im up for a new phone quite fancy the desire but i use my current nokia for voice nav using the free satnav it has a full map built into the phone and is free to use and doesnt require internet to be on either

is there a similar thing for the desire ive seen google do a voice thing but does that need an internet connection. and if your in the stick does it lose nav ?

thanks

I have a different Android phone so can't comment directly on the Desire, but Google recently released turn-based navigation for Google Maps (as of v4.2).

It works quite well. It uses text-to-speech for the voice, which is a bit of a double-edged sword; it sounds a bit artificial compared to say a TomTom, but where it wins is it can (approximately) pronounce road names. So eg rather than just "turn left" you get "turn left onto the A123, Blackburn Road."

It streams the maps over your data connection though. In the car that's rarely a problem, but out in the back of beyond I'm not sure how well it performs, I've not had cause to try it yet.

Android being Android though, you've a lot of alternatives. CoPilot is a full-featured commercial SatNav product, and weighs in at about £25 quid. There are other free, nearly free, open source / community driven etc options too, but TBH you'd be best looking for comparison reviews over on androidforums.com.

cheers fella i will take a look on there. the nokia mapping is great but i think android is the way to go. thanks

As above, I've got a Desire and have tried the Google Maps.

The 'voice' is no way as good as a tom tom as mentioned, but it is more 'intelligent' and you can do things like use satellite view & I think it automatically switched to street view when you get close to your destination if it's available.

I imagine that it might be a pain if the map downloads can't keep up with your route, but i haven't encountered that yet – have only used it once to see how well it worked.

Used the voice navigation on the Desire the other day when I went to pick up some forks… although it's a little odd sometimes with how it pronounces numbers, sometimes say the A four hundred and fifty three and other times saying A four five three… but other than that I found it rather good.

I'd not want to do it again without a car charger though… it ate the battery as it keeps the screen on all the time…

I normally turn my sat nav down, as it gives the turn signals way too early, which is rubbish particularly on roundabouts (it's an old Garmin).

I imagine I'll do the same with this if I use it much.

funkynick – did you set it not to turn the screen off, as the one time that I tried it out it kept turning the screen off which seemed a bit lame. Oh and it still killed the battery & the phone (processor?) got quite toasty!

I keep hearing about Google maps navigation, but I can't find it when I search in the Android marketplace. Can anyone help me out?

Didn't do anything other than set it going… it kept the screen on all by itself.

Oh yes, and it got nicely toasty too!

dave360.. it's part of the latest Google Maps upgrade, not a seperate download.

dave360 – it's just part of the latest google maps – it's not a separate program.

If you have the latest version of google maps then open it, click on your menu button, then 'directions' from the screen.
Stick in where you want to go and when it's found it, you'll have the option to 'navigate'.

If you've not used it before you have to download the voice synthesis thing, but this only takes a mo' and off you go.

EDIT – yeah what he said, but slower….

I don't seem to have the navigate option, just directions

you need to have Android 1.6 or above to get it, so stock Heros don't have it for example.

You can get co-pilot live for android. Uses offline maps so it will work, even if 3G is no good.

http://www.alk.eu.com/copilot/android/

or you can go to market and search for Navigon or copilot

(make sure you are on wireless though; its a big dl. Think navigon is free for a month

Balls, and I'm assuming I can't upgrade to 1.6 without a load of hassle or a new phone

It's usually pretty straight forward to do it. Have a look on androidforums.com for your specific phone, there will probably be instructions there.

One of the biggest PITA Android handsets for upgrades is the Samsung Galaxy i7500 that I have, and even that's upgradeable with a bit of work.

The Android platform is pretty robust. Where a bad ROM update would normally 'brick' a phone, the Android is pretty much always recoverable. I'd suggest you give it a go.

I5700 too. I'll have to have a look at that forum though it took me a week to work out why I couldn't connect to my computer

I bought a £5 USB-cigar lighter plug to charge the phone in the car via supplied cable.

When running the satnav, the phone will stay on but it struggles to actually charge, either my Punto has got a crap connection to the cigar socket, or the phone just struggles to charge from a 14v ish connection.

Anyone know what voltage the phone charges from via USB on a PC?

I thought that all USB ports are 5v.

Maybe they are? Maybe the phone just won't charge properly whilst navigation is on?! Saying that, once on the M6 we turned the navigation and GPS off, probably played with the phone for an hour out of the following four hour journey, when I got home and unplugged it it flashed up 14% warning. Maybe the USB thing is crap…

spooky… it's probably that it the satnav uses power at about the same rate the Desire charges at, so you while it won't charge up very fast, it won't splat the battery either…

EDIT: Or the car charger is crap… :o)

THE PODGE

Hero (s) are getting the android 2.1 upgrade in june (they actually emailed me to confirm) its an over the air upgrade apparently

It's not voltage that will differ, it's current.

USB charging is a funny beast. It'll trickle-charge unless the charger is intelligent enough to negotiate a highter charging rate with the device. If you're putting heavy drain on the battery whilst on a car charger, it should keep it topped up but you're not going to see the same results that you would if you plugged it into the mains.

What I've started doing with the Navigation is setting it running and then just hitting the phone's lock button to shut the screen off. That blanks the screen but leaves the Nav running in the background, so Mrs Stephen Hawkins still shouts instructions at me even with the screen off.

Christoginger, I don't have a hero.

What do you have?

As above, samsung i5700.

Says firmware 1.5

I can't find any specific reference to android so I guess it's that

Been trying to use this on my Desire. It has worked and sometimes it does, somethimes it doesn’t. I can always get the directions but the turn by turn voice doesn’t always work. I can’t find a setting that turns it on or off though. Any idea what else might be upsetting it?

Once navigation starts use the volume rocker to make sure the ‘voice navigation’ volume is turned up.

checked the volume. Sometimes, it doesn’t even give the low level type view, it just gives a conventional plan view. There must be a setting I’ve missed but I really can’t find it.

Navigation will not start until your phone has established a GPS link. beyond that I cant help any more…sorry. just have to play around with settings.

I was wondering if it was gps related. I though perhaps the cell location method might be upsetting the gps so perhaps I shouldset it to one or the other rather than bopth in the location settings.