planning on getting a new phone in the next few weeks and one thought was how do the android phones compete as a car GPS compared to an old tom tom one v2 which is what i have.

I use my Desire as a satnav and it’s been very useful. Never had TomTom so can’t offer a comparison, but google maps navigation seems good 99% of the time. I’ve had about three occasions when it just seems to sit there and not produce a route – annoyingly timed to when you really need it.

+1 for HTC Desire and google navigation, same as above, can sometimes ‘need a little think’ but overall very good

what do you use as mounts? i assume there is some kind of cradle for the phone?

iPhone 4 & copilot app is what I use, works great, does eat battery though so make sure you have a charger. Never had any problems with it struggling to find a signal or creating a route either in UK or Europe

And to the chap on STW who wrote QuickGo – I tried it today, brilliant.

@mrmo I bought a cheap mount that clips into one of the airvents on the dash. It’s a little more discreet than a windscreen mount IMO

Recently got a desire, replacing a Nokia 5800. The Nokia was much better as a Satnav imo,almost as good as a fully featured stand alone unit. Google maps is ok but I think you have. to download maps on the fly and the voice is an annoying computer generated thing not helped by the tiniest pos speaker I’ve ever heard.

Galaxy s and google navigation works great for me 😀

I use my old e61 and a cheap bluetooth dongle for car satnav. As long as the phone is in offline mode (SIM doesn’t work anyway), TomTom seems happy and it gets me to where I am going. I do have to keep an inverter and two chargers in the footwell though (one for the phone, one for the dongle).

Google Maps Navigation is free but requires a data connection. Not much cop in poor signal areas but great for occasional use.

CoPilot is a ‘true’ TomTom-a-like, will set you back about £25.

I use an iPhone 4 with TomTom and a Parrot hands free kit. It is really very good. Very good indeed…

edit – Oh, and the HD traffic is fab.

Rachel

im a trucker an hav no sat nav.. just use google maps on a iphone..and its very handy if the address is wrong cos u can then use google to find post codes etc

think u can also get a tomtom app so would basicly be a sat nav then

If using a Desire as a car SatNav (and this may be true of similar devices), make sure you have a full 1 Amp charger as it’ll otherwise run down the battery with both a data connection and a GPS connection active.

I have an iphone with copilot, the phone connects to my stereo so get the spoken direction through the speakers and can control the tunes from the stereo also. Works a treat, you can get £5 holders that stick to the windscreen from ebay.

I use this mount:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003ZTAEB8
Which is excellent (springy so should fit HTC etc too)

And I use “NavFree” from NavMii on the iPhone – which use OpenStreetMap data, so possibly not quite as good road coverage as Copilot (though not far off these days), but it has the distinct advantage that it is FREE rather than £17.

I’ve got the same mount as GrahamS, really very good indeed. Absolutely rigid, and stays on the windscreen too, unlike the crappy Kensington one that wobbled all over the place, then fell on the floor after twenty minutes. I use CoPilot Live, cost £19 against TomTom’s £60, and it works beautifully, I have a dock cable running from my Alpine stereo, so all the voice directions come through that, and it mutes the music as well. Just on the off-chance I bought CoPilot for North America as well. It was a fiver, so I though why not, might come in useful one day.

Posted this elsewhere today, but http://www.brodit.com/ do Epic Mounts.

As bigG, ip4 and copilot live, it’s at least as good as the tomtom unit I had before, and better in that it’s much brighter in direct sunlight. Also have the same mount as graham s, which is excellent.

I’ve had tom tom on an old HTC, which was ace.

Then went to iphone 3g with Co pilot, good but slow.

Now use google navigation on my Motorola Defy. Great for free.

Used standalone units and can’t see the point if a phone can do it for free.

Used standalone units and can’t see the point if a phone can do it for free.

In theory the satnav built into my car should be better than the one on my phone, as the car one has direct access to my vehicle speed (so it can interpolate positions while in tunnels or bad coverage), direct access to my steering wheel position (so it should be able to respond immediately when I take a turn) plus it gets RDS traffic reports, has a bigger screen, a second dashboard display, voice control, and doesn’t need to fit in a phone!

However, despite all this, it is crap and the phone often works much better 😕

I use an n97mini as a gps mounted in a nokia cradle. The phone is crap but the gps is its saving grace. Ovi maps is superb. The only thing i’ve noticed is that the phone gets quite hot in use. I mentioned this in carphone wharehouse and was told phones are only meant to be used as an occasional gps.

I mentioned this in carphone wharehouse and was told phones are only meant to be used as an occasional gps.

Hmmm, not sure, but smartphones do get warm if they’re worked hard, just like any computer, it’s probably the phone’s processor struggling to keep up with the data processing; Ovi maps are cloud based? That is, you access them from the network, rather than them being native to the phone? If that’s the case, then yes, that’s why, it’s not exclusively a GPS issue. If the maps are native, ie installed in the phone, then it doesn’t work as hard to keep up with the speed of travel. If I’m doing a lot of web browsing my iPhone gets noticeably warmer, but not using GPS because most of my maps, CoPilot and OS ones, are all installed.

The latest versions of goole nav seek to pre cache data, so theoretically you shouldn’t lose connection data, even if you lose signal…

DrP

+1 for being to resort to looking stuff up on google if in trouble.

My CoPilot on andriod has repeatedly tried to send me down singletrack/near impassable lanes, so I use Google navigation most of the time now, and it seems ok.

It is also cool that I can run it as just a road view rather than actually navigating me somewhere – copilot might do that but I haven’t found it.

I actually prefer using my satmap or the the satnav in 2d mode as then I get a better idea of where I am going than blindly following the route.

Navfree on iPhone here too, it’s great for free. Just as good as the TomTom i used to have.

i have a sony xperia X10.
i use it for sat nav all the time, it hasnt yet failed me.
got a phone specific mount off ebay for about £4, and its ideal.

google maps is always pretty good, especially if you havn’t got a post code, you can look on the map and find the place.
i have orange maps, which is alright, but i never really use it.

Update your Tomtom to the latest navcore and map. Just done a old One XL which now has the latest 865 Western Europe maps, bluetooth connectivity, IQ routes, HD Traffic (via bluetooth and phone or RDS-TMC receiver), lane guidance etc. The only thing missing is the voice control as my unit doesn’t have a microphone.

I use google maps navigation on my HTC Desire, launching it using a little app called Quickgo which I wrote, which gives you a full screen keyboard which is easier to use in the car.

And to the chap on STW who wrote QuickGo – I tried it today, brilliant.

Great, thanks!

For a holder I use the official HTC one, it is fine, and charges even when navigating.

Google maps is jolly clever – it integrates with google traffic, to route you taking account of jams – eg. if I route down to Heathrow way late at night or Sunday morning or something, it goes M1 -> M25 -> destination, if I do it in the day , it often misses out the M25 bit and goes further west then back in.

I mentioned this in carphone wharehouse and was told phones are only meant to be used as an occasional gps.

That’s just carphone warehouse staff talking rubbish.

Joe