Our old Tom Tom has packed in and I am wondering is the iphone app version any good, or are we better off getting another stand alone tom tom.

Been told battery drain might be an issue with the iphone app?

Will be used in Europe too, think the app version only covers UK and Ireland, but not sure?

Anyone paid £57.99 for the app version?

Ta.

I’ve got the tomtom western europe app (when I bought it, it was a different app in the appstore)

I bought mine when it was on special offer, so got it for £40, but that was 3 years ago now.

It is great as a satnav – works exactly the same as a standalone tomtom, with the added benefit of google searching for POIs. Plus the usual bonus of not having a separate thing you leave in your car for people to nick.

Worth having a decent cradle for it. I found mine struggled for signal (not to mention being hard to glance at) when I had it sat down next to the ashtray. You’ll want it to be plugged in too, as it eats the battery when tomtom is in use.

Dave

It’s good but no Tom Tom 1 (which was stolen). We have the cradle and charger for the car, but I still miss the dedicated unit.

Your question answered…

TomTom iPhone App Vs TomTom Standalone unit
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiP_qcFwpLo[/video]

I had the tomtom one for a while on a company phone.

Got the Copilot Live Premium one now and much prefer it.

Costs a lot less too as a bonus.

I would never buy a standalone Satnav again. Seems pointless really. And I use it Pretty much all day, every day. Plus four or five euro trips each year.

(you do need to have a car holder for it obviously and a power cable. But that’s no different to a standalone unit really)

I use the Brodit holders from dsldevelopments.co.uk in all three vehicles and they are fantastic.

Brodit cradle +1

Neat and tidy and very well put together.

I use NavFree – which isn’t quite Tom Tom standard, but is FREE and good enough to get you most places (as long as you’re not one of those drivers that follows a satmav blindly into a river).

Waze is also quite good – gives good traffic feedback from other “Wazers” and can cut the car stereo to give voice navigation over Bluetooth.

Been told battery drain might be an issue with the iphone app?

£3 from Amazon.

For a cradle I use Mini Arkon:

£9.36 from Amazon

You could also consider using Waze for the iPhone. I downloaded it last night to try it out and am really quite surprised at how nice it is for a free app. Ignore the twitter and FB integration if you want to, but it uses crowdsourced data to route you around traffic (or something). Directions seem good and the UI is slick and intelligent.

It is a battery fiend though, so before I go away and try and use it in anger, I’m going to have to do what Graham has suggested above. It beats using an inverter, the wall wart and some blue tack.

willard: beware of Waze eating your mobile data allowance up if you are not on unlimited data. Streaming maps plus messages takes up a fair bit (you can turn on a meter somewhere in the Waze settings).

I used to use it on every drive and it soon scoffed my 500MB allowance.

I use the TomTom app in the car. Bluetoothed to the stereo so it fades the music when there’s a voice direction.

Look at getting the live-traffic thing too – even if it’s only when you plan to do long journeys – it helps to know how long you’ll be queueing for and it’ll reroute you around longer delays.

Graham. No worries there. Somehow I find myself on the O2 unlimited data plan still.

I’ll only be using for the odd long journey though. Everything else I can cope with on my own internal sat nav (i.e. remembering the way).

Does it still need an open dta connection for the maps, or jusst for the interactive part? The maps looked recent and vector-based, so I thought they might have been built in to the app.

I like it as all the data is on the phone so I don’t get hit with international roaming (I live in Luxembourg so pretty much everywhere I don’t know the way to is international). Overall no problems and I’ve used it in the car, on foot and on bike (latter two in pocket and consulted as I go)

Had my TomTom app about 2 years now and its great. Bought the TomTom cradle in a sale for cheap and the GPS fix is almost instant and very strong. Wouldnt be without it now, its often been handy when travelling with others for finding the way for the last couple of miles of a journey too.

Not quite tom tom but satnav 2 might be worth a look before spending 60quid, not used my satnav since getting it, only uses GPS so no data usage, i think it was £1.50

Does it still need an open dta connection for the maps, or jusst for the interactive part? The maps looked recent and vector-based

Yeah the maps are vastly improved recently (they used to try and use crowd-sourced maps, but OpenStreetMap was already doing that way better than them, so they switched to a licensed map data).

They seem to be streamed: guessing from the amount of data downloaded on the move and the fact that the Waze app takes up just 48MB on my phone, compared to NavFree which definitely stores maps on the phone and is 507MB!

I use nav free and been very happy with it do far but prolly not as good as tom tom but is free.

If you can wait a couple of months the iOS 6 will have turn by turn navigation built in for free. Apple have worked with Tom Tom to build it so it should be very good. Seems crazy to spend £60 now.

Maybe muddle through with the free apps and google maps until then?

I use tom-tom ap, not really noticed it being any worse than my old dedicated unit, plus so far in the two years >I have had it, map updates have been free.

Also handy to be able to buy traffic alerts for a single day.

Using the phone also means it intergrates with the car radio.

Also using a brodit cradle.

If you can wait a couple of months the iOS 6 will have turn by turn navigation built in for free. Apple have worked with Tom Tom to build it so it should be very good. Seems crazy to spend £60 now.

Maybe muddle through with the free apps and google maps until then?

It won’t store maps on the phone as far as I know, it would cost more in roaming charges than the price of the tomtom app for one trip through france.

OK, thanks for all the advice, looks like the app might be worth looking into

Ta.