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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.'"
I love using Google Navigation on my Android Phone, but it's short-sighted to say that just because I'm not paying extra for "Navigation" that the cost of this service is completely free. It's all part of the relatively expensive "Google Smart Phone" bundle.
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'
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.
A lot of "cityfolk" like to take a drive from one major city they're familiar with, to another major attraction they plan to visit, and rural areas are a huge unknown adventure in between. Some like the superhighway, but many like to get off the beaten track, see some farm houses, smell the manure and wash the beetles off the windshield for a change of pace. They didn't grow up in the area, they didn't know that choice A was 150km, and choice B was 250km. That's exactly when they turn on the GPS and confirm which fork in the road to take.
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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.
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.
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.
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 article is astoundingly hard to read. Apparently they took a bunch of GPS devices, gave each one to a driver, who was in a different car. They all started at the same place and time, and were told to go to the same destination. They had to follow the instructions of their device and follow the speed limit. OK. Sounds good.
But they all did this only one time. You would need to do this many times before you could start to draw conclusions from it. Sure, it is fun to play scientist and get out in the world and do some sciency fieldwork, but seriously. Anybody who has taken basic statistics ought to understand that meaningful conclusions can't be drawn from this because of the huge variance of travel times as a function of local traffic. Sure, the cars all start and end at the same spots, but they take different paths. If one path that would otherwise be the fastest is slowed down because of a car accident or an adorable family of ducks is walking on the roadside, that will skew the results for this single trial only.
It makes me sad that this sort of thing passes for research, and it makes me even sadder that people don't think critically enough to realize it is not reliable.
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)