CoPilot live is one of the newest contenders in the iPhone GPS arena. And I must admit that before the iPhone version I had never heard of them before. This could be why I was so pleasantly surprised by this GPS app. It’s fairly full featured, fast, and I think it’s my new favorite GPS app.

ALK Technologies, based in Princeton, NJ, has been around and doing GPS applications for mobile devices and smartphones for a while. While new to me, their CoPilot Live 8 software is available for Windows Mobile, Android, and now iPhone. When I originally looked at this app, I moved it to the bottom of the pile as I wasn’t really impressed. There were lots of menu items that were grayed out, stuff seemed to be in odd places or just didn’t work, and it didn’t seem ready. But just a couple days ago an update was released that fixed most of the issues I saw and increased it’s usefulness greatly.

This update brought some of the Live services that CoPilot seems to be known for. These include location searching which is much more up to date than the built in POI database and is useful for finding restaurants and newer businesses that the POI database doesn’t have. This updates also activates the weather and fuel prices options. Though the fuel prices isn’t useful in it’s current sparse format. I live in downtown San Francisco and the closest place with fuel prices it could find to me was over 100 miles away.

What about what CoPilot Live doesn’t have. For one, even though it’s listed (and it’s grayed out), it doesn’t have live traffic. It also doesn’t have any form of lane assist in the current version.

There are some other upgrade features listed on the web site for CoPilot that may be available in the future for inclusion in the iPhone version. This includes the previously mentioned live traffic, text-to-speech conversion of street name, and voice control. No word on if these will be available and at what cost for the iPhone. It should be noted that fuel prices are listed on the CoPilot web site as a premium service but is available free on the iPhone.

Routing was very simple and robust on CoPilot Live. It allows you to do multiple point routes, you can edit and save and load those routes, and it will also allow you to use contacts as waypoints on your route. The one little missing part is using the Live Local Search feature to add waypoints. This can be done indirectly be creating a new route with just the Live Local Search location as the destination and then editing the route, but this only works for one point and is rather awkward. The Live features need to be better integrated into the app and not just walled off on their own menu.

Once you’ve created your route you have a variety of ways to view it, turn list view, turn maps which show you 2D maps with each turn that you can page through, and a preview that you can zoom through, fast forward and rewind.

How about iPod functionality. While CoPilot doesn’t have built in controls for the iPod, it doesn’t stop your music from playing either and allows it to continue to play while voice commands are played. We would like to see it fade the music out a bit while the voice commands are spoken to make them easier to hear though.

In the end, I was very happy with this GPS app. Besides a couple small issues, this is a very good app. I think it will end up being the one I keep using. The one question is how long they will supply updates for this version, and I guess only time will tell. And what about that price — half the cost of the other GPS apps. A great deal, for sure.

Mobile Maps is a well conceived and nicely designed GPS app, but not really designed for a touch screen device. The app is also not without it’s functional faults… and there are quite a few faults to deal with. Looking on the brighter side, it is apparent that there is a good base for a GPS app there, it just needs some work.

My first issue with Mobile Maps is that the routing information seems out of date. A specific example is that from where I live to get anywhere south of here, I hop on the 101 at the Octavia street on-ramp. This is a fairly new ramp, maybe 5 years old, but it’s not on the map. Instead of using the obvious close entrance, Mobile Maps routes me around and has me get on one 4 blocks away, seemingly thinking that the entrance 4 more stoplights down might be easier.

Another example. In certain instances if you want to choose a point on the map as your destination, the map starts you in the middle of Europe. It’s just a tad disconcerting that this issue made it past QA, along with a few other obvious issues. Odd sized icons, weird settings menus, menu paging controls that are miniscule and obviously meant to be used from hard buttons on other platforms doom this app to mediocrity… at best. This is again another iPhone app that wasn’t really designed to the iPhone, or any touch screen device for that matter.

Another thing that I find odd is the way the screen zooms in and out such great amounts. I find it rather difficult to keep up when you are glancing over to the screen.

Fortunately, the routing is fairly robust and multi-point routes are doable. You can’t use contacts at all in this app, and your routes can’t be saved or loaded, but they can be edited.

