Navigon shows off new release for iPhone with multitasking compatibility
Of the app categories to benefit most from iOS 4's new multitasking features, turn-by-turn navigation is certainly pretty high on the list -- after all, no one wants their route to be interrupted by a phone call mere moments before a critical intersection or exit ramp. Navigon has just posted a video showing off the multitasking compatibility in the upcoming 1.6 release of its iPhone app, and it's pretty neat -- you can switch out of the app and come back to the exact same place where you left off, of course, but it'll also continue to play voice guidance during phone calls (hopefully, you can turn that off if you find it annoying). Follow the break for the video.























pretty sweet i guess for iphone users!
@mattyboy1013
Yes. Yes it is. I'm curious to see if there's a difference in performance between multitasking on the 3GS and on the iPhone 4.. Seems pretty smooth on the 3GS though.
@Heirborn391 Welcome to last year.
@mattyboy1013
Hey Apple, Welcome to last year... You push the boundaries on some things, but are slow as molasses on others...
@Son Of a Gun
Sarcastic welcome is often not welcome.
@Phenom
Im fine with the feature being slow coming as long as if performs well while preserving my battery life!
@mattyboy1013
yeah but that was a little anoying, with the voice and ring tone at the same time. If it was on vibrate it would have been better. Also they need a way to ignore a call without sending it STRIGHT to voice mail.
@mattyboy1013
So... is it free?
@Son Of a Gun yeah because android is as polished as IOS.
Give me a break. Android is 4 years behind in terms of appeal & multimedia usage.
You can yap all you want about multitasking being old. But
what the iphone lacks android lacks in other needed dpts.
@Moisture I agree everything apples adds works seemlessly and just flows and to keep it like that they take their time which Is a lost art these days
@Bezzeywolf
yeah I agree that they take their time so it works well! Also, I think that Apple has a software raodmap that holds off on things to push sales of newer devices. They have done this with the iPhone from the start.
@mattyboy1013
Next step: It needs to avoid being interrupted. All that crap happening at the same time was chaos.
How: Time when it gives directions and either speed up or slow down the voice so as to occur in between rings or during moments of silence in the conversation.
@mattyboy1013
Yeah, the multitasking feature is very welcome.
He shows the Call screen showing the whole time while the Nav audio is running in the background.
However, I'd also like for it to work by having the Nav screen showing the whole time while the call is in progress.
So...
1) Call in progress.
2) Nav screen showing with all its visual indicators for directing me.
3) No Nav audio (because I'd have visual indicators while on a call and it's too hard to distinguish two voices (that of my caller and GPS) going at the same time).
4) Ability to switch to call screen if I need to access those features, and then back again to Nav screen if I wish.
That's the way I'd prefer it all to operate while utilizing GPS.
@DogStar
Truthfully, if it does not work like then that is pretty lame. If Im multitasking with nav and a phone call, why in the world would I want to have the call screen up instead of the nav? Is this apple not allowing it becuase it wold be a distraction? Regardless, thats a total letdown.
@Gavin M True Apple have always been like that imo, but you can't blame them they release a phone once a year unlike any other company I remember buying the nokia n95 hyped up to be the best nokia ever didn't take long for 10 more nokia phones to come out claming to do better things plus no phone I've had has been as responsive as the iPhone plus the customer service from apple is amazing unlike ms where they never get back to you
@mattyboy1013
Eh, I would rather have the visual of the Nav app during a phone call than the audio. I don't need/want any visual info from the phone app. But I can't listen to two people talking at once. I'm too dumb. I want the visual maintained in the Nav app and mute the nav audio while I'm on the call. That is a better execution.
@DogStar
I take it you have never used an iphone, you have always been able to load up apps whilst on a call just by sticking the call on speaker and pressing the home button, i can open navigation apps, or games or anything i want on my phone whilst I'm on a call, what you described would be nothing new apart from point 4, which is available in ios4 now anyway.
@Moisture
Trumpet the Apple PR from the highest mountain all you want. This has been around on other phones for a while, and battery life is just fine on mine.
Furthermore, if you're using GPS while in your car you might as well plug the phone in anyway...
@Heirborn391 With 256MB of RAM, count on big applications being flushed to the background by little ones. When the Nexus One first came out, it could only address around 256MB of its 512MB of RAM. So, when using navigation and one other thing (like music), it was OK. However, try to take a picture and the nav app would get paused and lose track of what you're doing. With 512MB (more like 400MB+ free) of the current FroYo or cooked ROM kernels, I haven't seen much of anything get paused or paged out except after many hours (or days) of non-use.
@DogStar
That's how the GPS works on a Droid
The free GPS includedwith it, mind you
@Heirborn391 if it seems pretty smooth on the 3gs which has a 600Mhz processor, imagine multitasking on a 1GHz A4 processor...
