Marianne Schultz

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First peek: Mobile Maps America navigation app by Sygic

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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).

Barcelona and pre-paid SIM card fun

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If you follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed that I was in Barcelona earlier this month for both vacation and to cover Mobile World Congress 2009. The first 5 days of my 10-day trip were vacation days and I did the tourist thing to see all the sights I could stand in Barcelona, as well as eat tapas and drink more than my fair share of wine and sangria. The last 5 days were devoted to work to check out the new devices announced at Mobile World Congress. Unfortunately, my last day covering the show came with sniffles and sneezes that blossomed into the flu on the flight home. Several days later, I’m finally getting back up to full speed. God, I hate the flu. This was one of the worst bouts I’ve had in a long, long time.


While in Spain, I did some window shopping to check out the gadgetry in that part of the world, and saw some fake iPods, a crowded Apple section at a local FNAC (a French consumer electronics chain store), and a million cameras in stores and in the hands of tourists. Everything I’d seen was priced higher than what you’d find in the U.S. given the current exchange rate, unsurprisingly. I did end up taking both my iPhones (it’s safer if you don’t ask why – really) and I purchased a local SIM card to use with my factory-unlocked iPhone 3G while I was there and it worked out pretty well, at least the second time around.  I thought I’d have trouble finding a pre-paid card that included data capabilities but I was wrong – I had a choice between a few pre-paid services that offered this and the prices weren’t too bad at all.




The first SIM card I bought was from a mobile service provider called Blau, which costed about $17 and included $13 of credit. Blau charged about $.40 to send an international text message and $.11 per minute to call the U.S., and a $.60 charge just to connect the international call. As is common in Europe and completely unlike the U.S., receiving a call on your cell phone results in no charge or deduction of minutes to you – the caller pays for everything. So, it was pretty easy to preserve the balance on my prepaid SIM by texting or IM’ing my husband and having him call me. Unfortunately, something was wrong with Blau’s systems for several days, making it impossible for me to add to the balance of my card online or even in the store where I bought it. And while I was able to change my iPhone’s settings to avoid using data without my knowledge, Blau charged $.11 per 512KB chunk of data used, even if I didn’t use the full chunk of 512KB of data at once. After a couple of days of periodically checking email, maps, and such while I was doing the tourist thing decreased my balance steadily. Since I couldn’t refill the card, I opted to buy another one from another service provider.




The next prepaid SIM card I bought was from Yoigo. Their rates were slightly higher than Blau’s but they had much more favorable data usage pricing. Using data on their network was charged by the kilobyte, not by 512KB chunk like Blau. Once you hit $1.60 in data use in a day, you weren’t charged anymore for any further data usage. Their site stated the data limit per day was 384KB, but I was never cut off even when checking my email several times a day, using Google maps, and more. It was really nice to use my iPhone as I normally would without worrying about exorbitant data charges.


I ended up not using my first-generation iPhone at all – it held my AT&T SIM in airplane mode the whole time and stayed hidden in my hotel room. It was nice to know that I did have a back-up phone in case something happened to my 3G.


Of course, now that I’m just about settled and feeling much better after returning from Barcelona, I’m off again to Vegas on Sunday to cover the PMA show next week. Photography isn’t quite my thing, but I’m getting into it a little and have even been looking around for a starter DSLR – a Nikon D70 would be my dream, but I’ll go for a D40 as well.


In my next post, I’ll let you know what new phones impressed me the most at MWC…


Mobile World Congress in Barcelona or BUST!

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I’m going to Barcelona to cover the Mobile World Congress for work (woo hoo!) and am fitting in a little vacation there beforehand. I’ve been reading some tourist tip sites and a Frommer’s guide book and the pickpocket warnings are standing out to me a lot. And they’re worrying me – almost enough to make me not want to take anything important with me, including my iPhone. Crap. I can’t go 2 weeks without my iPhone! Not. Possible.

I do have a first-generation “spare” iPhone that I use for snowboarding. I got an incredible deal on it ($75!). It’s a bit beat up, but it’s a fabulous back-up phone that I hardly worry about. However, my 3G has GPS, which I can envision needing to get around and I’m thinking that the cell tower triangulation that the first-gen iPhone uses won’t be enough to pinpoint my location to be as useful as I’ll need. Plus, I’m thinking of bringing my husband’s new digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix, instead of my old Sony DSC-T1, but I will feel terrible if something happens to it.
I’ve lived in and traveled through Europe before, so I’m not a total newbie. To be honest, I’m not quite sure why I’m getting so worked up about my safety and the safety of my gadgets in Barcelona. I must be getting old or something. (I vote for “or something”.) Part of it must be the fact that I’m a little overwhelmed about spending time in a country where I don’t speak the language. I opted to take French in high school and college, not Spanish. I can tell you my name, the time and date, and ask where the bathroom is in Spanish, and that’s about it. Which reminds me – I need to find a good translation app.
Shoot. I’m sure I’ll end up taking my iPhone 3G. Hell, probably both of my iPhones despite my concerns. Don’t ask why – it’s best if you don’t. Gah.
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