True, it's not the first app offering turn-by-turn driving instructions for the iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS -- but it is from TomTom, an industry heavy-weight that is finally delivering on years of
rumor and
speculation. After starting with New Zealand a few hours ago, the iTunes App Store is now populated with region specific TomTom apps for NZ ($95), Australia ($80), US and Canada ($100), and Western Europe ($140). If that sounds expensive... it is; dedicated TomTom navigators start at $120. In other words, this isn't one of those knee-jerk 99 cent App Store purchases. Naturally, that price does not include the announced
TomTom iPhone car kit (rumored to cost
£113.85 (about $194) with bundled mapping software) that mounts and charges your iPhone 3G or 3GS while enhancing its GPS performance, speaker, and microphone. Our advice: wait for the reviews before dedicating your non multi-tasking iPhone to the dashboard for navigation duties.
Update:
Recombu took the software for a spin and seem duly impressed by their ability to navigate streets with an iPhone
taped to the dash (not a joke). They say that when a call comes in, the TomTom app "turns off but restarts as soon as you finish the call." Lame. See the video overview after the break.
Update 2: TomTom says the upcoming
car kit dock / windshield mount will also
work with the iPod touch and third-party apps -- it contains a faster, more accurate GPS chip than the one in the iPhone. Check a video of it after the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Read [Warning: iTunes link]
posted August 17th 2009 11:17AM
@chefgon_ign
WebOS can navigate while calling as well. Works really great when using the handsfree
The only thing is that if you go off the route it won't be able to recalc.
I think the price is kinda steep but at least when you get the dock you can use your first generation iPhone and iPod Touch as a gps too
$100 is ridiculously steep. You have to pay per month too? AND a car kit? That price is a little too unrealistic for TomTom to expect to corner the iPhone GPS market. I just picked up a free 3GS here:
http://www.computersncs.com/rd_p?p=1912712&t=9544&gift=29670&a=29670-engadget
Even after saving the $400 or so on the phone, I can't be expected to shell out around $230 for GPS navigation when I could just go pick up a stand-alone unit at Best Buy for $100 cheaper. Makes no sense to me. Sure, portability is nice, but when I'm walking I have no need for turn-by-turn directions. Top down view in Google Maps is just fine.
You don't have to pay per month...that's AT&T
iPod music plays nicely while using TomTom.
It quickly cuts out the music, and give you the Voiceover, then returns to the music. Music continues playing in the background.
And those of us that are TomTom fans, the $100 is worth it.
It fits into the iPhones app style well, with easy-to-hit touch controls.
iPhone is much more responsive than the standalones which felt like you had to push the screen "in" to get it to respond.
So far me likey.
"They say that when a call comes in, the TomTom app "turns off but restarts as soon as you finish the call." Lame."
Did you expect that they had implemented multi-tasking without telling anyone? What did you expect it to do?
This is so lame... 99 bucks for this crap!? I have a bb8800 that I now use as my regular phone instead of my original 8GB Iphone... why? B/c as nice as the iphone is- it isn't too good as a phone - you must look at everything, the speaker doesn't work as a loud speaker, and it takes some time to load applications. Additionally, paying for turn by turn voice guided GPS is crap - again, I have two GPS voice guided progs on my BB that are FREE and WORK PERFECTLY - no monthly fee or anything - very easy and simple to use and probably BETTER than the tom-tom download. The programs on the blackberry are constantly updated and not a 2 gig or 100mb download- they are active downloads from a database.
Adderz, they did figure out how to do great multi-tasking on a small device... It's called the Palm Pre.. Which y the way comes with just about as good navigation as this from sprint, and its absolutely free and comes installed out of the box including good voice to text and uses no internal storage space. Does anybody know if this downloads the data over the network or if you tie up alot of storage with maps?
Since when does a PHONE have to do everything ever other electronic "gadget" ever invented have to do? That's like expecting your Corvette to also do rock crawling, fly, be submersible, and cook you breakfast! C'mon, GET REAL. And I agree with those who are concerned about folks adding this to the myriad things they're doing in a vehicle when they should be DRIVING!! Jeez, hardly a day goes by that we don't experience a "near-miss" while just DRIVING and trying to keep clear of all those BOZOS doing 13 things while "attempting" to steer a vehicle ('cause you sure as hell can't call what they're doing "driving")
I use a portable Magellan, and also have a factory built-in nav in one of my vehicles. NEITHER is perfect, but using Google Maps/Directions on the iPhone for a "larger view" with current location (pulsing blue dot) showing, IN COMBINATION WITH the turn-by-turn, voice-prompted portable nav unit is as close as I've found to a truly USEFUL setup. There's also something called USING YOUR BRAIN that needs to be an integral part of using ALL these technologies, especially when "on the move".
BTW: An incoming call on most smart phones will "interrupt" whatever else you might be doing with the device, at least for the duration of the call. This is to be expected, and in many cases MAKES PERFECT SENSE.
Re: xGPS via Cydia (on Jailbroken iPhones): Be aware that in order to use this app, you will have to not only "Jailbreak" your iPhone, it also requires you to DOWNLOAD the map data to the iPhone's limited memory/storage. I tested it (on my 32 Gig 3G-S) with just the Tucson metro area, and found it takes 24 meg just for this one, modestly sized city. Maybe this is not too much if you only need data for 1 town, but if you travel, expect to use a LOT more storage for maps.....
"...an industry heavy-weight that is finally delivering on years of rumor and speculation."
I think Thomas Ricker needs to review the history of the iPhone, it's SDK, the availability of GPS, then relearn what "years" means.
Does it have live traffic stuff for the US version?
I just watched a video on Cnet about how to share purchased apps. So, what is stopping anyone from buying the GPS app and sharing it with everyone? Does TomTom force you to register the app after the install?
