TomTom's iPhone car kit promo video is enticing, but still no mention of price or release date
By Ross Miller 
posted August 22nd 2009 3:46AM
posted August 22nd 2009 3:46AM
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posted August 22nd 2009 3:46AM
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lol. The carrier says T-Mobile in the beginning.
Tom Tom is a Dutch Company.
The Dutch iPhone Carrier is T-Mobile :)
Dang, thought I was being clever.
You mean there are other countries outside of America??
"You mean there are other countries outside of America??"
Pretty hard to imagine!
oh yea so if they are referring to the the dutch T-Mobile why are they mapping driving directions in New York City hmmm
Dutch people like to holiday too?
New York is old Dutch trading post. They are reclaimig it and soon resettling the people occupying it illegally to Alabama and Nebraska.
@Adderz
Hell, there are other countries INSIDE America. The U.S. doesn't cover both continents.
I'm American and my old iPhone was on T-Mo.
Another over-priced Iphone accessory.
Sexy!
Its an even better deal if you didnt pay for the maps :-P Not that i would ever do such a thing!
Its actually a nice looking bit of kit. I was looking for a car charger and windshield mount already so this would be perfect. After using TomTom and Sygic i can understand why they made it, GPS reception sucks. My 5 year old PDA gets a quicker more consistent connection than my new Jesus Phone.
Now I see that, this is much more than a hunk of plastic holding up a GPS enabled iPhone. And now I understand how this could work with the iPod Touch. But now, I am a bit disappointed in a new iPod touch possibly having GPS.. this mount not only has it built in, it is an integral piece of the puzzle for the next iPod touch.
I was hoping the next iPod touch would be an iPhone without the phone :) Ah well.
And actually, It would be great if Apple would release an ultra version of the iPod Touch with EVERYTHING but the phone...
EDGE/3G, wiifi, GPS, compass... just no GSM voice. It really would be the perfect solution for those who dont want to get into a full voice contract with ATT, and obviously, if one did not want too.. would not have to activate the EDGE/3G either. One can dream.
You sound british, in britain if they see a sucktioncap ring on a windshield they break open your car to get the expected device from the glovebox I hear, which is a reason people stop using suctioncaps, so this is a bit outdated 'technology'
I can has tomtom?
only if you getz rid ofs lolcatz speak
That hand model must have really big hands...
I was thinking the SAME thing!
They'd probably have an instant customer out of me if they can put it at 150 dollars. At 200 they might still get me, but I'd seriously think about it. At that price point I could just get a proper GPS and not worry about freaking out if I get a call when I'm heading into a complicated area.
From what I have previously read about this, the iPhone continues giving you voice directions even if you receive a call en route. This probably works because of the phone app being able to run in the background on the iPhone.
Maddy:
I don't know what you have been reading but it is incorrect.
The phone app does not run in the background. If a call comes in whilst using tomtom, the tomtom app closes in order for you to take the call and automatically runs again once you end the call.
It's a minor inconvenience that will hopefully be removed with simultaneous app support in a futur iphone OS revision.
I would want this more if the gps didn't become useless in areas where you don't have a cell signal... they still exist... on the other hand, my normal tomtom works perfectly w/o a cell reception...
You don't need a cell signal, the car kit works for iPod Touch as well. The maps are stored on your phone, not streamed online like Google Maps.
How is it useless w/o cell signal? iPhone 3G/3GS has aGPS which helps it acquire satellites quicker in accordance with your current location. Cell towers triangulation + GPS = better than non-assisted GPS.It doesn't mean it doesn't work w/o cell signal. As long as your iPhone has an unobstructed view of the sky it works fine, I've never had a problem. That's why the iPhone can usually locate you so quickly unlike non-assisted GPS devices like my Garmin which would take minutes to find where you are especially if you power it on at a completely different location from when you last used it.
and yes like Gogo said that maps are stored on the device itself, not loaded wirelessly from cell data service as you drive if that was what you were referring to. That's why the TomTom app is over 1.2GB ~
really? just how might your phone know where you are w/o a signal? the maps being on the phone and knowing where you are, are two different things.
The iPhone has a GPS in it. It does not need to rely on a cell tower to know where you are, much like a regular GPS unit doesn't usually have a cell chip in it. Even the iPod touch can use as long as you get the kit (it needs the kit because it does NOT have a GPS).
I'm sorry, but are you having a laugh? What possibly makes you think that a cellular signal is necessary for GPS to function? You could use your iPhone's GPS function in the arctic as long as it functioned at that temperature. The only aspect that the cellular signal is used for is to try and establish your position if the device cannot actually see the satellites (such as when you are indoors) and to try an accelerate the initial position determination. Most GPS devices do not have cellular network connections and the TomTom software on the iPhone does not need it.
