TomTom iPhone app hits 1.3, gains real-time traffic and Google local search

Here lately, Navigon has been crushing it on the iPhone GPS front. Every couple of weeks, it seems that MobileNavigator is getting yet another fantastic update, all while TomTom's lackluster offering hangs back in the land of complacency. Thankfully for us all, the outfit has just pushed out the v1.3 update, which adds real-time traffic (an unfortunate $19.99 add-on), Google local search, updated roadways, automatic music fading between text-to-speech instructions and the ability to add locations from other apps and websites. We'd still recommend Navigon's software if you're looking to buy into iPhone GPS for the first time, but this is certainly a boon for those already locked into the TomTom alternative.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

[rkevwill Posted Mar 14th 2010 12:13AM]

@cdf74dc9

Um, if you read my post up above, you might find out why. Your android phone at present, doesn't have a REAL gps chip, and it needs a cell signal to work worth a damn.

[cdf74dc9 Posted Mar 14th 2010 5:21AM]

@rkevwill "doesn't have a REAL gps chip"

I'm getting everything for free with Android and you say iPhone have a dedicated chip? I trusted my phone more than the so call "dedicated GPS" which got me lost for 6hrs because it loses signal outside of town. I believed in good free apps and not have to pay a cent for junk that claiming to be "better". Sometime you jhave to think with your head and not your wallet.

[Spideyman Posted Mar 15th 2010 9:09AM]

@cdf74dc9

Please read the poster's original comment before sounding off. He/she made the very good point that ALL phones do not have a dedicated GPS chip and uses aGPS, whereas the TomTom cradle does. Thus, whether you have free "GPS" or not, it is not as good as a dedicated device in terms of sensitivity, especially in large open areas.

[Doobry Posted Mar 14th 2010 5:50AM]

iPhone Tom tom HD traffic, for a year, in the UK is £38. It's not that much on their hardware devices and TomTom has to pick up the data costs. where on the iphone, that's down to the user.. How do they justify this?

[MH1 Posted Mar 14th 2010 10:47AM]

I just did the update.

And a road I use in the UK used to allow you to exit either going left or right on the the main road at the end. But about 4 - 5 years ago they stopped right turns. I was a bit pissed off when I bought the TomTom western Europe. To find a road change that is by no means a back road was out of date. Well guess what it still is out of date with this update.

Also you can not set any updates.

The UK tomtom app was priced at a price that made me look wonder if it was mapped better as a stand alone Country, but the info does not tell you there is any real difference with what you get with the W.E. I like Tomtom, but It does piss me of when they say I should have the latest maps, and don't.

[malexandria1 Posted Mar 14th 2010 1:21PM]

I don't understand the point of having a GPS on your iPhone. As long as you can't multitask it's POINTLESS.

I tried a few of them - the ones that had a trial and while there are some excellent ones like the Goki for $1.00 I can't see myself paying $89 for a name brand app and another $100 for a holder. Yes in many cases the features of the iPhone version is better than the stand alone - at least for Tom tom and mobile Nav.

You are asking me to pay almost $200 for an App that is rendered useless the minute I get a phone call!

[crunc Posted Mar 15th 2010 9:48AM]

@malexandria1 If you get calls constantly, yes, it would be useless. However, if you're like me and don't get a lot of calls, and don't talk long while driving when you do, then it's not much of an issue.

I use the app GPS Drive on my iPhone 3GS, which is much cheaper. You can get a years worth of voice navigation for $25, and it is like Google voice navigation in that it uses live maps and live searching, in this case served up by Bing. It's quite nice, but is missing some features such as text to speech and live traffic. Actually it has a primitive form of text-to-speech in that it will speak exit numbers, but no road names. I'm hoping both of those will come in in an update sometime soon (but so far they haven't.)

Also it has the same problem as Google Maps - if you don't have a cell signal, you can't get any new directions/routes. It does cache your current route, though, and I think perhaps past routes as well, so if you go out of signal you still get full navigation to your destination, and then when you get a signal again you can make new routes.

Hopefully we'll see some form of 3rd party app multitasking in OS 4.0 (as others have noted, the iPhone does have multitasking, it's just currently restricted to some of the built-in apps - for example you can play an audio stream in safari and then quit safari and go to another app and the stream will continue to play.) What would work for me is to have it restricted to only when the iPhone is powered, such as when in a car, connected to a power source/cradle, or connected to an external battery pack. That would avoid the main issue with multitasking - unexpected battery drain when some background app goes crazy unbeknownst to you, and having it hooked to an external batter pack would let you have multitasking on the move, but if some app goes crazy it will only drain the external battery. Once that is out of power, multitasking would be disabled and the internal battery wouldn't be drained to empty.

It's also perhaps worth noting, though, that if you are trying to navigate with a GPS, most likely when you really need the GPS directions, you aren't going to want to be on the phone talking to someone else anyway, so you'd be better off telling them you'll call them back.