I drive about 30,000 miles a year. That mileage is consumed in chunks of between 5 to 50 miles each, so I have a whole lot of destinations to hit in a week. Most of the time it’s locations I am familiar with and have no need of assistance getting there. For this reason I have not seen the need for a dedicated GPS navigation gadget. Once in a while though I have to leave my home turf and head to parts unknown over 100 miles away or have a destination I am unfamiliar with.
I didn’t want to became one of the millions of drones with a GPS stuck in my windshield to show me what I already know is out there. Nor did I want to become one for the growing number of victims that forgets to remove their navigation aid from public display only to find their driver side window broken and the device stolen because some idiot wanted to steal it. The dark side of the force tells me I have a recent map book in my car and have no need for any gizmo. Still the gadget freak in me causes a strong pull on my bank account.
Along came turn by turn apps for the iPhone and the price for membership in the personal navigation device owners club dropped enough that I can convince the dark side its a reasonable expenditure. A lot of the price for these apps is the cost to license the map data by the app developer. So there is a bottom floor in pricing that is required if you are going to use quality maps. The lowest price apps use open source map data, provide partial US maps or the quality of the app is poor. I gotta be able to use the iPod function while driving and some don’t permit this. I guess Tom Tom’s app started the ball rolling for me, but only because of all the press. I feel $100 is too much to pay for an app that I will rarely use and is pretty close to the price of a dedicated GPS device. AT&Ts app requires internet access for its maps and the cumulative price is too darn high. I looked at G-Map, but its pricing structure is setup to license only parts of the US and the quality is not quite there yet.
Navigon looks to be the only real competition for Tom Tom on the iPhone and the price was right at $69.99 till the end of August. Like the other apps that contain all of north America, the size footprint is huge (1.29GB), but that is the price of entry if you want the data on the phone, not over the internet. The dark side still was not happy with it, but I purchased Navigon due to the overwhelming pull of gadgetdom.
Startup time is about 5 seconds. The user interface is simple and easy to use. You can pick one of the following options from the main menu: enter an address, search for POI, take me home and show map. In addition there is a menu bar at the bottom of the screen that lets you select destinations via your iPhones contacts list, the apps recent destinations and favorite destinations you have added.
“Enter an address” drills down to your destination. It assumes the state you are currently in, though you can choose another via a button on the screen. This option functions much the same as any other GPS device, enter city, street then street number. At any point after you pick a city you can display a map of that location and start navigation. It works easily and quickly.
“Search for POI” lets you search for POI’s in a city, statewide or nearby. It’s good for general reference, but is incomplete and not up to date.
“Take me home” starts navigation from your current location to a single location you previously selected as your home base. Works as described.
“Show map” displays a moving map of your current location with all the same speed, POI and street name information as the normal navigation display, just no destination info.
Voice navigation does not speak street names, but does a good job guiding you around. The voice is a pleasant female one and cannot be altered. It is pretty accurate and does not annoy you with unnecessary chatter. You can force it to repeat the last spoken message by touching the turn guidance area of the navigation display.
The navigation display defaults to 3D, but can be changed to 2D by touching the screen to toggle it on or off. You can make it default to 2D on the options screen. There is also an option to turn on night view on the option screen amongst many other settings. It changes the color scheme to darker hues for better nighttime use. Icons for nearby POI’s are presented along with streets and their names as they enter the displayed map area. The names are difficult to make out from the drivers position with the phone near the dashboard. I had no problem reading them if I leaned a little closer.
The map display can be rotated as you turn the iPhone, but the app needs to start up in the vertical position then turned otherwise it might not rotate properly. It displayed the map upside down once and on a couple of other occasions refused to rotate from vertical to horizontal when the app was started with the iPhone in the horizontal position.
The map display indicates your current speed as well as the posted speed limit. While usually very accurate I noted a number of times where the posted speed limit did not update to the correct speed in areas that have had the same limits for a number of years. These instances usually occurred where the speed stepped down twice within a mile of each other. It usually updated properly at the second drop in speed. If you selected to receive speed warnings the app will warn you when you’ve exceeded the posted limit by an increment you specify under on the options screen (5,10,15 or 20 mph) by saying “Caution” as well as displaying a yellow warning triangle over the posted limit indication.
The routing profile can be set from the options screen to adjust for a number of parameters such as walking, driving, use of highways, toll roads, ferries etc. My experience was that the default settings usually picked the best route. The times that it didn’t where minor variations that would not have significantly impacted trip time. Navigation automatically adjusts and corrects your route if you miss a turn within a 10-20 seconds of the missed turn and issues voice assistance to get you back on track when you reach the next point that you can reroute. It worked every time.
If GPS signal is lost the top status bar turns red to indicate it. I had a few occasions where the display lagged behind my current position and audio cues did not occur at the right time. This was always with heavy tree cover intermittently blocking the GPS signal. The GPS signal had not been lost long enough to turn the status bar red.
If you want to play music while using Navigon you need to start it before starting Navigon. Once music is playing it will continue to play. If you want to pause music or skip to another track while navigating you can do it with a double press of the home button on the iPhone to bring up the iPod control panel. Navigon will fade the music when it needs to speak to you then restore the music when it finishes talking.
If you are navigating and receive a call the app will automatically restart when you finish your call. It will not return you to where you left off. You will need to wait the 5 seconds it requires to restart, then select you last destination from the “Recents” list at the bottom of the apps main menu screen. If the iPod was playing you will need to restart it and then restart Navigon.
You are going to need a couple of accessories to effectively use the iPhone with any navigation app. The first is a mount of some kind and the other is a power adapter to plug into your car. These apps suck down the battery in the iPhone very quickly since the screen never goes to sleep with the app running and the continuous processing along with location services turned on really puts a dent in power usage.
It’s a stable app and has not crashed nor locked up. What would I like to see improved? I’d like it to resume playing the iPod after a call and some basic control that lets you start/stop the iPod without leaving the Navigon app. Spoken street names would be a plus. They need to fix the startup rotation issue. The POI database needs an update along with the option to add your own, aside from using favorites. I would like some additional functionality added via long touches on the navigation screen to bring up POI info as well as routing by a long touch on the “Show map” screen.
I have no regrets and consider the $69.99 well spent. My gadget need has been satisfied and even the dark side can see the benefit of the app.
Frigging iPhone 