Update Under Review

We got word this week that an update for Mobile Maps was submitted to Apple 2 weeks ago. This update addresses some of our concerns with Mobile Maps, but not others. The features listed in the update include:

• text-to-speech, i.e. voice guidance announcing the name of the next street or road in North America, Australia and New Zealand
  
• ability to choose addresses straight from iPhone contacts and navigate to them
  
• smooth fading out of the music playback before the voice instructions
  
• enhanced GPS lock, now faster than ever
  
• smoother position display when moving on the route
  
• navigation automatically resumes after completion of phone call, without the need to tap the “Accept” button anymore
  

In the end, while I think Sygic have great possibilities, I think that they are still a ways off. The app needs to become more iPhone like, and fix some bugs. Hopefully the update under review will help many of those issues. We’ll be keeping an eye on it, but we can’t recommend the current version.

iGo My Way 2009 from NNG is a fairly well done GPS application for simple routing. It comes up a little short on features though, considering some of the competition both in the iPhone and in dedicated devices. iGo My Way has good and easy to read maps, simple routing, and a fairly good interface. The downside is that it’s very non-iPhone-like.

iGo My Way from NNG has been around for a while. They make iGo My Way for other mobile phone devices and also make software for dedicated devices. Their port to the iPhone shows obvious lack of understanding of the iPhone. It’s walled away from all of the phone features other than the GPS. There’s not even any integration with your contacts, the simplest of iPhone integration features. Therefore it just doesn’t feel natural using it. Maybe not an issue for many people, but you know it could have been so much more.

There are a lot of the features of iGo My Way that I really like. Especially so when you are using the main navigation screen. The display is clean and crisp. The maps don’t stutter like they do on some other apps, they update quickly and smoothly. And the GPS gets a fix fairly quickly with iGo My Way. iGo My Way also includes a 3D+ view which shows 3D renderings of a small number of buildings, mainly in downtown areas. This can be useful when trying to verify your location.

Routing is quick and easy, but simple. Only a single destination is allowed and there’s no function to save or load routes. iGo My Way does allow you some settings on the route including the ability to set if you are walking, riding a bike, or driving. You can also view the different options for the route, fast, short, economical, easy and compare them quickly on the screen.

All features of iGo My Way are pretty easy to get to and navigate around. The one exception is the settings list is never ending and so deep it’s easy to get lost in. iGo My Way is much slower to launch than other GPS apps I’ve tried. Not sure what is going on, but once launched it’s speedy and responsive. There are plenty of missing features — any sort of connected features such as live traffic. In settings there is a checkbox for speed cameras but I was unable to verify that this feature even worked as there are no permanent speed cameras in the US.

One good or bad thing about iGo My Way, depending on how you look at it, is their commitment to supply map updates through December 2010. iPhone users seem to feel to be entitled to infinite free updates. It just doesn’t work like that anywhere else. I think most users are going to be in for a rude awakening with GPS apps. That’s why you have to hand it to NNG, they state their upgrade policy right up front, more than we’ve heard from any other GPS developer.

Overall, iGo My Way is just okay. While I like their navigation interface better many others I’ve tried, the features just aren’t there for me to keep using it. It just feels like it’s an over-rushed port by people who just don’t understand the iPhone. I will be watching it though and hope the updates add the functionality that the iPhone demands.

TomTom brings it’s great history and reputation in the GPS industry to the iPhone and gives us a fairly good though simple GPS app. Their app, while featuring the top quality TomTom IQ Routes and maps for the US and Canada considered to be top notch, is a little short on extra features.

Routing is one of the most important features of a GPS app. TomTom’s routing options are very good, but very simple. It’s difficult to create a route with more than one stop. Your destination selection is very well done including the ability to set a point on the map, point of interest from the database that comes with the app, a contact address, recents, etc.

The inclusion of IQ Routes, a TomTom feature that uses historical traffic data to determine the fastest route for the time of day you are traveling, is a welcome addition and seems to work well. In addition you can set the route for travel by car, bike, or for walking. Missing though are any routing features for saving routes for future trips, multi-stop routes, and editing of routes.

Of all of the GPS applications I’ve tried, TomTom is the most iPhone like. They’ve paid attention to the user interface and made it both iPhone like and kept the buttons large for quick use while driving.

