Marianne Schultz

the musings of a geeky girl

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Navigon Launches MyRegion Navigation Apps for iPhone

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Navigon’s MobileNavigator is by far my favorite* iPhone GPS app – after reviewing an ad hoc distribution of it, I paid $69 to buy it (while it was on sale a little while ago) and have also purchased the traffic feature via an in-app purchase (also while it was on sale). Today, Navigon has made available several MyRegion versions of their navigation app which cover a portion of the U.S., each available for $24.99 (this is an introductory price and the regular price will be $29.99 after April 12).

There are 3 MyRegion U.S. apps: Eastern, Western, and Central (links open iTunes). If you need another region after you’ve purchased one, the other regions are available as in-app purchases for just $12.99 (to go up to $14.99 after this introductory pricing). You can also get the Traffic Live feature as an in-app purchase. Each MyRegion app has the same features as the full MobileNavigator North America app.
I think this is a pretty neat offering, particularly for those who don’t want or need to have maps of the entire U.S. with them all the time, while still offering the ability to buy them on the fly if they are needed.

*To be fair, I haven’t tried out the latest version (1.3) of TomTom’s app (review) which seems to have been updated to fix many of the things I didn’t like about it. Sygic’s Mobile Maps app (review) is still quite good as well, but Navigon still wins out over it with more fluid interface that mimics the out-of-the-box iPhone apps.

It’s ALIVE! My iPhone car set-up has been perfected

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Well, this may not be perfect according to everyone’s standards, but it’s damn near close for my needs.

The hardware:

I’ve had this OEM iPod kit in my car since I bought it and it’s worked flawlessly with an old iPod nano that permanently resided in my glovebox. However, now that GPS apps are now widely available for the iPhone, I wanted to hook up my iPhone to my car so I could hear the navigation guidance audio over my car’s speakers and charge my iPhone at the same time with the same cable. Yet there were a couple of obstacles to overcome first…

  1. The iPod cable in my glovebox was not quite long enough to reach the place on my dashboard where my ProClip holder resides, so I needed an extension cable for this. 3GJuice makes a 24-inch one that sells for $24.95 on Amazon. It’s black and would have been a bit less obvious against my black dashboard, so I went for it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Next, I tried a similar extension cable from USBFever. No dice with that one either. I half-heartedly ordered a CableJive cable, expecting to see the same result. But it worked! God bless CableJive!
  2. The iPod-your-BMW kit charges via Firewire only, so if I wanted my iPhone to get a charge – particularly important when using power-intensive apps like GPS ones – I needed a charging converter to work with my iPhone 3GS. Scosche sells one, and I got it from Amazon
    for $24.99.

I do have a Belkin iPhone car charger but my cigarette lighter/charging port for the front seats is inside the ashtray, and it’s not the prettiest thing to leave this open all the time when I want to charge my iPhone, and it’s a bit of a pain to keep digging the charger out of the center console as well. Hence my desire to make sure I could charge my iPhone using the cord for the connector kit that is in my glovebox.

I’ve had the ProClip mount almost as long as I’ve had this car as well, albeit with different holders for the different phones I’ve had. The current holder is an iPhone 3G/3GS-specific one that accommodates a naked/skinned iPhone (I have a Gelaskins skin on it at the moment – my review of this skin is here). It also tilts and swivels so I can switch my iPhone to landscape orientation and adjust the viewing angle, with an additional arm that will prevent it from falling out when swiveled on its side or even upside down – you can find it on ProClip’s site here. I can’t say enough good things about ProClip mounts – they require no modification to your dashboard since they just pop into existing seams and they look far more professional than the air vent and windshield mounts I’ve seen. They are a bit pricey, but definitely worth it in my opinion.

Honestly, I do not like the look of wires hanging about my dashboard, but I was hesitant to drill through my dashboard to make this a little cleaner. However, since it’s just one black cord that peeks out of the back of the glovebox and drapes only 12 inches or so over my also-black dashboard before hitting the side of the passenger footwell, I’m not *too* bothered by this (this picture actually makes it look more obvious than it does in person).

To avoid the cable from dangling into the passenger footwell and the plug end from flopping around on my dashboard when my iPhone is not connected, I used some wire clips (kindly procured by my husband) and velcro. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with velcro, but it works very well for this, including keeping the dock connector end stuck to my dashboard in a place that makes it easy to grab when I need it and quick to store yet out of the way when I’m done.

In the end, if not aesthetically flawless, my set-up is is spot-on for what I need:

  • Incoming calls are already routed via Bluetooth through my car’s speaker. I can accept and end calls using a button my steering wheel. I can initiate calls using my car’s voice command system, or I can browse my contacts list on the stereo’s display using buttons on my steering wheel. Music playing through the stereo or iPod app fades out and in with incoming and outgoing calls.
  • Music playback from the iPod app works flawlessly, though it is limited a bit by the iPod-your-BMW kit. I have to set up special playlists labeled BMW1-Playlist1, BMW2-Playlist2, etc. for the kit to see the playlists and play music from them. It’s not the greatest and requires advanced planning, but it works and I’m used to it. I am considering changing this kit out for an after-market one that offers more functionality, but that’s not in my budget at the moment. If I really want to listen to something I just downloaded that’s not in a specially-made playlist that the system will see, all I need to do is start playing it before I plug it in and it will automatically pick up playing where it left off – I think this is a bit of a glitch with the iPod kit, but it’s a handy one.
  • Audio from GPS apps plays over my car’s speakers. Depending on the app, music will fade out before the navigation guidance and fade back in afterward, or guidance will simply play over the music. With the TomTom app (my review for work), this means music stops and starts abruptly when voice guidance is given. With the Navigon (my review) and Sygic (my review) apps, music fades out and back in nicely before and after voice guidance.

