Like many, I was really on the fence about which navigation application to get. What really ultimately made me decide to purchase Navigon was the recent announcement that version 1.2 would have TTS. I installed the app last night and used it on my 1 hr commute from South Orange County to San Diego. Here are my thoughts (many of these same sentiments have been echoed by others but here goes anyway):
Installation: I did not follow the direction listed on the Navigon site that recommended I reset my phone. I am not sure if I believe/understand what they mean with their reference to memory allocation....
GPS signal: it seemed this app was very fast to acquire a signal. In fact, I was able to lock on to a signal while sitting in my family room. This morning, when sitting in my car, I got a GPS lock by the time Navigon started up on my iphone. One strange behavior I noticed was when I received a call while the app was running. Once the call ended, Navigon could not lock onto a signal. I had to end my route and start it again before it could reacquire the location. Another time, I lost the signal when I was at a stop light under a bridge. Once I got out from under the bridge, Navigon got its location within 5 seconds.
GPS Accuracry: I did not have any issues with the accuracy. I did notice at times my speed was off by as much as 5 mph.
Navigation: Navigon worked just fine. The route it planned for me was just fine even though I do take a different route. That being said, my commute to work is mainly freeway and major roads. It will be interesting to see how Navigon does routing only in city or residential. The estimated time to arrival was fairly accurate, no better or worse than my Garmin Nuvi or Lexus in car GPS. Navigon did at least update the arrival time during the course of my drive. I think in the end, I arrived 5 mins later than the original estimate. Not too bad. Even though TTS would be nice, the directions and voice prompts were clear and timely enough for me. That being said, I was traveling on a well known route. I am sure TTS would come in very handy when traveling in an unfamiliar area, especially since the street names on the GUI are virtually impossible to read.
Re-routing: This was one feature I was very impressed with. I was surprised at how quickly Navigon was able to re-route when I missed a turn. It happened within seconds, even faster than my Garmin Nuvi!
GUI: this is may major area of complaint. As other have pointed out, the street names and POI symbols (nice touch to have the actual logo of businesses by the way) are nearly impossible to read. It would help if we could zoom in a bit on the 3d map during navigation but it seems we are only given a default zoom level when in 3d mode. What I do like is how the screen zooms in and changes when its time to take an offramp. It would be better if the vehicle position was also shown in the zoom mode. There also needs to be more on-screen buttons for things such as volume, adding an intermediate destination, POI search, etc. As it is, you have to go into the menu in order to get access to these features.
Interaction with other iphone apps: During my commute I received multiple calls and push alerts. Aside from the GPS signal issue after a call, Navigon performed fine when interrupted. I think if Navigon could be allowed to run in the background during calls, then I would not have had an issue with the app re-acquiring the GPS signal. I am going to look into jailbreaking once OS version 3.1 is released.
POI: I did not use this too much as I do not really use a GPS unit for this purpose. No other GPS unit I have used is very good in this regard so I do not expect Navigon to be better. I live in a community that is about 10 years old. It found all the addresses and businesses that I go to often. It would be nice if the address of the business was shown in the search list. Instead, only the business name and distance is shown. For example, I did a search for Wells Fargo which resulted in multiple listings. I wanted to select a particular one but there were several which were within 3 miles of my house. I had to go through the list, selecting each one before I found the one I was looking for.
Battery drain: my iphone 3gs never got great battery life and using GPS for an hour did not help matters. I lost about 20% during my commute.
Summary: overall I am very happy I purchased Navigon. Of course I did not try out the other options so I cannot compare. For me, Navigon does everything I need it to. I am looking forward to TTS and better integration with ipod controls. The ultimate will be to jailbreak my phone so I can run Pandora in the background while using Navigon. There is definitely room for improvement but I could easily live with this version.
Sorry for the long post...thank you for reading.
Installation: I did not follow the direction listed on the Navigon site that recommended I reset my phone. I am not sure if I believe/understand what they mean with their reference to memory allocation....
GPS signal: it seemed this app was very fast to acquire a signal. In fact, I was able to lock on to a signal while sitting in my family room. This morning, when sitting in my car, I got a GPS lock by the time Navigon started up on my iphone. One strange behavior I noticed was when I received a call while the app was running. Once the call ended, Navigon could not lock onto a signal. I had to end my route and start it again before it could reacquire the location. Another time, I lost the signal when I was at a stop light under a bridge. Once I got out from under the bridge, Navigon got its location within 5 seconds.
GPS Accuracry: I did not have any issues with the accuracy. I did notice at times my speed was off by as much as 5 mph.
Navigation: Navigon worked just fine. The route it planned for me was just fine even though I do take a different route. That being said, my commute to work is mainly freeway and major roads. It will be interesting to see how Navigon does routing only in city or residential. The estimated time to arrival was fairly accurate, no better or worse than my Garmin Nuvi or Lexus in car GPS. Navigon did at least update the arrival time during the course of my drive. I think in the end, I arrived 5 mins later than the original estimate. Not too bad. Even though TTS would be nice, the directions and voice prompts were clear and timely enough for me. That being said, I was traveling on a well known route. I am sure TTS would come in very handy when traveling in an unfamiliar area, especially since the street names on the GUI are virtually impossible to read.
Re-routing: This was one feature I was very impressed with. I was surprised at how quickly Navigon was able to re-route when I missed a turn. It happened within seconds, even faster than my Garmin Nuvi!
GUI: this is may major area of complaint. As other have pointed out, the street names and POI symbols (nice touch to have the actual logo of businesses by the way) are nearly impossible to read. It would help if we could zoom in a bit on the 3d map during navigation but it seems we are only given a default zoom level when in 3d mode. What I do like is how the screen zooms in and changes when its time to take an offramp. It would be better if the vehicle position was also shown in the zoom mode. There also needs to be more on-screen buttons for things such as volume, adding an intermediate destination, POI search, etc. As it is, you have to go into the menu in order to get access to these features.
Interaction with other iphone apps: During my commute I received multiple calls and push alerts. Aside from the GPS signal issue after a call, Navigon performed fine when interrupted. I think if Navigon could be allowed to run in the background during calls, then I would not have had an issue with the app re-acquiring the GPS signal. I am going to look into jailbreaking once OS version 3.1 is released.
POI: I did not use this too much as I do not really use a GPS unit for this purpose. No other GPS unit I have used is very good in this regard so I do not expect Navigon to be better. I live in a community that is about 10 years old. It found all the addresses and businesses that I go to often. It would be nice if the address of the business was shown in the search list. Instead, only the business name and distance is shown. For example, I did a search for Wells Fargo which resulted in multiple listings. I wanted to select a particular one but there were several which were within 3 miles of my house. I had to go through the list, selecting each one before I found the one I was looking for.
Battery drain: my iphone 3gs never got great battery life and using GPS for an hour did not help matters. I lost about 20% during my commute.
Summary: overall I am very happy I purchased Navigon. Of course I did not try out the other options so I cannot compare. For me, Navigon does everything I need it to. I am looking forward to TTS and better integration with ipod controls. The ultimate will be to jailbreak my phone so I can run Pandora in the background while using Navigon. There is definitely room for improvement but I could easily live with this version.
Sorry for the long post...thank you for reading.