And that’s about it. What’s there is really well done, but it’s a bit short on features. TomTom is missing some of those cool features of the standalone TomTom devices such as live traffic and local fuel prices. And the routing features are only meant to get you from point a to point b, right now. Also missing are any form of lane assist and text-to-speech functions to speak the street names.

And unfortunately TomTom haven’t announced any plans to add these features. In fact they’ve been rather quiet on any future plans. We can only guess that they will eventually be added but no idea if they will be free or a paid additions.

The greatly anticipated TomTom car kit was recently delayed to October. This device allows you to mount the phone to the windshield and also includes bluetooth connectivity, a GPS antenna, and a power supply to keep the phone powered. Well that’s what we hear, who knows what the delayed device will bring. Previously this device was announced for $99.

TomTom is a very competent on-board GPS device. Pretty well done, great routing, and great maps — what’s there is very solid. The problem is the price and what’s not there. Currently TomTom is the highest priced GPS app, but very short on the extra features compared to dedicated TomTom devices or other iPhone GPS apps.

Note that this app was reviewed on an iPhone 3GS. Some iPhone 3G users have reported considerable lag when using this application but we were unable to verify.

Navigon is an on-board GPS application for the iPhone (3G and 3GS only)featuring maps for the US and Canada, with on-board meaning that all of the maps and routing information resides right on the device. There is no data connection needed for use. This also means that it’s rather large at 1.44 GB. That’s a big percentage of your storage space on your phone, especially so if you have an 8GB device.

Navigon goes above and beyond some of the other on-board GPS applications by adding full text-to-speech navigation (the app now speaks street names as well as navigation commands), social features (see friends locations on your map), Reality View (view complex interchanges on screen with arrows highlighting your route), and very nice iPod functionality.

Routing functionality is very good on MobileNavigator. You have the ability to add route points from points of interest, enter an address, recents, and favorites. You can edit the route list once you have added items in the typical iPhone list method, deleting points or changing them around. In addition you can have multiple points in your route. Many iPhone GPS application allow you only a start and a destination. The areas where routing is lacking in MobileNavigator are the contact integration and overview of a planned route.

For contacts, you can’t use them as waypoints in your route. These seems to me an obvious oversight and the most common way to use contacts. The only way to use contacts is to navigate directly to them. I’ve also found that MobileNavigator does a really horrible job of parsing addresses from my contacts. Only 1 in 10 addresses MobileNavigator was able to be parse the correct address from the contact.

Another way that routes could be a little better in MobileNavigator would be to provide a better overview of your route once you have created it. You can’t get a textual turn-by-turn overview of your route, you can only simulate your route. Simulating the route is rather slow and you can’t skip ahead. But a textual / graphical turn-by-turn overview of the route or the ability to skip turn by turn in the simulation would be useful.

RealityView (lane assist) in action

This latest version also does text-to-speech for street names. In my tests it has done a fairly good job of the conversion and comes up with a completely understandable reading. Though some times the pronunciation is off, that’s to be expected for any text-to-speech conversion.

MobileNavigator is easy to look at and interact with while driving, quick single touches allow most functions you’d need while driving.

One useful feature is the lane assist function that MobileNavigator calls RealityView. This shows you the lanes and the lane you need to be in with arrows. Very useful when you come up to complex interchanges.

Navigon have recently announced that they are preparing to release a windshield mounted iPhone holder specifically for use with MobileNavigator. This is a simple non-electronic holder that just provides a way to hold your iPhone in your windshield while viewing the screen. While this doesn’t seem to be as full-featured of a device as the one announced by TomTom, that also means it will likely be much cheaper.

While there are some features I’d love to see added and some of the user interface I’d like to see improved in MobileNavigator, right now Navigon have shown the greatest commitment to the iPhone from any of the GPS application developers. They have, since release, already improved their application considerably and released 2 updates to add new and most requested features. All in all, it is a really good GPS app that just needs a few tweaks to make it the clear leader.