I can buy a cheap Tom Tom at target for 80-10bux......And that includes the hardware. No way I'm spending $99, and probably another 50ish to get the add on window mount/extra GPS receiver kit.
Major FAIL!
Regarding no multitasking on the iPhone - the iPhone DOES have multitasking. The phone app, for example, is a multitasking app. Anybody who has actually used an iPhone knows this. As soon as you take a call you can switch out of it and do something else like web browsing, email, facebook whatever the hell you want - all while still talking on the phone.
What nobody appears to have tested is whether you can take a call then immediately open the tomtom app back up and resume navigation while you're still on the phone. It works that way with every other app so I don't know why it wouldn't work with tomtom, but nobody appears to have tested it yet.
Hint hint, Engadget.
@Zak. Yes you can navigate with TomTom while making a call in the iPhone. Just like most apps, initiate a call, go back to the home menu and run the TomTom application. That easy.
Disappointed but not surprised Engadget didn't mention OpenStreetMaps, that inconvenient effort to create a truly Free mapping system. Inconvenient to companies like Apple who believe everything must have a price tag, even when there are plenty of dedicated people willing to fill in gaps, and companies like Apple's behavior to intentionally limit their product capabilities. Imagining a world of abundance and participation that is today easily available but beyond the imagination of most people.
The reason people are complaining about the price is because IT IS overpriced. CoPilot Live for the android has the same features and better looking maps for less than half of what this costs! These GPS softwares definately take up a lot of space too, the north american maps for copilot is about 1.2gigs on my G1.
Lower the price quick.
neofolklore,
As an attorney, I rarely take time out of my day to respond to reader comments on any blog or website, but when someone as dense as you completely misrepresent contract and intellectual property law principles, it deserves special attention.
First, I know you're not a lawyer because there isn't a copyright lawyer alive who would use the such an antiquated method for citing statutes. Also, any competent attorney would know there is no 'section f' of the copyright act; the section you refer to in your post is 17 USC 1201 (f) (which, consequently, I believe is part of the DMCA, the infamous, big bad statutory boogieman for all hackers and P2P, bittorrent, newsgroup users).
Second, no matter how strong the urge to succumb to your feeble intellect's desire to impress your fellow geeks with your legal knowledge, you should refrain from posting what clearly constitutes legal advice. As a non-lawyer you can be fined, imprisoned or sued for the unauthorized practice of law. I have no doubt you are much more technologically advanced than I, so I assume you know there are methods for tracking down the author of anonymous blog posts. You could face very real-world consequences for these sorts of rants.
Third, "ignoring" your EULA means you are in wilful breach of contract and could be liable to Apple for thousands of dollars. And various EULAs are enforced in other countries so breaking them anywhere on planet Earth is not a smart move.
Fourth, applications for jailbroken iPhones are often knock-offs of App Store applications, thus exposing the user and app creator to exposure for copyright infringement and possibly trademark infringement or counterfeiting.
Fifth, if you read section 1201(f) in it's entirity, or had read any of the cases interpreting that section of the statute, you would know it does not clearly exempt those who jailbreak their iPhones from liability.
I know there are a lot of people on engadget with jailbroken iPhones and I generally don't care one way or the other about it. I do have a problem with pirates dispensing bad legal advice.
I just have to ask something then. Many of the jailbreak apps I've seen are NOT true duplicates of App Store apps, but allow functionality that Apple thinks we're not entitled to. They are often more powerful than "official" apps. iPhone is the only phone that prevents the user from actually using the phone the way THEY see fit, unless jailbroken. Is it really copyright infringement to make a more powerful app? And why does Apple have the right to extend this much control over the end user after we've bought and paid for a phone? Is the iPhone ours or theirs after it's bought and paid for?
Lack of true multitasking = iPhone FAIL!!!
Sounds tempting. What I like the most about these TomTom/Navigon apps is that they work in vertical display modes - something I've been craving for for ages. The whole widescreen trend in GPS devices drove me nuts lately - why the hell would I want to see more of the streets that I'm NOT going to be driving on?
For the price though this app seems to be very very basically featured:
- No text-to-speech for pronouncing street names. Even my 3 year old Garmin has ($85 price these days) has that.
- No live traffic updates. For the app that runs on connected device that's plain silly.
- No lane assist. Granted, that's a premium feature on modern PNDs but you'd figure that if $99 price tag doesn't include hardware costs, the least you could do would be to bundle it in.
In other words it seems that they have the features that you can buy on a $99 tomtom dedicated device, which is sure to come with a mounting bracket, charger, etc. This has "ripoff" written all over it.
i'm waiting for the car mount kit - would like to add gps to the ipod! one less gadget hoorah, now put a camera with a good lens on it.
congrats apple & tomtom,
new ipod = pmp,mid,gps,camera, internet phone (skype)
sorry MS you need to innovate add some stuff to the zune make it compete, why design your products to be behind when they're new, i'd rather buy yours, but it lacks camera,gps & apps.
(forget the compass about as good as an idea as new coke, lol)
Wrong, the compass is what lets the map automatically orient itself in the direction you're facing. That is specifically what you would want for an app like this.
I'm a TomTom fan but this is way too expensive for non dedicated solution.
I'm running copilot and love it and its only a fraction of the price!
Now, I'm wondering if there is any shot that the car kit will work with the Navigon app.
$194? Ouch. I can buy a cheap GPSr for that much that I can lend out to friends and family if I want to. Something I already do with my nuvi. $50, sure thing, $75, maybe, but not for $200.
Tom Tom App = junk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHFtUhDh71s
so does it have to be 3GS so that the turn by turn navigation to be working since it has the compass or it doesn't matter?