Group Test: smartphone satnav apps 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 …
They don't have any good up to date software that you can buy and run on a current smartphone.
They have their own shitty smartphones, but they are really grim (there was a review of one recently on here, I think)- specwise behind the times, and hobbled by Garmin software.
Actually, I have no great love for them, their receivers are good, but their software is fricking useless. I have one of their bix expensive standalone units, paid a fortune for detailed street maps, and it calculates terrible routes, often twice as long as the one I'd use, completely borked. Also, slow and ugly, glacial redraw and clumsy interface.
I suspect that Garmin are somewhat behind the curve now.
I am still using tomtom 6 on my winmo omnia pro. I will probably move to copilot rather than get another map for tomtom. As an ebay purchase it was fantastic and has done me proud for a few years.
I tried ndrive on the wife android and it was fecking awful going round newcastle. In the end it was easier for her to open google maps and tell me where to go.
For an impromptu mount you cant beat a lump of blu-tack either.
"Android users on contract tariffs with bundled data, but will raise issues if you are on PAYG or roaming abroad. "
T-Mobile UK PAYG does a really good data deal. I pay 20 quid for a 6 month booster which gives me 1GB of allowance each month. That equates to £3.33/month. You don't get charged if you exceed that limit, but they will warn you about it. You're not going to hit 1GB a month unless you're downloading videos every day or doing a lot of tethering. Perfect for navigation+web browsing+email though.
I'm not associated with T-Mobile other than as a customer.
Im not sure how the iphone and android versions differ, but im surprised your not annoyed at the way copilot handles motorways and junctions... 'Just ahead' is used WAY too much, im a big fan of '500meters, 200 meters, now!!'
and multipule choice lane filtering.... 'Keep Left' actually means 'Take the Exit' which sometimes isnt obvious and can be very confusing especally when you have the chioce to keep left OR take the exit!
But, all said and done, its my satnav of choice, and I do find the M&S woman rather soothing as she guides me about!
I use CoPilot for iPhone and my Android chums use it too. Not had chance to take it out on the motorways yet, but for the country roads around Yorkshire, it's never failed me. I'm very impressed with how quickly it recalculates the route if you decide to take a detour.
Woman's voice is calming and places pronounced accurately but, like you, I find that the 'Just ahead' instructions does become a pain after a while. Still, you cannot beat this application for the money.
I even bought the US version when they offered it for a tenner. Never going to drive over there but a tenner's a tenner!
And Google Navigation and Navigon are my favorites.
I use Google Maps for UK navigation, and Navigon when abroad (as I don't want to enable roaming data).
Google is apparently working on offline caching for Google Maps/Navigation on Android, and when this arrives, there won't be any need for anything else.
I recently purchased the Sygic maps for my HTC Touch Diamond 2 (which incidentally I bought after reading an El Reg review and is absolute pony..) for a cycling holiday in Brittany. I found that it drains the battery like hellfire and the cycle mode is almost pointless (admittedly it kept us of the motorway, but certainly did not take the cycle routes or back roads into consideration.
I did, however, have lots of fun changing the voice to the American lady... especially as the roundabout foibles are greatly exaggerated when it is referred to as a "traffic circle"...
I use both Google Nav and CoPilot on my Nexus One.
Google Nav has much better integration with contacts etc (unsurprisingly), but CoPilot proved vital when holidaying in Spain earlier this year - I bought the Iberia map pack to add on to my UK version.
A couple of important things to bear in mind with CoPilot on Android:
1. Support is email only after an initial period, and responses are slow.
2. They still haven't implemented AppsToSD for Froyo based users, and have failed to respond to numerous queries from myself and others about when / if they will implement it.
3. A major plus for Android users is that you can carry your licence to your next Android phone - it is very fiddly to do but can be done..
It's based on OSM, which makes it a good thing in my view as its only 4 pounds on the market. Been out now for a couple of months, there are constant updates and its made by Germans!
Simple, but gets the job done and the best bit its completely offline, ie. you download the map data on your phone, and then you can use it without needing data transfers. Perfect for when your roaming, which is when you most probably will need navigation!
I used to be a hardcore TomTom fan, but quickly got cheesed off with paying a lot of money for maps/regions only to be forced into paying that cost again at full price when the software was updated. No such thing as customer loyalty? My AV gives me 40% renewal discount each year.
After getting fed up of being ripped off by them I tried CoPilot, love it, probably use it's features more than I do TomTom's and I've forked out for the traffic which is v.useful. Another thing I like about CoPilot is the ability to update the speed camera database for free whenever I like (although judging by the financial pressures of today's councils might not be much of an issue for much longer).
Prefer the overall look of CoPilot as well, find their map interface easy on the eye.
