[kyte]

iPhone GPS Application Roundup

The apps being looked at today are those released for the Australian market, and readers from other countries may have a different experience of them. Additionally, they have been tested in and around Newcastle, NSW, which is a major regional centre north of Sydney. Readers from Australian capital cities may also have a different (and in some cases, more positive) experience.

The reason I am qualifying my remarks at the outset, is my discovery that it’s not only the application software which affects performance, but also the maps used, and how these maps are implemented within the software.

The apps I am looking at are: Sygic, TomTom, Navigon, NDrive and Copilot. Sygic and TomTom both use Sensis/Whereis; Navigon, CoPilot and NDrive use Navteq.

I think it’s a given that all of these applications will get you where you want to go, eventually. It's how they get you there, which is under scrutiny at this time.

Its always a difficult task to decide which particular features to take into consideration, so I am looking at the ones most commented on and requested in various forums I go to. These are not in any particular order of importance.

1. Text to Speech: Many people rely on this feature to navigate in unfamiliar territory. So it needs to be understandable, and approximately correctly pronounced, in order to be utilised fully.
2. iPod controls: Given that the iPod can be played in the background, on a longish trip it might be very useful to be able to listen to your music of choice as well as get instructions for your route. Music needs to fade in and out with the instructions, so that you don’t miss them, and ideally, the application should have built in controls, so you can make changes without exiting the GPS application. It should also pause, rather than continue playing. I listen to audiobooks, and a missing section would be a pest.
3. Speed and Red Light cameras: Should be visible on the map, and there should also be an audible warning (user selectable for sound and distance from target) available.
4. Over speed Limit warnings: Should be visible in a large font on screen and ideally there should be a user selectable sound for an audible warning.
5. Because in Australia there are speed limit changes around school zones, these should be built into the software as an addition, and audible warnings sounded on approach.
6. Interface: Some believe the UI should be all iPhone, others don't mind what its like, as long as it does the job.
   

Text To Speech
Text to Speech is only found in two of the applications at this time. The Navigon TTS engine is sophisticated and surpasses that of Sygic, which created such hilarity in my car, it had to be turned off. The other applications may provide TTS in the future, but this is unknown right now.

Update 26/10/2009: For the first time today, I tried the American TTS voices in Sygic and I was quite surprised at the results. For my ear, the best pronunciation comes from Ryan, who pronounced the names of roads nearly perfectly and at least as well as the Navigon voice. The American Heather did not do so well, and both the English voices failed magnificently. So, if you want TTS, switch to Ryan, and you'll be okay.

iPod Controls


Navigon: Full control from within the app. Note "Map" top left.


Sygic, TomTom, CoPilot and NDrive: Partial control via double Home Button click (fast forward, back, pause). Taking the “iPod” option closes the GPS app to open iPod, GPS app then has to be manually reopened.

Speed Cameras

Navigon, NDrive and CoPilot: None, not visual or audible. This is not to say the capacity is not there, but rather that there is not enough information from the Navteq maps to allow the software to perform the task.

Sygic and Tomtom: Present in both apps, both visual and audible warnings. Only Sygic has user-selectable sound for the warning, plus the capacity to set distance from target as a trigger.

Over-Speed Warnings


Sygic: Visual and audible warnings with user-selectable sound. Note the visual ! as a badge over the road speed indicator.

Tomtom: Visual only; background behind speed info turns red and stays that way as long as you are overspeeding (eg 68/60)

Navigon, NDrive, CoPilot do not have road speed limit information for most Australian roads (tested on major highways north of Sydney) and so, although the capacity to warn is in the software, without the map info, none of these apps can perform the task required. Some people will comment that it works for them, and I would suggest that they are in Europe or North America or a metropolitan area, at the very least. Rural Australians will not see it working.

School Zones:

Navigon has visual indication of school locations, via POI system.


Sygic has full information, also via POI, but with the capacity for the user to select a warning sound to be played at a user-selectable distance from target.

TomTom does not appear to have any school information (edit: well, actually, it does, and has from the beginning. dang!)