]]> http://www.148apps.com/reviews/mobilenavigator-north-america/feed/ 0 http://www.148apps.com/reviews/mobilenavigator-north-america/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/148apps_reviews/navigation/~3/sxx5NxQsIcI/ http://www.148apps.com/reviews/meetme/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:22:29 +0000 Chris Hall http://www.148apps.com/?p=16178

The things that makes the iPhone so great rarely have anything to do with calling people or listening to music. I can review iPhone games all day, but they really don’t make the iPhone amazing either. If need be, I could whip out a DS and play away (don’t get me wrong, I still love iPhone games). The things that make the iPhone amazing are the things that change the way you go about your life. Since my life revolves around food, (how am I not fat?) apps like Urban Spoon and Yelp have been life changing. Remember those arguments you used to have in the car… the ones arguing about where to eat? The worst though is when you have to meet someone somewhere and don’t know where to go. I always try to meet people halfway, but we always end up going to the same place, again and again.

Fear not… there’s an app for that too! MeetMe takes this common problem, where to meet halfway, and laughs in its face. What it does is let you pick a ‘Point A’ and a ‘Point B”, and then gives you a Yelp powered list of things to do in between. Typically, on a normal search, you would click on “Current Location” for point A, and then go into your contacts for point B so you have the true locations of each person. Then you pick what type of place you would like to go, from art galleries to chiropractors to bakeries. Once you choose, MeetMe gives you a list of locations with the basic star ratings and how close the place is to point A and point B. The great part is that you have a slider on the bottom which lets you select a place closer to A or B, depending on who you want to be closer to.

The best part of the app, in my opinion, is what happens after you hit the ‘Meet Me Here’ button. Let’s say, and this is hypothetical, that I was trying to meet my mom somewhere while she is visiting Phoenix, my current place of residence. I could tell her all day to take the 51 to the 202 and then get off at Scottsdale, or, with MeetMe, I could just hit ‘Meet Me Here’ which gives me a menu to e-mail directions from point A, point B, or both. The e-mail that is auto-created for you tells you the business location and a link to google maps that shows the directions from your address to the business address. At this point, if she can’t follow Google Maps instructions, she shouldn’t be able to renew her license.

For the most part, the app works extremely well in deciding what to do and where to go… saving me approximately 5.3 minutes (what?) of my life deciding on where to eat. The app is extremely intuitive, letting you make a relatively easy decision as to where you are going to go. The only issue now would be deciding on which place to go on the list of places between the two points. I still think that adding a simple coin flip option to one of these programs would be a stroke of genius, but alas, I may be the only one who thinks that. For $0.99, I would say that this app is a must have, especially when mom is in town. Get it!

Interface

The presentation of G-map reminds me much more of a dedicated GPS unit’s screen than the iPhone’s dedicated Maps application. Still, simplicity is the goal in either case. When you open the application, you are greeted by a disclaimer reminding you to secure your device and be careful when driving your car.

Once past that, you may select a destination via a nested menu of categories from food, gas, and lodging to hospitals and shopping. You can also view a map of your current location or plan a detailed route with a starting point, waypoints and a destination (as well as Optimal Departure Time, which I could never use successfully). The option screen allows you to choose shortest and fastest route, truck routes, scenic routes and things to avoid (like highways, u-turns, unpaved roads, etc.).

Maps/Navigation

The maps themselves are attractive (Navteq), and in some larger metros offer 3D views to interchanges. I have to say that, with GPS devices, I’ve often wished for that feature and I’m glad that a lot of people are moving forward with the concept. That being said, G-Map is not always very specific with exit numbers and other data beside the street name or highway that you’re going to use. It does do some interesting things to alert you of upcoming turns.

When the 1.3 update was released, it contained some interesting notes in the change log. The most prominent change was the addition of a GPS “game” that gave you points for following directions successfully. I found this kind of strange, but went ahead and gave it a try. When you are within one mile of your turn, the top bar containing the next street/highway name begins to fill with green from the left and a surprise box appears on the right. The bar’s state corresponds with the distance to that turn, e.g. if half the bar is full you have one half mile to your turn. Within about 1/10th of a mile or 500 feet of the turn a chime sounds and the mystery box opens revealing a cherry, watermelon, joker or another prize. This feature may be fun for your kids, but has the added value of letting you know fairly precisely (without looking) when you need to turn. It’s always interesting to see people use creative ideas

One of my problems with version 1.2 was that, on a long drive, G-Map only displayed the number of miles to the next turn with no simple way to display remaining time to a destination. The latest update fixed this by removing the distance to the next turn. This is one of those situations where I’m not sure which was worse. I understand that the new “game” interface provides some feedback, but a mile can be a very short distance to cross lanes in certain traffic situations. Having a way to see remaining miles in your trip intermittently or displaying both seems like a much better option.