@demiurgical - Not extactly right. While iPhone has aGPS, using the already known coordinates of cell towers to more quickly attain it's position, this does not make it better than non-assisted GPS.
The (gps) antenna in the iPhone is much smaller and much less accurate than most standalone GPS. Assistance (aGPS) is neccessary for the iPhone to quickly acquire satellites. However, the iPhone's GPS is still accurate enough for the majority of street navigation.
TeleNav only works with a cell signal, as the maps are loaded on the fly and are constantly updated via the cell network. I think that's where he's getting confused.
Ah, crap. I hope I am wrong on this but I am not seeing any mention of FM Transmission for playing back your music. The direct 3.5mm audio jack connection is going to great for those people with a car stereo that has an auxiliary input but mine doesn't and hence we are currently using a RoadTrip, which does the business. It's not a deal-breaker but it will take the shine off things a bit. Funny, but I could have sworn that this feature was announced in the past - am I going mad or did someone else see that too?
just plug it into your cassette adapter.
My car stereo might not be new but it isn't THAT old. It's a CD-player with support for MP3 playback but simply doesn't have an external 3.5mm socket to plug in an MP3 player (it plays MP3s burned onto a CD). Still, thanks for trying.
just plug it into your external FM transmitter.
Any idea how you would do that? As best as I can tell, the car kit uses the Dock connector on the iPhone/iPod and doesn't have a pass-through connector that would enable a connection to another Dock device. The 3.5mm audio connection looks like the only option but how would you go about attaching that to a device that uses the Dock connector? Or are you assuming that my FM transmitter is connected via the 3.5mm audio connector? I suppose an option might be to try and connect the cradle to a basic FM transmitter but I suspect that will be a messy solution, albeit one that might work.
Might as well just find yourself a relatively cheap car amp head with a 3.5 in.
The bigger question is, where's a dock passthrough, I can't think of how many modern cars have some sort of iPod integration via a dock cable, or the fact that people willing to spend this much money on a mount have installed 3rd party iPod integration such as blitzsafe, dice, dension, or have something like microsoft sync.... FM is a joke unless you are in a very rural area.
Sorry, I just saw your second post after the fact... I have found one cable that combines a usb input with a female aux input to bump back to a female dock connector. http://cablejive.com/universal-dock-converter
But this to me is a huge over site on TomTom's part, why not at least make two versions...? or will they offer a cable that does the same thing...?
too many questions
Well, we might end up moving countries again in the not-too-distant future, so perhaps I'll just make do with converting Apple AAC files to MP3 and burn them to CD, then just ensure that the next car has a stereo with an aux input. Buying another car stereo could be a solution but doesn't make sense if we are going to sell the car in the next couple of months. What is the worst part about all this is I was convinced that the cradle had an FM transmitter. I must be getting old and going senile or something.
Very slowly... feature by feature... the iPhone catches up with what I was doing on my WinMo phone about 8 years ago.
But don't even expect to be able to take a phone call while this is running; or, at least not until Apple implements multitasking....
Able to do it doesn't mean it's able to do it well. I have been using winmo for gps and after switching to iPhone I don't want to go back again. iPhone just integrates everything very well except true multitasking.
hmm.. you had a windows mobile phone in 2001 (presumably running Windows CE 3.0) that was doing turn-by-turn GPS navigation? In addition to all the other things that the iPhone does; music (playback and purchasing) apps, decent mobile web browsing, movie playback, wifi etc.. etc..
Since the iphone is now playing catch-up to Pocket PC 2002, I'd suggest turning off your iphone and really attempting to use an 8 year old winmo device and see how that works for you. Enjoy the flimsy stylus and activesync!
Way to be literal there, Mike. You know, takedowns like that only work if someone misses the point completely.
And the point stands - people are getting really excited about things that Windows Mobile phones have been able to do for a long time (this is hardly the first time it's happened). Shinrajp: WinMo has TomTom already. Why do you presume that the iPhone will do TomTom "better" somehow? It's the exact same software.
Hi-Five!
i bet that WinMO didnt crap out battery life. Buy Tomtom then a week later buy a new iphone!
What kind of diss is that? So what if Winmo could do it years ago? You do realize the iPhone platform is only two years old and it pretty much trumps all other mobile software out there. This, by the way, coming from someone who was a Nokia fanboy for several years.
I could imaging increase in criminal activity.. :) people would just break the car window that car kit.. :)
Why? Can you see anything that physically distinguishes this from other windshield mounts such that someone would break into a car for it? Damned if I can.