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Sunday, August 9, 2009

GPS navigation for your iPhone/iPod Touch: Sygic and the iGPS360

Link for iPhone and iPod Touch users here

Link for iPhone and iPod Touch users here

This is the first in a series of upcoming videos that will demonstrate some of the GPS navigation applications that are available on Apple's AppStore.

The first software that is put to the test is the Sygic navigation software. Sygic supports different countries and regions. Click here to see their AppStore listings.

Countries supported are: North America (includes the US, Mexico and Canada), United States (only), Europe, Australia & New Zealand, Russia, South-East Asia, Brazil, and United Kingdom & Ireland.

The equipment used in the video is a first generation 16GB iPhone with an iGPS360 module from Orange Gadgets using GPSSerial 1.1 and running Sygic NAM version 7.71.2 Build 5961 D Map version 7.80.

I purchased their North America version last week for $79.99. Currently they have a sale going on at the AppStore and the North America version is $69.99. If you are in the U.S., you can purchase the United States (only) version at the sale price of $49.99 (assuming you won't be traveling to Canada or Mexico).

Here is the review:
  • Start-up time: about 14 seconds.

  • User Interface: Sygic's user interface is mainly made up of icons. After you have used it for a bit, things are fairly easy to find, with the exception of how to change/edit the list of favorites(I had to do a Google search for that to find out how to do it; turns out you need to use the "Manage POI" icon). An awkward thing about the user interface is that it does not respond to the typical iPhone/iPod Touch swipe gestures, that is, instead of swiping the screen, you have to press on an arrow. Take your time to read the guides included in the application and find all of the "hidden" features. As the user interface consists of icons, you can't really tell how deep a certain menu option goes; a typical iPhone table view would have been better for the UI to make things more concise and easier and quicker to find.

  • Routing/re-routing: Sygic automatically re-routes when you go off-route. Recalculation of your route is pretty quick, usually a 3-5 seconds or so. As I was using GPSSerial 1.1 for the video, the video doesn't show this when I decided to take the 405 Freeway instead of the 5 Freeway. But with the upcoming update of GPSSerial (yes, Mathieu from Xwaves has done it again!) you will get a working auto-re-routing feature and also the heading and speed issue has been fixed :-)

  • Route planning: Sygic's route planning menu is quite sophisticated: you can view route instructions (text) or show the route as turn-by-turn images as well as get a route demo. In addition you can enter an itinerary, which means you can add multiple via points into your route before getting to the end destination. Quite neat.

  • Settings: Sygic has quite an extended list of settings that you can change to your likings: from regional/language/voice settings, 2D/2D North up/3D View, daytime/night colors, auto-zoom to screen indicator settings (like speed, time, distance) and quite a few more.

  • List of favorites: you can maintain your own list of favorite destinations and this list is fully manageable/editable through the "Manage POI" icon.
Hope the review is useful for you and stay tuned for the next video which will cover Navigon North America...

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Just a small comment to inform that GPSSerial has been updated to 1.2
Didn't had the opportunity to try it yet but it is supposed to fix the speed bug.

Also, I wanted to inform you that iGPS360 works perfectly with iGo Europe on my iPhone v1.

Anonymous said...

I can call again from my ipoT 1g OS 3.0 via skype or spihon with gpsserial instaled, thaks for fix.

Unknown said...

Call as in a voice call? Is that possible with GPSserial?

Anonymous said...

((used mic ivoice pro for skype or siphon but gpsserial v 1.0 blocked mic in the dock somehow, and gpsserial update /just out/ /for my igps360/ solved the issue, I am happy again))

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I can now confirm that the speed is shown correctly in Navigon 1.1 with GPSSerial 1.2

Eeything works smoothly ! (although the "reverse bug" still applies sometimes in the "show on map" mode)

Piotr said...

Did someone already test the new TomTom navigation aviable at the ApplStore?

Piotr said...

I can answer my question by my self! It works! I installed TomTom Europe on my 2G iphone and started it with my iGPS360 and it goes.

koRnolio said...

I can confirm, tested by myself, that the module works with no problems on the "IGO MyWay" software.

Tested with the Argentina Maps and GPSSerial 1.2, you just need to open the "IGO" and then plug the module.

Just to let you know, thanks for this masterpiece, :D
have a good one!

icefox said...

my unit just arrives and it's works great!

but when I plug usb into igps, then igps into iphone, my iphone charging icon in a few seconds becomes full iphone (a plug) although it's far from full. I changed to a higher power usb slot on my computer but it's still no good. is it normal? why? is it because the power isn't enough for charging both at the same time?

GPS said...

@icefox: try re-calibrating your iPhone's battery. Search on the forums on how to do this: completely drain it, plug in the USB cable, then turn the phone off and let it charge overnight with the wall-charger.

Talos said...

Hello everyone,

i would also like to add that GPSSerial 1.2 is working fine with Sygic and XGPS (xgps still has the speed problem-Sygic works ok).

I've noticed a strange behavior with my camera application. Sometimes the shutter wouldn't open and i couldn't take a picture! Reboot was the only solution but after a while i noticed the same behavior again. I don't know if it is the videoedit from sbs settings or sth with the location services. This solution worked for me: go to GPSSerial and choose iPhone GPS instead of iGPS360 or other...home button and then everything is back to normal with the camera or any other image taking application. Ofcourse no such problem occurs if you have the iGPS360 module connected and iGPS360 checked in GPSSerial.
I just wanted to mention this in case someone experienced the same problem.

One question though...has anyone managed to make maps.app work with the module or GPSSerial. Can this be done? Any thoughts?

iPhone 8GB EDGE running on O.S. 3.0