Great software at a low price
I've had CoPilot on my G1 Android phone for a few months now, having previously used an earlier version on a windows mobile for a few years.
Version 8 is a great improvement on the earlier versions, and it works very well - smoothly and quickly - on my G1.
The price is a bit of a bargain, but that does mean I have to agree with Andrew Macrobie above, in that tech support/customer service leaves a lot to be desired. I waited well over a week for an answer to a problem I was having, before taking matters into my own hands and completely uninstalling, deleting any trace of it from the sd card before reinstalling from scratch. I still haven't had any response to the ticket I opened on their support system. Poor show. Telephone support is better, but then you're paying for that in call charges, and there are times when it is much easier and more convenient for end users to communicate asynchronously via email rather phone conversations.
But I have to repeat that it's very impressive software that works pretty faultlessly.
In response to a comment above, mine has never lost its gps signal. Nor do I find any inconsistency in "just ahead". You set what "just ahead" means in distance and/or time, and Emily keeps to it.
I like having the ability to select different map colours, including a British one (i.e. motorways in blue, not orange ...)
Agree it's a shame it doesn't make use of the compass.
I have four corrections to make to the review:
1) as already noted, the keyboard is now qwerty
2) on my G1 I've never seen a display of motorway junctions/lanes like the photo-realistic one shown. I get clear lane indications across the top of the screen, but the map view remains.
3) there is only one voice available out of the box. You have to choose a voice at installation (unfortunately without being able to preview), and only that one is installed. I see there are now additional voices available to download, but I've not yet succeeded in installing them, and life's too short to try to contact ALK support for advice on something as trivial as that. "Emily" works fine for me.
4) The hide function doesn't close CoPilot, that's true. But my experience has been that running other things on the phone, having minimised Copilot, does sometimes close CoPilot - when you restore it, it goes through the whole splash screen startup, but remembers the journey you were on. Sometimes it does just restore though.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