The only downside (aside from the limitations of the iPod-your-BMW kit) is that I must plug in my iPhone each and every time I get in the car if I want to listen to music from it. If I’m lazy and don’t do this, I can still listen to FM radio or a CD, of course, and my calls will still be routed via Bluetooth and all of those functions remain intact. However, I’ve found myself plugging my iPhone in as soon as I get in the car all the time, even for short rides to the gym or post office. I really dislike FM radio (too much chatter and advertising) and I haven’t made a new CD in ages with more recently-obtained music that I usually want to listen to.

Overall, I’m very pleased with my set-up. If you have any questions about any of the products I’ve mentioned in this post, please don’t hesitate to email me or post a comment.

Hi. My name is Marianne. I am addicted to iPhone GPS apps.

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Okay, one iPhone GPS app reviewed and another one coming up. I think I’ve gotten a little obsessed with GPS apps for the iPhone, but I feel like I’ve just been waiting for so long for them. I’ve just hated digging out my TomTom GPS unit, doing my damndest to install the suction-cup mount so it will stay put (which it never does), and watch it get confused more often than not while my perfectly capable iPhone stared at me woefully, muttering lame excuses about how no official GPS apps were available for it yet. No more, finally!

My review of Sygic’s Mobile Maps North America navigation app is up here. When the app was first released, it was priced at $79.99. It’s now down to $69.99 and another version that includes only the U.S. is now available for $59.99. For those who don’t venture out of the U.S., I’m sure the latter will be much appreciated, though I personally hope few people take advantage of it, purely out of a personal desire to see more Americans travel outside of the U.S. to experience other cultures and locales. Just pony up for the North American version, okay? It’s only $10 more. Use it to find a white sand beach in Puerto Vallarta or the lovely Notre-Dame Basilica in Montréal, at the very least.
Navigon’s MobileNavigator app (link opens iTunes) is up next for me to review. Right off the bat, it does have a feature that Sygic’s app is missing: contacts integration. Also, its interface is more iPhone-like, allowing you to use two fingers to pinch and zoom in the map as well as a menu structure and keyboard that mimic what you see in a built-in iPhone app.

However, although it uses the same map data source as Sygic’s app, TeleAtlas, my street isn’t on its map and it takes longer to acquire a GPS location after start-up. Street names are also hard to read with the daytime color scheme, which cannot be changed. Also, there are no language or voice customization options, nor much in the way of navigation preferences and settings. I’ll start using it to get me around the city this weekend to see how it does performing its main function.
Unrelated to GPS apps, my husband said something astounding to me last night (those who follow me on Twitter already know). He said – and I quote – “I think I might get an iPhone.” Do you have any idea what those words meant to me? I swear I heard angels singing afterward. After I came to, I suggested – perhaps a little too eagerly – that we could go to the Apple store right then to get one for him. He said that wasn’t necessary, so I went to fetch my spare first-generation iPhone for him so he could use it in the meantime. He declined. I offered to answer any questions he might have about the iPhone and inquired about the color and capacity he might be interested in. He then said that I needed to calm down or he wouldn’t get one at all. He also wouldn’t let me see his stupid Razr, noticing my plan to “accidentally” snap it in half written clearly on my face. Sheesh. What a party pooper. I was just trying to help. We’ll probably go see the Harry Potter movie this weekend at a local theater next to an AT&T store. I will work to subtly guide him there to seal the deal. Wish me luck!

Review of Sygic’s Mobile Maps navigation app for the iPhone

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If you read my blog, you know that I’ve been waiting and waiting for a true turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone for some time now. Sygic put out one of the first comprehensive turn-by-turn apps earlier this month, and I’ve just completed my review of their Mobile Maps North America app (link opens iTunes). It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn good in my book, with enough features to make me want to retire my stand-alone TomTom Go 720 GPS device. Read my full review here.

LosAngeles

Mobile Maps navigation app – more first impressions

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I’ve started to use the Mobile Maps turn-by-turn navigation app that I mentioned the other day and it’s working out quite well so far. It runs smoothly and has gotten me to all of my destinations without any problems, though it gave me a more round-about way to get to one than I would have liked (and different from the route my TomTom Go 720 gives me for this same destination).

What I like so far:
  • Quick route re-calculation
  • Good graphics
  • Reliable – hasn’t lost the GPS signal or gotten confused at all
  • Tells me which side of the road my destination is on!
  • Highway lane guidance display
What I don’t like so far:
  • Voice guidance volume is too low, even at highest volume setting
  • No way to search all POI categories at once
  • No integration with contacts list
I’ll be testing it more to see how it handles incoming and outgoing phone calls and trips with more than one destination. I’m also going to see how it runs on my iPhone 3G compared to my iPhone 3GS.
To be honest, I expected it to make my iPhone run really hot, but it doesn’t. It gets slightly warm to the touch, but that’s it, even when I’ve got my iPhone plugged in with my car charger at the same time. Running it off the battery alone with the screen on all the time didn’t result in as drastic a decrease in my battery charge as I’d expected, to boot. Definitely good so far…