Like any GPS data, the streets and business in G-Map may not be completely accurate if there has been a construction project or a closing in the last one to two years or so. In addition, the application occasionally takes some time to find your current location. This can be particularly annoying when you find yourself searching for pizza shops in the Cupertino area while vacationing in Dallas.

Overall Impression

Until the 3.0 update is released, G-Map is the closest thing I’ve seen to the forbidden turn-by-turn voice navigation. There are definitely some annoyances in the application, but it works extremely well for everyday and trip usage. For those who need something more robust than Maps it’s a great option. While pricey in the bargain-filled world of iPhone applications, G-Map is a good experience that should only get better with time.

Knowing public transportation schedules is something every urbanite should have as a second nature. I’ve been impressed by a few people that can fire off connecting bus lines without even thinking, even telling you what time increments they arrive in. I need an iPhone for these kinds of things! Luckily there are a handful apps that serve exactly this purpose, and Routesy happens to be the most polished of them.

The user interface is quite nice when compared to their web brothers and sisters like nextmuni or munitime. Upon launch you’re presented with all of the MUNI lines (whether they are in service or not) and you can simply scroll through them to find the line you want to take. Once a line is selected, Location Services will kick in and estimate the intersection nearest to you to board that bus. Underneath that nearest stop, you find all of the subsequent stops on that line with their approximation in distance. One confusing element: the listing of other stops aren’t necessarily in the order the bus travels in, so watch out! Selecting a bus line yields a page with how long you’ll have to wait for the next three buses along with a map that can also be viewed in iPhone’s Google Maps app.

Routesy is very handy for those who live and die by public transportation in San Francisco. It’s very convenient – knowing whether or not I have to rush to catch a bus is a handy tool indeed. A few features I think would be useful if added are the ability to bookmark certain lines or stops, and the capability of entering in a start and end point to have Routesy spit back a public transit itinerary. Sometimes the app crashes on launch, seemingly tied to how good of a data connection the iPhone has: the app is snappy on wifi, but if EDGE is weak it’ll take a couple of launches to get it going. However, this still beats waiting for a web based app to load all of the content.

At 2.99 I think Routesy is only attractive to the niche that is on San Francisco MUNI every day. For a guy like me that doesn’t have a car and rarely leaves the city limits, I find it worth the price, but if you’re coming to SF for a visit it might be better to use a web based app and save the bus fare!

Where To is one of those why didn’t I think of that applications. The app provides a categorized directory for searching Google Maps. The idea is simple, and the execution is nearly perfect.

Where To adds a feature to the iPhone that brings it closer to a full GPS device. The main function of the app is to present you with a tree of categorized search terms to be fed into Google Maps. You select from the top level 11 categories that include sections such as Entertainment, Emergency services, Food & Drink. From there you are presented with sub categories such as Movie Theaters, Auto Repair, and Pizza Places.

Once a sub category is selected you have the option to search from your current location which utilizes the built in GPS, from a pre-specified point on the map, or from the location of any of your contacts.

One of the more interesting features is only available under certain sub-categories. For instance Food & Drink > Pizza. From there you can select a chain of pizza places that the program knows about to search for just that pizza place. This feature is only available in a few of the sub-categories, mainly under Food & Drink.

The application features a favorites feature that allows you to add any sub-category to a list that can save you a click here or there by showing you all of your favorites, across categories, in one list.

The only real negative I can find with this application is that you can’t add additional categories to the lists. This, I think, would be a great feature addition.

This application is absolutely beautifully crafted, works very well, and is surprisingly convenient and useful. While you would think you could just type in the search terms into Google Maps, this program makes it a 2-3 tap operation and saves you time.