Just one datapoint: I have two instances of Nokia/OVI maps. On the N900 (maemo) it's very annoying and barely usable. On the E71 (symbian) it's great, despite the much smaller screen. Wouldn't surprise me if some of the others showed big platform differences too.
I've no idea why the maemo version should be so f***ed up. Particularly annoying given there's no google maps app for maemo either.
I use N-Drive on a Satio and, apart from the roundabout voice over oddness, have been impressed.
As with most people, I guess, I only really need it for the last few miles of the journey. I know where Birmingham is thank you. It just when I get there the trouble begins. So if I don't like the route N-drive has chosen I go my own way and it will virtually instantly re-calc until I zero in on the destination point. If I miss a turning or choose not go through an industrial estate between two a roads, again instant route re alignment
On my dad's Navman you get two or three minutes of 'make a u-turn' before it realises you were right all along.
I'm thinking that a smart phone based app is going to have more computing horse power to throw at this than a stand alone sat nav and a definte advantage to this option.
I have a Nokia E71
with it came bundled a Satnav package, am not sure whose it was. I have since downloaded googlemaps and ovimaps and tried to use them both for Satnav.
However, by far the best Satnav I have used on the phone was the Vodafone's own branded SatNav - I generally only use it when I am heading into a city I do not know very well.
The first time I used it was heading from Peebles to Perth. as I approached Edinburgh, a Traffic announcement on the Radio told me that Edinburgh bypass was totally blocked due to a few accidents.
I headed into Edinburgh, a city I have never driven through and do not know well at all.
I turned on the SatNav told it I was going to Perth and let it go as I continued heading into the city.
it quickly established my location and my route. - the first thing it told me was 'Updating route due to Traffic'.
The route then took me through the centre of Edinburgh quickly and easily on a friday late afternoon.
I arrived at the Forth Road bridge without any problems.
Arriving at the Girlfriends 10minutes later than I expected.
A great tool, that I would only replace when I change to an Android phone (will stay with vodafone especially if they have created similar for the Android).
The best part it is Free.
I've got Ovi maps on my E71, it's very good but I still prefer a dedicated car based sat nav. This is beacuse I like a big screen in the car, and any phone with a big enough screen is bigger than I want to carry about as a phone.
However I'm torn, I have to pay for map and safety camera updates with Tom Tom but not with Ovi. Also I can download any of the world maps for free with OVI, and use them on holiday. (I do use my E71 when navigating on foot. It picked a location within seconds of exiting the tube last time I was in London, and was very good in helping me reach the right address.)
On my smart phone I have to give permission to Google to get data from my handset in order to run Google Maps.
Now I can understand if my phone asks for a map centered around my coordinates, or to provide map and routing information to point X with my starting position Y.
Except that well... its Google. So as I use their maps and routing, what are they doing with that information? I mean, in theory... they are tracking you, know your destination, they know who you are... What other things are they tracking?
Paranoid? No, but just someone who values their privacy and recognizes that in a google world you have no privacy.
I'd choose my phone over a dedicated Sat Nav every time - and for one very simple reason. Dedicated Sat Navs are all widescreen. Why on earth would I give a damn about all the things to either side of me when I'm driving? I want to see as far ahead as possible so I put my phone in portrait. I've always found it baffling that everyone produces Sat Navs in widescreen.
For the record, I've used TomTom, CoPilot and NDrive quite a bit. They all seem to do the job. Don't use TomTom any more because of the awful licensing (as mentioned above). Not a lot to choose between NDrive and CoPilot except the contacts integration is better on CoPilot - although I think my NDrive is now one version out of date so that might have changed. The NDrive roundabout instructions are a little weird but on a recent holiday driving quite a bit around Paisley, East Kilbride and Newton Mearns (none of which I knew but appear to have been designed by someone with a roundabout fetish) it did a great job.
I used iGo on a stand-alone satnav and it wasn't very good, very prone to crashing. Mind you, the satnav was Czech in origin, and the only things they seem to do well is girls and beer. Not an insignificant contribution towards making the world a better place, to be sure, but that doesn't make their satnavs any less rubbish.
Navigon I tried on the iPhone 3G and it works reasonably well, but is prone to crashing. Also, it seemed quite dear for what it did. So then my contract was up for renewal and I bought a Nokia E72.
Ovi Maps, daft name notwithstanding, does the job well, although the maps for my particular region seem to be quite old, but they are very precise. The user interface is nice enough, and the guidance is generally spot-on. All in all, the phone is awful as far as the software is concerned, but the keyboard is great for texting and the satnav works well enough. I'm not buying another S60 phone again, but give me a nice featurephone with a QWERTY keyboard and Ovi Maps, and I, an iTard of the highest magnitude, will happily use it as my second phone.