Update 25/10/09: Nobody challenged me on the Tomtom School Zone issue so I am assuming that nobody else found what I found just a few moments ago: Tomtom has schools included in its "Colleges and Universities" POI. I haven't activated it before, I did tonight, and there they were, all neat black and white icons. Still no warn option but its a start.


NDrive has the tiniest icon which might or not be related to school, it seems to be a pencil...


CoPilot has school information available via an icon, and an audible warning which says “ATTENTION! Point of Interest!” in a peremptory tone, but with no indication exactly what kind of POI it is. The warning is the same for a school as it is for a petrol station, or a hospital.

Interface
Navigon and Tomtom use the iPhone UI to the max: Tomtom's is particularly attractive.
Sygic looks like a standard GPS application. The keyboard is too small, some say, but I don't mind it. Fonts in the latest version have been enlarged.
NDrive and Copilot use a non-standard for iPhone or dedicated GPS UI, though CoPilot pays homage in the use of the iPhone keyboard. The NDrive keyboard can be qwerty or abcde, depending on what you want.

Getting to where you need to go:

All applications perform as expected, for the most part. You will arrive at your destination at some time. If you test them out in familiar areas, you can compensate for each application’s shortcomings. The real test is to go somewhere you don’t know, and see what happens, or to deliberately force a route recalculation.

CoPilot: Smooth recalculation, and it doesn’t try to make you do U-turns in silly places.

Sygic: Fairly quick to recalculate for new routes.some report that its slow, and I have found it so once or twice but not overall.

Tomtom: Fairly quick to recalculate for new routes.

Navigon: Similar to both Sygic and Tomtom, recalculates well.

NDrive: Has some ridiculous instructions. For example, trying to make you turn left, then right over a median strip which has had a fence on it the last 8 years. The Navteq map NDrive are using appears to be very out of date, which makes it very easy to throw off course. Sometimes completely unable to recalculate a new route (even though it can pinpoint your location on the map), and on these occasions requires a restart of the application. When you restart it will ask if you want to continue on the same route, a nice touch.

Conclusions

For TTS: Navigon is best
For sheer customisability (is that a word?): Sygic is tops
For resting on its laurels: Tomtom: has the potential but for some reason TT refuses to even give the iPhone app the latest maps available to its dedicated devices.
For the brightest but most confusing interface: CoPilot. Too many options lie buried in menus and submenus. There’s little consistency, and the promise of in-app updates does not yet appeal.
For trying but falling short of the mark: NDrive. Nice interface, but without reliable navigation, it’s not a recommended buy at this stage. As updates are released, and they are promised for free, I would expect to see a vast improvement in performance.

As a postscript, Roadee should at least get a mention. Its $2.49 on the app store, comes with one robot voice which will direct you and read street names to you, and no maps. POIs much be searched for by name but there do seem to be quite a lot, you just can’t get a complete listing. Maps are downloaded on the fly, and new voices can be bought. The one complaint I had about it is that maps could not be stored. There was an update yesterday, which may well have addressed that issue, but because I am still on firmware 3.0.1, I can’t use it to find out. Navigationwise its ok, but having to download maps over and over is just ludicrous (and data-expensive)

Recommendations?
I’m reluctant to make recommendations (but I will). I think everyone is quite aware of my bias toward Sygic, its been full featured from the get-go. But if you are just looking for a very nice application which will get you from A to B with a stop off at d, e and f… pretty much any of the applications will do. It’s horses for courses as usual, and, that which appeals to one individual will be detested by another. If you want weather reports in your app: CoPilot. If you want traffic reports, no joy yet, although both Copilot and Ndrive have the capacity, just not the access to info. Check the table below, it might enlighten. Where I have "yes/no", it means capacity but lack of info for the software to use. Note that it only appears where Navteq is used.

In order of preference (from my biased point of view)

1)Sygic


2)TomTom


3)Navigon


4)CoPilot


5)NDrive (gets lots of brownie points for its free updates to come)


6)Roadee (no screenie, sorry)

A Comparison Table of the applications as tested