wide blue yonder without my satnav only to need it down the road, but I have yet to ever drive away sans phone. And let's not forget that satnav is not a purely automotive issue - most of us can get just as lost on shanks' pony.
Of course there are downsides to having your phone double up as a satnav. All but the latest generation of monster Android handsets have screens frankly just a little too small for easy satnav viewing. Even the iPhone's 3.5 inches is a bit marginal when the handset is fixed to your windshield. I did actually manage to get from A to B using a Sony Ericsson X10 Mini with a 2.6in screen and Google Maps Navigation recently, but it's not something I'd recommend.
Secondly, you generally don't get a windshield mount bundled, though I manage perfectly well with a £5 no-name bracket that fixes solidly to the vents on my Mercedes, looks far too cheap to attract the attention of felonious urban youth and will accommodate everything from the above mentioned X10 Mini to a Dell Streak, if only in portrait orientation. Some Nokia handsets come with a free screen mount, including the X6 which Nokia kindly lent me for this round up.
I also used an HTC Hero, an HTC Desire and an iPhone 3GS.
Price can vary hugely, with a set of maps for the UK and Ireland costing anything up to £50 or more, though several of the applications on test have the magic price tag of zero and, as you'll see, free doesn't automatically mean useless.
It's a testament to the evolution of the breed that not once during testing did I actually encounter an error in navigation. In fact, 95 per cent of the time, the various systems chose exactly the same routes. With the remaining fiver per cent, the two alternate routes really had nothing between them in terms of ease, distance or speed.
Of course, that's allowing for the fact that certain locations don't yet exist in the user-contributed Skobbler's map archive. That aside, all the points-of-interest databases present found my nearest ATM, Subway, Asda and petrol station easily enough, and they also found the Trafford Centre by name.
If you're wondering why your favourite satnav app didn't make the final dozen, I found amAze GPS too slow, TeleNav too American and Blackberry Maps too dull. Nav4All rather inconsiderately ceased to exist earlier in the year, while AndNav proved too buggy by half. Navdroyd, which as the name suggests is an app for Android, uses the same free community maintained maps as Skobbler but isn't as developed.
Next page: Destinator 9
********************************THIS IS AN EXCERPT **********************************************
And regarding TeleNav as being too American...sounds like that is worth looking at... company's website:
Google maps, along with the Weather Channel app, are my two favorite apps for the phone.
Could you share some of the phone specifics with us unwashed in all of this mobile technology?
Once you’ve used a stand-alone PND/GPSr or whatever, any app on a smart phone does not compare.
That first picture is CoPilot Live 8, which is causing me to pound my head on my desk. I ran it on Windows Mobile and liked it so much I bought it again on Android.
However, it will not let me search for addresses. Everything else is perfect - all my Points of Interest show up, but I can not enter in a street address - cities will not load.
I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled, downloaded, uninstalled and reinstalled the maps (1.7 GB!!!) and downloaded the map update from yesterday. Still nothing.
After many emails back and forth to support, who seemed to know less than the product than I do, they told me to uninstall and reinstall everything “and see if that helps.”
Nice.
know less about
What phone and Android level are you running.?
HTC Evo, Android 2.2
There are some pretty cool technologies involved in the hardware that is being crammed into our Windows Phones these days. WiFi, various cellular technologies, GPS, et al. My vote for the coolest of these is GPS. The fact that some very intelligent person somewhere came up with the idea of putting machines into orbit around the globe and then using these to navigate is extremely impressive to me.
Harnessing the full power of the GPS on a Windows Phone can be a difficult proposition. Free tools such as Google Maps and Bing/Live Search are capable of utilizing a GPS receiver, but they don’t give you all of the benefits that we have come to expect from a full featured GPS.
Copilot Live is one of the premier GPS applications for Windows Phones. Now in version 8, ALK Solutions has re-worked their pricing to make this amazing software accessible to just about anyone with a Windows Phone. (See my review of Copilot 7 here.)
Thanks.
I tend to disagree. I use the GARAFA app on my I-Phone and it’s as good as or better than my Garmin.
Yeah, I’m about ready to give up on this and therefore eat the $40 ($20 for the program and $20 for the upgrade). I had minor bugs with Windows Mobile, but it’s kind of hard to depend on a GPS that can’t search by address!
They only give you a 24-hour window to get a refund, so buyer beware.
I have 2 phones: 1 iphone and 1 G1, one runs Android, the other runs IOS. Both apps are free.
I use navigation programs all the time. Google Navigation has led me astray three times - the only thing that saved me was knowing about the area.
Going to Busch Stadium in Missouri from West County (I was using it for traffic purposes), it wanted me to cross the river and go into Illinois and then do a U-Turn and come back across the river. I just got off at the next exit to which I came and was right there in no time, much more quickly than taking that scenic route.
The second was a test in picking up a client. It sent me way out of the way to get there.
The third time was for real, without knowing the area, and it was a miserable fail. I had a meeting in Park Hills, and it told me I had a 1 hour, 11 minute drive there. I gave myself two hours for traffic.
The place to which it sent me was undeveloped land from U.S. 67, with no exit to get there anyway. It was “supposed” to be right off the road. I reran the route, and it told me that I was 20 minutes north of where I needed to be.
The problem was, once I got to the road to which I needed to get, it sent me west instead of east and led me to some farm house. I switched to Sprint Navigation, and it took me right where I needed to go.
The only thing that saved me from being late was giving myself much extra time.
As with anything, it is always a good idea to take a map with you.
I’ve used HTC TyanII and the AT&T/Cingular built in Windows 6.1 SatNav feature.
Works well enough... only caveat, receiving a call and getting back to the navigation window is troublesome in traffic.
However, during the Holiday season Black Friday sales I found a TomTom for like $75 with lifetime free updates.
The cost of electronics in the UK is ridiculous due to smaller number of vendors, the standard of taking the price in dollars and keeping the same number in Pounds, i.e. $100 becomes 100 Pounds, and the massive VAT tax. For most Americans it has to be cheaper to buy a standalone product.
bookmark
I'm waiting for somebody to do a modern re-working of that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.