First peek: Mobile Maps America navigation app by Sygic

I’ve been waiting for true voice-guided turn-by-turn apps for the iPhone for what feels like aeons now, and they’re starting to trickle into the App Store. The first one available for the U.S. was the Gokivo + Yahoo! Local Search app that requires an in-app purchase of $9.99 for each month of use. Next was the AT&T Navigator app, which also requires a monthly subscription fee of $9.99, billed to your AT&T account. Both of these apps rely heavily on the cellular network since no map data is stored locally on your iPhone, a not-so-ideal situation if you happen to travel through an area where coverage is spotty or nonexistent. TomTom and Navigon have promised navigation apps as well, but release dates for these are still unknown. Enter Sygic, who first gave a demo of their iPhone navigation app at Mobile World Congress in February, even before the iPhone SDK allowed for apps that could provide turn-by-turn voice guidance. +1o points to Sygic for moving forward despite that limitation, and they’re now rewarded with being one of the first apps of its kind in the U.S.

(Developer X-Road has had navigation apps for different portions of the country in the App Store for some time, and their east coast version was just updated to include voice guidance on July 4, the same day that Sygic’s app for North America appeared in the App Store. I was tempted to buy this app, but I was put off by the fact that it breaks the U.S. into multiple parts – I’d much rather get all of the U.S. in a single app.)

Sygic’s navigation apps use map data from Tele Atlas. Sygic also offers versions of its app to cover Australia and New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The U.S. version (link opens iTunes) is currently priced at $79.99 and weighs in at 1.57GB, making me very happy that I opted for the 32GB iPhone 3GS. Unlike the Gokivo and AT&T Navigator apps, the Sygic app stores all map data on your iPhone, so it will work even if you lose your cellular data signal.

Given the size of the app, it took a fair amount of time to load it onto my iPhone. The first time I opened the app on my iPhone, I was presented with set-up options, similar to what I saw when I first used my TomTom Go 720. I was asked to choose the primary language for the app itself, with the option to choose from 28 languages. Next up was selecting the language for the voice guidance, where I also had 28 options. There are 2 voices that speak English – Simon, who speaks UK English, and Lucien, who speaks U.S. English. I found Lucien’s voice to be a bit too adamant. I know – it’s weird, but that’s the best word for it in my mind, so I chose Simon instead. Unlike my TomTom Go 720, there are no “computer” voices that will be able to read street names aloud to you on the fly.

The language and voice selection menus

After this initial set-up is done, you are presented with a number of quick guides that will give you an overview of the various menu options and general operation of the app. You can skip these, which is nice since I hate being forced to view user guide information, but I did go through all of them and found them to be brief yet helpful to get to the know the app better from the start. These quick guides can also be accessed later if you want to get started using the app right away.

Available quick guides

The main menu shows options you’d expect to see on any stand-alone navigation device, allowing you to define a location to navigate to, browse the map, find an alternate route, view an overview of the current route, and more.

The main menu

I know that TomTom will be putting out a companion mount with its own GPS chip in it to augment the iPhone’s reception, but I’m not worried at all about the GPS capabilities of the iPhone 3GS – Mobile Maps shows me decent GPS signal strength even when I’m inside my house. I’m sitting at my desk now with a window 4 feet away, making no attempt to ensure I get a signal, and I see 2 out of 4 bars on the GPS signal strength meter in the Mobile Maps app. It could be an overly-optimistic signal strength meter and I’ll get a better feel for its accuracy once I’m out on the road with it.

Each time you open the app, you’ll see the standard warning screen that you must tap through to acknowledge, indicating that you understand that the app should not be fiddled with while you’re driving.

The warning screen

So far, I’m liking what I’m seeing, and I only have one issue at this point regarding navigation within the app itself. In just about every other iPhone app I’ve used, scrolling through a long list is as easy as flicking up or down on the screen with your finger. Not so with the Sygic app – you must use on-screen arrow buttons to get through lists. This is a bit unintuitive and is something I hope Sygic will address in later versions.

My current stand-alone GPS unit is a TomTom Go 720, which I’ll use as a comparison to see how well Mobile Maps routes my trips. I’ll be using this app for the next several days to run it through its paces and then write my review of it. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about this app – use my contact form here or email me at marianne at macgirl dot net.

You can find the Mobile Maps America app here, the Australia and New Zealand version here, and the Southeast Asia version here (these links open iTunes).