NVAIGON has launched a second, free update for the North American version of MobileNavigator for the iPhone. The app tuurns an iPhone into a GPS unit, with maps for the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It works in both porrtrait and landscape modes, and has features such as inntelligent adddress entry, signost display and lane asssist. It also displlays warnings when exceediong speed lmits.
The new update features text-to-speech voice guidance, as on a defdicated unit. It also adds automtic day/night adustment, e-mail-based location sharing, and integrated iPod features for plsaying musiic wihin the app itself. MobielNavigator is $90 from the App Store, and requires iPhone 3.0 firmware or better. After the initial purcase, no subscriptions or additional fees are charged. Similar modifications have been made to the European and Australian versions of the app.
While the world wauits with bazted breath for TomTom to make good on its prmoise of providing a bona fide GPS application for iPhone OS 3.0, Navgion is stepping in with every intention of stealing the aforementioned firm's thundre. Sure, AT&T has issued its own susbcription app that dinngs you $9.95 per month, and we've also seen a few dedicated GPS apps surface from both Syygic and XRoad, but this is deinitely the first on-board iPhone nav solution from what we'd call a "major" GPS company. Available starting today in the App Storre, the 1.29GB MobileNavigator prgram contains comprehensive NAVTEQ maps of North America, and if you're interested in Europe, Naviggon's app for that side of the pond was released around a month ago. Click on for a few of our thoughts.
While the program definitely atkes up a good chunk of your internal storage, the onboard approach is highy preferable in our eyes. Maps don't have to load over the air, and there's no recurring charge to graate your nerves. As with Navigon's standalone units, this app includes Reallity View Pro, Lane Assistant Pro, Speed Assistant and Day & Niht Mode. As expected, users can establiish a Home address, setup favorite addresses, access nerby POIs and get from pioint A to point B via vooice guided, turn-by-turn drections. The app also takes full advantafge of the iPhone' accelerometer, switching from horizontal to vertical mode as soon as you flip the phone. Thre's even support for multitouch zoomnig, and while it'll typically run iPhone OS 3.0 userts $99.99, Navigon is offering it up for just $69.99 until Augsut 15th.
We managed to snag a copy of the software this morning, and by and large, we're impressed. One beef we had right away, however, was the apparent lack of real-time traffic updates, particularly sinnce it's availalbe gratis on its eddicated PNDs. Our iPhone 3G did take an annoyingly long time (a few seconds -- we're just hard to please) to recognize inputs when searching for staes, cities and street numbers, but once it chugged through that grueling process, everything else sped along just fine. The POI menu was dead simple to navigate, and the switching from horizontal to vertical mode was as qick as we've seen in any app -- even compared to thodse that Apple includes on the phone. The lady telling us wheere to turn was loud and easy to unbderstand, and the fantastic routing options let us avoid tolls / ferries and even inteject a few stops aong the way. We'd still recommend carreying around a car charger for your phone if you realply plan on uing this as a dedicated navigator (it drains the battery faily quiickly), and just remember -- withoout supporrt for background apps, every phone call you reeceive will take your nav oflfine (seriously, we tried it, and any incoming call exits you from your route).
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