Why the biggy over 'Voice Guidance'? Cant you use the tom tom kinda software guidance, where is shows your with arrows which way to head?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
xGPS updated - Turn by Turn Voice Guidance Now Included
- Thread starter Knowlege Bomb
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Well it is free so you could always just delete it off if you don't like it. I got it to work fine, with voice, earlier in the day.
Just used it for a full trip
Just went from my college to home (Around 22 miles) with xGPS 1.2 I can indeed confirm that the Voice turn by turn works. It found my location right away and as soon as I was on the way home I heard a small beeping noise and then this funny sounding robotic voice saying "In 330 meters turn right onto Memorial College Avenue". The robotic voice is funny but can become a little annoying after a while.
Pros:
1-True Voice by Voice Turn
2- The menu system looks great
3- Love the Route Manager
4- Displays MPH (Pretty accurate)
5- Accurate directions
Cons
1- I believe it should say stuff like "Continue on 85 North for 5 miles" or things like that.
2- Robotic voice can be annoying/difficult to understand
3- Uses meters for voice commands (Miles is alot better in my opinion).
4- Seems to display Wrong Way when I am going the right way
Here is a screen so you can see what the interface looks like while driving. Note- Don't ask how I took it
Just went from my college to home (Around 22 miles) with xGPS 1.2
I can indeed confirm that the Voice turn by turn works. It found my location right away and as soon as I was on the way home I heard a small beeping noise and then this funny sounding robotic voice saying "In 330 meters turn right onto Memorial College Avenue". The robotic voice is funny but can become a little annoying after a while. Pros:
1-True Voice by Voice Turn
2- The menu system looks great
3- Love the Route Manager
4- Displays MPH (Pretty accurate)
5- Accurate directions
Cons
1- I believe it should say stuff like "Continue on 85 North for 5 miles" or things like that.
2- Robotic voice can be annoying/difficult to understand
3- Uses meters for voice commands (Miles is alot better in my opinion).
4- Seems to display Wrong Way when I am going the right way
Here is a screen so you can see what the interface looks like while driving. Note- Don't ask how I took it
Attachments
I tried this out. Garmin doesn't have anything to worry about yet, but for a free simple GPS route voice guidance it works great! I just took a short trip to the Wendy's down the road, but it alerted me to all the turns by beeping and telling me the distance. I had it hooked into my car's audio. I didn't test whether if I played ipod songs if it would interrupt them to tell or not, but that would be sweet if so. Only thing I didn't like it is always tells you the distance in meters so 1080 meters, eh, doesn't really mean much to me. Maybe its just me. I can see when it gets down to less than 500 meters, but anything over that, I want the miles equivalent for. Also the text to speech engine isn't anything as good as professional GPS. It mispronounces a lot and sounds really robotic.
The map display works great, it auto rotates when you turn. The speedometer was spot on. Beats the socks off of Google maps. And the price can't be beat. I could definitely use this to find where I needed to go. I will say I'm in a 3G area, and I didn't download the maps prior to my journey but the phone kept up. I don't know how it would perform in EDGE.
The thing that doesn't work for me is the search feature. It finds things alright, but only in my local area, and when I click a result nothing happens. I can get around this by manually creating a route and you can use the search there, but just searching and expecting it to plot a route to automatically doesn't work unless I've missed something.
For free, and being just released it is pretty sweet at the moment. It can only get better from this point.
The map display works great, it auto rotates when you turn. The speedometer was spot on. Beats the socks off of Google maps. And the price can't be beat. I could definitely use this to find where I needed to go. I will say I'm in a 3G area, and I didn't download the maps prior to my journey but the phone kept up. I don't know how it would perform in EDGE.
The thing that doesn't work for me is the search feature. It finds things alright, but only in my local area, and when I click a result nothing happens. I can get around this by manually creating a route and you can use the search there, but just searching and expecting it to plot a route to automatically doesn't work unless I've missed something.
For free, and being just released it is pretty sweet at the moment. It can only get better from this point.
This app in its simplistic form is worthy of praise. No longer do I have to scroll the map while I drive to figure out where I am going. My only wish is to have the option to just "beep" for notification of upcoming turns. I think I'll do fine without the robot .
.
App is good. As another person said....it displays wrong way when I am going the right way. The voice is annoying. I went the wrong way to see how long it took to reroute.....lets just say i'd have to pull over to make sure I got where I was going. Too long to reroute. I like the purple circle every place I am to exit or turn. All in all...decent app. I still need Apple to do there thing because I need to find something on google, hit directions and have it tell me how to get there.
Well from what I've read thus far it seems Xwaves is looking to make.... well, waves.
I realize that the software is nothing in comparison to that of traditional GPS providers like TomTom, Garmin, etc, but think about all of the iPhone 3G (jailbroken) owners who are going to see this and veer away from buying a real GPS device. The 3G crowd is anything but small. And like somebody mentioned above, the only way to go from here is up.
I realize that the software is nothing in comparison to that of traditional GPS providers like TomTom, Garmin, etc, but think about all of the iPhone 3G (jailbroken) owners who are going to see this and veer away from buying a real GPS device. The 3G crowd is anything but small. And like somebody mentioned above, the only way to go from here is up.
I would say that for a free app it's excellent. The speed jumps around quite a bit, and when you're stopped at a stoplight, it really jumps around, and in some cases turned my arrow going the opposite direction. It was also off by about a tenth of a mile on the final turn into my work. Whew....Good thing I knew where i was going.....or I would have ended up in a field... LOL
I'm sure, over time they will refine it, but for now it's actually in a good state.
Which app is this? I didn't know there was one in the crap st--, ahem... app store.
Does it progress through the directions as you do? I'm not really concerned about the voice as I can never hear mine over my music anyway.
