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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.
