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Google's Free Satnav Outperforms TomTom
Barence writes "A real-world road test of several different satnav systems has found that the free Google Maps Navigation outperformed TomTom's premium GPS unit. PC Pro put the satnavs through four different real-world tests, covering country roads, inner-city traffic and motorway driving. The Google satnav finished the four tests more than half an hour ahead of the top of the range TomTom Go 950 Live. 'For those in rural areas or people who spend hours in their car every day, we believe the investment in a dedicated satnav device or software will still pay off,' PC Pro concludes. 'But for the recreational user, it's amazing what you can get for free.'"
It didn't exist when I bought my G1. Now I have it. I'd call that 'free'.
Granted, I updated the firmware manually on my G1 and stock G1's may not have it.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Is that Google's solution is not free because it requires a data connection on your phone. When traveling in foreign countries this is usually prohibitively expensive.
With TomTom you can purchase foreign maps and use them without "per use" data charges.
Actually, Nokia likely has the best solution in this regard - they give you free maps/navigation on your own phone (so nothing to purchase) but you can pick the countries and pre-load their maps on your phone. You then do not need an active data connection to navigate.
For what it's worth - TomTom and other standalone makers are probably the losers in this. These devices are consolidating and phone manufacturers are emerging as winners.
Well, that depends where you're driving.
Google Navigation does cache images of the entire route -- but this can become problematic if you deviated from the planned route.
Free software running on free maps (OSM) would be fair to call free. Then we could argue about the quality of the maps or the quality of the navigation, but I'm still waiting for this option which is likely to be the only free solution.
I was going to say something exactly along these lines.
I do a lot of driving for work, all over Ontario (Canada). I use a Tomtom 630 (previously had a 720) for most of my navigation. I update regularly and have a yearly map subscription to keep up-to-date with changing roads and speeds.
What's the difference? My Tomtom would never send me down a major street in Toronto during rush hour. Why not? Because it has average speeds for each road stored in the map data based on day of week and time of day. It knows that this road is faster on average than this other road at this time of day. With the FM antenna, I also get the live traffic updates as I pass through relevant areas.
On several occasions I've plugged the same destination into my Tomtom and my Android phone. The navigation directions on my Tomtom are almost always smarter. On rare occasion, Google takes a slightly shorter-by-optimal-speed route, but the actual time to destination is usually what the Tomtom predicted instead. In general I find the Tomtom's algorithms much more intelligent (although the 720 was much dumber, not having average road-speeds).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)