@CaluMoo
Yes, and own and use an iPhone. You're not understanding what I was saying. While the GPS app is up, I just want the process I mentioned above to be automatic. I don't want to mess with pressing the home button and tapping the app icon again to get it to come up. That's too much to mess with while I'm driving.
@DogStar I agree here too.
That's pretty neat. I'll stick to Google Maps w/ Navigation though.
@liquidkernel
Coming from a 3GS I can officially say that iPhone Maps and the new "multitaking" is crap. The Nexus One has better nav, true multitasking and FLASH!
@rstoplabe14 Google maps navigation is awesome, but the iPhone does have true multitasking now, better than android, all android has is the ablility to have annoying advanced task killer, and flash, Meh
@rstoplabe14
i just do not get the fascination w/ flash. it's slow, makes the browser slow, and to top it off flash based applets are cumbersome to use at best on the small screen.
now i wish iphone had google navigation but tell me, how useful is it when you're out and about hiking or on a trip WITHOUT reception? when you need it most it falls flat on it's face. i'll take navigon, tomtoom etc with on-board maps any day.
being a regular navigon user, i cant wait for this update!
@That guy 2
What?
@mikespry I have a droid on Verizon and this past memorial day traveled up north (I live in southern California) to lake tahoe on the 365...if you know that road you know it's 500miles of dessert and mountains and I still got killer service. I was able to use google maps--which I did use--through the entire trip.
@mikespry
Verizon's network doesn't fall flat on it's face like AT&T's does. I just spent the day with my cousin and his iphone and me with my moto droid driving about four hours through two states. I never once lost 3g data coverage while he never had it. Even at the worst times I was pulling 100kbps down while he was pulling 10kbps (using speedtest.net app on both devices.)
@mikespry Ditto on the Flash. All I seem to miss with it are ads. Sites I use on my desktops seem the same on iPhone and iPad. If Flash ads are important, there's always Android. ;)
not a fan of the half-assed multitasking
@NinjaGabeX
How is it "half-assed"? Even though it seems like fully-assed wouldn't be a good thing...
Soccer moms all over will be pissed knowing that this isn't "true" multitasking..,
@MattsZ It is full multitasking, it saves positions in apps while not leaving them taking up memory, and also saves battery life and performance, and the ui is only 2nd to webos for mobile os...half assed multitasking was the ability to listen to iPod in the background and leave safari open, and mail could be saved at it's current state if your reading a certain email, but pandora and uplaoding type apps, compeltely shut down when you click home, but not with ios 4
@That guy 2
It's still missing local task scheduling (can only schedule notifications) and/or push task scheduling. With those it would be pretty close to full multitasking, but take away some of the user's control of his battery life.
I am wondering if a 24/7 GPS logger will be allowed since background location is a service.
Can you get my Sanjas number?
only if you put in 1.21 jiggawatts.
@EnGadGetz
Gigolo.
Iphone can eat it...
@iwilzkilz
the iPhone 4 can drink it too... any beer from my fridge.
I can do that on my WinMo phone 5 years ago. It is nice to see apple finally catch up. Good job!
Dude, if you're so anti-apple, just use the exclude/apple link. I don't find a great deal of interest on the new Wp7 stuff, but I don't want to completely ignore it, but at the same time, I don't go and post every time they do something the iPhone does :/
There's just no need for the hate! Competition is awesome.
@geekthree
It's not competition if you're serving old tech and calling it revolutionary.
@geekthree
If you can ask apple fanboyz stop shitting on anything that does not have a fruit on it. I will use the exclude/apple link.
@geekthree
an iSheep talking about competition, this is new. You do know competition works when you buy a product for its quality/features/value etc, not for the fruit that it bears on its back.
@rstoplabe14
Sorry.. I don't buy Apple because of the fruit on the back of the product (although I do enjoy eating apples..). I buy Apple because, after having used other products by other companies, I find that Apple products are what I'M most happy with. This doesn't apply to everyone. But it isn't wrong to like Apple. And @joshai ... considering how many preorders there were for the new iPhone on the first day, I'd say it IS competition.. regardless of the tech in the phone itself.
@milklee Why don't you record a video, showing a demo of the same concept of turn-by-turn navigation with voice direction while multi-tasking on your 5 year old winmo phone, and share it on youtube? That's the surest way to proof your case.
@pika2000
Do you still use your 5 year-old phone? wow, I mean, I know the economy is bad, but I did not know it is that bad. There are many good, low price, non-fruit smart phones out there. You should take your head out of Steve Jobs' ass and give a try.
@milklee Why are you so offended? I'm just trying to help you proof your case while you're making weak excuses to wiggle out of your own trollish statement. Oh, I still have my Nokia E51, so suck it hater.