Folks, unless I am very much mistaken Garmin only currently sell a mobile navigation app for Blackberry along with its Garmin-Asus satnav phones. The general idea behind this roundup was to look at satnav apps that are available for a selection of platforms (yes I know TomTom is currently iPhone only).
If Garmin's Mobile XT software for Windows had still been available to buy at the time of writing I would have included it.
http://www.garmin.com/sites/uk/products/mobile-phones/
Ovi maps is like a dead dog for the N900. It doesn't have voice at all is barely supported and isn't on the list of free OVI maps they advertise, it can't find you most of the time. I stood on oxford street in london (that well known central road in a world capital), 25 minutes of waiting and half my battery and it showed me a beige map with no roads. Couldn't even find the streets I was on. I wouldn't touch Ovi maps with someone elses barge pole.
Sygic however works well (version 10 is far better than version 9 which is still around)
Then again I use tom tom on my 2 year old winmo tytn 2, far better and less CPU hungry than the N900 offerings. (The phone that is, not just the map software)
I am using CoPilot on Android (Froyo) and whilst it works pretty well it does have some issues:
- They don't seem to be using the keyboard driver correctly so you can't input numbers by the push and hold mechanism that is the standard way of doing it - you have to go into the alternate number keyboard (really useful for entering postcodes!)
- When you have entered a postcode and go back to it from history it doesn't seem to go back to the full postcode location correctly
- There's no ability to paste into the address field (maybe down to non-standard keyboard handling again?)
- You can't move what is a comparatively large application onto the SDCard to free up phone memory
- ALK are saying they have no map updates coming for Europe on their support channels - its soon going to go out of date. They claim this is down to their provider - I suspect they just didn't get the right agreement with their map provider...
It might be best of breed, but its a long way from perfect
I recently travelled across EU using solely Ovi for navigation. It is barely tolerable and does not deserve the outrageously high score given by elreg.
If you are travelling in Shengen you need to subject yourself to a voluntary border control. Instead of happily traversing borders at 75mph you have to stop and reboot the phone. Some imbecile has coded the map reading task as realtime so when it has to load a new country map too fast it crashes one or more of the other realtime threads on the phone. Bluetooth is nearly always the victim, though the entire phone may go limp. Same for germany and province borders.
Key routes are not present - like ex-Yugo ring roads around cities. So you end up sitting for 2h in a roadworks traffic jam in downtown belgrade blessing the map quality. Search indexes are also pretty flimsy.
Overall, its only saving grace is that it is free and the free price tag is well deserved if you want to travel anywhere further than your local supermarket.
I know it's 'Cool' to hate Nokia right now with all the Lemmings going for iTarded devices and throwing all their personal data away to google. but...... I have a N900 & a N97
N900's aren't really designed for mass market usage and they haven't upgraded OVI Maps on there for some time so don't even bother.
N97 .. OVI Maps is absolutely brilliant, it gets me from Manchester to Frankfurt without a glitch what-so-ever, the only downside with it is that it can lag sometimes but other than that it's certainly the best Phone based satnav out there in terms of features and quality AND i didn't get a huge bill because my maps are loaded onto a microSD Card :-)
I've tried both GoogleNav and CoPilot on my Streak (Android 1.6) recently, and both seem to have the same problem of not handling phone calls well. I've only tested this whilst stationary, but both have the SatNav screen completely replaced by the incoming phone call, and after the call (using bluetooth headset), it returns to the home screen rather than navigation. This isn't exactly ideal, and if I was the sort of person that got lots of phonecalls, then it would render the mobile close to useless for this purpose.
What I'd expect, is a subtle on-screen indication of a phone call which doesn't block the navigation view.
My other problem with CoPilot is that I can't find a way of displaying estimated journey time (apparently it's possible, but I can't find a way of making it work and anyway, it should be there by default). Most of the time, I know roughly where I'm going and use the SatNav for deciding whether I have time to stop off at a service station before my meeting. Not having this feature makes me want to stick with Google Nav, despite it's lack of other features.
The 5" Streak however is definitely big enough to use as a satnav.
One last thing - the option to switch between overhead and 3D view is really nice (my old SatNav, a PSP, has it). It switches to a large scale (configurable) 2D view if the distance to the next event is greater than 3km. Generally, if all I'm doing is travelling along a road, being able to see how far along it I am is far more useful than seeing the turnoffs I'm going to be ignoring. Especially useful on the M1, where I can be on the same road for 3 hours+.
I used CoPilot extensively on my Hero. Worked reasonably well. I not use a Nexus One running vanilla 2.2. CoPilot does not install properly never mind actually run. CoPilot support is non-existent beyond the usual canned responses. I have requested a refund as i am unable to use the product but, so far and as expected, they are totally ignoring me. The comments on the Android Market are very similar. I really would not recommend this product to anyone, even my worst enemy.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
