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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.'"
So the free google offering out performed the rest, but they still recommend buying one rather then the google offering?
With the enormous caveat that:
'As yet, there's also no way of downloading [Google] maps to a memory card for offline navigation, so you could have major problems in areas without a 3G signal'
I have been using a dedicated tomtom device and now also google nav on the Nexus 1. And I agree in most nav cases Google nav is better, if you have an online connection. Thats the biggest issue, roaming forget it, having a flakey 3g connection forget it, as soon as you have to go offroads you need the connection to recalculate the route.
The pathfinding on googles solution is up to par to Tomtom or even slightly better, but the voice output is where it shines. At least for the german tomtom the voice output is sometimes kindof weird and while using a Tomtom I often give a last final look at a voice command which is not drive left or right to check whether the voice output is the same as the display. That never happened on googles nav to me, the voice output always has been preceise. Add to that that Tomtom never added text2speech to my OneXL or I never got a combined european map (while they sold new devices with exactly the same map), and I will retire it soon, one customer lost to Tomtom who will never return thanks to their arrogance regarding their products.
For offline driving I am still undecided whether I will stick with Copilot but I will probably switch to Navigon, which still has way better voice output than anything Tomtom ever delivered.
This reminds me of something I've contemplated numerous times before, which is the realm of generic, multipurpose hardware. Everything is converging - GPS receivers, phones, PDAs, cameras - because it simply makes sense. There are two problems with this.
One is that there are certain physical controls and form factors that are more conducive to certain uses. For example, many phones aren't the best cameras because it's too easy to cover the lens, the "shutter" button is not in an ergonomic location, etc.
The other is that often the devices need to be used simultaneously. And I don't mean multitasking, I mean two devices visible and usable at the exact same time.
I just can't help but wonder if, as the price of components drop (like all-in-one chipsets, LCD panels, etc), if there will be a market for iPad / iPod Touch like devices that are essentially generic computing devices with integrated connectivity, GPS, camera, etc. There would be various physical form factors available - like touchscreen only, buttons on the sides, fold out keyboard, an SLR sort of design. Thus I would buy a $150 generic device and designate it as the GPS in my car. Obviously most people can't afford cellular service for every piece of hardware, so these devices would have to operate in an offline / standalone mode, like as a GPS. Or better yet they would all "tether" via bluetooth or wifi off of my actual cellular device.
Anyway I'm just wondering when or if this will happen. Obviously with companies like Apple charging a premium for a generic device (iPad / iPod Touch) that's not going to happen soon. But I'm sure there are manufactures that could produce the equivalent hardware, today, for $199.
Better known as 318230.
Driving around Edinburgh, it kept trying to tell me to turn off the North Bridge onto Market Street. Great, except they're separated by about 20 metres vertically. Going along Market Street, it told me to turn left onto North Bridge - what, in a helicopter, or something?
Who knows what other hideous failings it might have? Telling people to drive off cliffs, or into the sea? "Oh but it *looks like* you can..."
I think it depends on where you live, and what the roads are like.
In my experience, a lot of rural places have a lot of smaller criss-cross roads and dirt roads that may or may not go anyplace. There's way more than two routes to almost anywhere. Then there's the "old highway" and the "new highway" in a lot of places, with the old highway being the scenic route.
If there are no other roads, then maybe what you say is true. If there's lots of roads spread out over a large area, I'd say that's when a GPS is at it's best. For any sufficiently long drive, or any drive to places where I don't know very well ... I've found a GPS to be an incredibly useful thing.
My mother still has to program the destination for my father's GPS, but he can tell it to get him home. For them it's a godsend, since he travels to place that are several hours drive away and that he's never been to before -- quite often actually for an old guy. They find the GPS gets them where they're going, and my father has decided he really likes to see exactly where he's going and know how far until the next turn.
Hell, even in town I find I can read the street signs on my Tom Tom before I can even see the physical street signs. For me, I'll stick with having the GPS.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What I really like it for is the 'unguided and unplanned meandering drive'. Turn on the GPS, drive around and take random roads you'd never take if you were worried about getting lost. Go ahead, get lost. Navigate by the sun or follow a river.
Eventually, tell it to take you home. It's actually a pretty decent way to explore your area.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The country maps cost extra, often quite a lot extra, and become outdated fairly quickly.. If you aren't planning on spending a lot of time in a specific country then the cost of roaming data might actually be less than buying the maps..
Open Street Maps
'nuff said.
I created a contacts folder in gmail with my favorite addresses. Then I configured android not to display that folder in the phone contacts list, but it does show up when I go to the contacts in the maps app. Kind of a pain but it works.
I impulse-bought a Garmin eTrex Vista for £160 back in March. I regret buying it: I thought I'd put OSM on it, and go on some bike rides without having to refer to maps. OSM did mostly-work, but the routing wasn't that good, and there were various quirks with the device. It was very slow at calculating a route -- it didn't manage to plot a 7km bike-friendly route into central London until I was within 2km or so. The display was clear in most lighting conditions, but quite small. It seemed very rugged and was waterproof.
I sold it on eBay for £125 a couple of weeks ago. I'm annoyed about the £35 I've lost, but I'm putting the £125 towards an HTC Desire.
Humorously enough, it took my 70 year old mother to show me that mine had the same feature. I think I'd seen it when I first got it, and then never looked at it again.
My parents came up to visit last year (about 1000 miles away) and told me that at one point they had to say "find the nearest gas station", which it promptly did.
Now that I know it's there, I actually use this feature quite a bit. Last vacation I took, I just told it to take me to the hotel I was staying in -- 4.5 hrs drive away. Took me right to the door of the hotel. Absolutely brilliant!
As I said in another post, my parents absolutely love their GPS since it saves them so much frustration.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I thought Google Maps was pretty good, but I tried using it a couple of days ago to find a place about 10 minutes walk from the city centre here. The street view car stopped a couple of roads away, so I couldn't see at ground level, the Google Maps arrow was in the wrong place, and it turned out that so were the roads. In contrast OpenStreetMap.org not only had the roads marked correctly (not hard - these ones haven't changed for about a century), it also had the place I was looking for clearly marked on the map.
I'm not sure if anyone's used the OSM data to produce a route-finding app, but it probably wouldn't be too hard. It also has the nice advantage that you can download the data yourself. For example, there is a nice little J2ME app that you can use to explore the OSM data offline on a mobile phone, so I can use it from my phone to look at local maps when I am out of range of a signal. The Google Maps Mobile app requires a constant Internet connection, which makes it a lot less useful in many of the places where I might actually want a map.
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