So I used xGPS on the way home from work and it worked pretty well. A short musical notification could be herad along with a robotic voice informing me of how close I was to an upcoming turn and told me where to exit. For those not hearing the voice I would make sure that you phone is not on silent and the ringer is turned all the way up. I used a car adapter and could hear the voice thru my speakers.
I for one think that is a very good plus over the standard maps app. It obvioulsy isnt perfect and I dont have any experience with a garmin/tom tom, but it surely doesnt compare to a built nav system which most cars have anyway.
I have g-map west from the app store and the positive with that app is that the maps are all pre-downloaded, however it takes about a gig of memory for some maps I will never use. One huge mistep for g-map is that it isn't integrated with your contacts and the POI search is pretty weak. It has 3 different views which is nice, but no landscape. I think it is just as accurate as xgps, meaning the dot or arrow doesn't move along the route as smoothly. They both kind of skip along the road.
Everyone has been really looking forward to voice guidance and now it's proven it can be done(who knows what David Pogue was talking about when he said the 3G gps antenna couldn't handle turn by turn). It is huge step forward and if you use xgps, the maps app and g-map all together, I dont see how you can get lost.
I for one think that is a very good plus over the standard maps app. It obvioulsy isnt perfect and I dont have any experience with a garmin/tom tom, but it surely doesnt compare to a built nav system which most cars have anyway.
I have g-map west from the app store and the positive with that app is that the maps are all pre-downloaded, however it takes about a gig of memory for some maps I will never use. One huge mistep for g-map is that it isn't integrated with your contacts and the POI search is pretty weak. It has 3 different views which is nice, but no landscape. I think it is just as accurate as xgps, meaning the dot or arrow doesn't move along the route as smoothly. They both kind of skip along the road.
Everyone has been really looking forward to voice guidance and now it's proven it can be done(who knows what David Pogue was talking about when he said the 3G gps antenna couldn't handle turn by turn). It is huge step forward and if you use xgps, the maps app and g-map all together, I dont see how you can get lost.
So I used xGPS on the way home from work and it worked pretty well. A short musical notification could be herad along with a robotic voice informing me of how close I was to an upcoming turn and told me where to exit. For those not hearing the voice I would make sure that you phone is not on silent and the ringer is turned all the way up. I used a car adapter and could hear the voice thru my speakers.
I for one think that is a very good plus over the standard maps app. It obvioulsy isnt perfect and I dont have any experience with a garmin/tom tom, but it surely doesnt compare to a built nav system which most cars have anyway.
I have g-map west from the app store and the positive with that app is that the maps are all pre-downloaded, however it takes about a gig of memory for some maps I will never use. One huge mistep for g-map is that it isn't integrated with your contacts and the POI search is pretty weak. It has 3 different views which is nice, but no landscape. I think it is just as accurate as xgps, meaning the dot or arrow doesn't move along the route as smoothly. They both kind of skip along the road.
Everyone has been really looking forward to voice guidance and now it's proven it can be done(who knows what David Pogue was talking about when he said the 3G gps antenna couldn't handle turn by turn). It is huge step forward and if you use xgps, the maps app and g-map all together, I dont see how you can get lost.
Since when?
Not everybody lives in Beverly Hills.
Since when?
Not everybody lives in Beverly Hills.
I dont live in Beverly Hills...but I do live in Southern California.
The obvious problem with this app is with the iPhone hardware itself, the strength of GPS chip and the battery life. If xWaves decides to make the GPS location service even more sensitive (perhaps they're already at max), they have to do it at the cost of higher battery consumption. Hence to reduce the "wrong way" issue most of you are experiencing is really the issue with hardware, which xWaves cannot do anything about.
Also for calculation of route, they are utilizing Google due to the fact this isn't like a 3 gig application. But I think they do save the route everytime you use it, so you can actually do so in the offline mode. However, if you need to re-route the direction, you will have to rely on the 3G connection, which is understandable to be slow.
There are several small areas for this to be improved, but overall, I think this is about as close to final product as it can be in terms of essentials.
Also for calculation of route, they are utilizing Google due to the fact this isn't like a 3 gig application. But I think they do save the route everytime you use it, so you can actually do so in the offline mode. However, if you need to re-route the direction, you will have to rely on the 3G connection, which is understandable to be slow.
There are several small areas for this to be improved, but overall, I think this is about as close to final product as it can be in terms of essentials.
Sweet! My parents have been dying to use my phone as a Sat Nav for ages
I hope they make some improvements though, and change meters to miles!
I hope they make some improvements though, and change meters to miles!
Sweet! My parents have been dying to use my phone as a Sat Nav for ages
I hope they make some improvements though, and change meters to miles!
In the settings you can change the display from meters to miles. The voice (which can be turned off), is always in meters. Again, for a free app, I think they did a very good job, and it will only get better IMHO.
Help
I have an coulpe of question?
1. is there an way we can turn up the voice direction? as it is very low?
2. which one do i using under the gps?
Xgps module
Iphone 3g gps
Igpsd
Igps360
Fake Gps
Which one do i using? an which one DOESNT NOT USE AN 3G CONNTECED?
thank you
I have an coulpe of question?
1. is there an way we can turn up the voice direction? as it is very low?
2. which one do i using under the gps?
Xgps module
Iphone 3g gps
Igpsd
Igps360
Fake Gps
Which one do i using? an which one DOESNT NOT USE AN 3G CONNTECED?
thank you
1. Not natively from the app itself.
2. iPhone 3G GPS, unless you have another external GPS output.
So you need 3G for this to work? If so, why can't you use GPRS isnt that what tom tom and other sat navs use? As you usually get GPRS 99% of the time