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.

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…

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).

Must. Get. iPhone. 3G S.

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I’ve already said that I definitely plan on getting the new iPhone 3G S. However, how I do it this time around is going to be a bit different. See, I waited in line at an Apple or an AT&T store to get my first-generation iPhone and my first iPhone 3G. This time around, I’m not eligible for upgrade pricing from AT&T to get the 32GB iPhone 3G S for $299 (which doesn’t surprise me and does not cause me to complain since they subsidized my first iPhone 3G less than a year ago), so I’m going to try to get it through a kind friend with family in New Zealand where they will hopefully be sold in a factory-unlocked state again. However, I still may get one from AT&T on launch date and then just return it before the 30-day return period is up. I’m not sure I can bear not having the latest iPhone for at least a little while after it’s released.

Also, I’m pursuing this sneaky method of getting an iPhone 3G S because I don’t want to sign up for another 2 years with AT&T. While I have no plans to switch providers, I’m tired enough of them that I don’t want to be stuck with them. I still remember the change in text messaging from the first-generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G. With the first-generation iPhone, 200 text messages were included for free with the data plan, and this changed with the iPhone 3G, requiring $5/month to get 200 text messages. So, in addition to the $10/month bump in the cost of the data plan, you had to pay $5/month more to get the same number of text messages, adding up to an additional $180 per year in plan costs to go from the first-generation iPhone to the iPhone 3G. Bastards.

Now that you know about my devious iPhone 3G S obtainment plan, I must say that I am in iPhone heaven right about now what with the final 3.0 version coming out soon and the TomTom and Navigon navigation apps due out soon. I’ve used TomTom devices and software for years now, but I think I’ll also check out Navigon’s to see if I like it more. I know TomTom is putting out a cradle to go with theirs, but suction-cup window mounts inevitably drive me batty by falling off no matter what I do and I already have a ProClip mount in my car that I’d rather keep using. However, the TomTom window mount accessory will have one major thing in its favor – its own GPS receiver to supplement the iPhone’s. I imagine this will result in better GPS reception and tracking while you’re on the move, providing an advantage over the Navigon app. Hmmm, I don’t know. What if I buy the Navigon app but find that the iPhone’s GPS chip isn’t really robust enough to provide solid navigation? Then I’d have to buy the TomTom app to go with the GPS-boosted cradle. I suppose I should wait for reviews, or get impatient and just do my own review to see. 😉
TomTom has put their iPhone app and cradle video up on YouTube:
On the Mac front, I’m not entirely thrilled about the substantially-lowered price of the MacBook Air considering what I paid for mine in November, but I am happy about the $29 upgrade price for Snow Leopard. As I type this, my husband’s MacBook appears to have gone tits up, and I’m trying to duplicate his hard drive before I need to do anything drastic to fix it. He’s running Tiger and did not have Time Machine to automatically back up his data, and I think it’s high time to get him to Leopard, or Snow Leopard at this point, to remedy this situation since he’s apparently bound and determined to not back up on his own. Which I’ve told him he should do. Several times. How bad would it be if I made up an “I told you so” song and sing it to him repeatedly when he gets home from work today? Are we talking wife-strangling bad? Or just I-won’t-speak-to-you-for-a-few-days bad? It would be really helpful to know this in advance. 
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