Smartphone sat nav apps & New GPS speed camera detector

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

flango

Hardcore MB Enthusiast
Joined
Jun 10, 2008
Messages
10,984
Location
Gods own country
Car
Mercedes SLK R171
Hi All

Over the last 3 weeks I have been testing sat nav applications for mobile phones, In my case a Blackberry Bold 9700 but the software I tested works on i Phone, Palm and other smart phones. I normally use the trusty TomTom but wanted a solution for when I just had to pop out to fairly local addresses so an App on my Blackberry seemed the perfect solution.

I also needed a GPS speed camera detector for my daughter, nothing flash just basic like my Inforad V4 but I came accross something on e bay I thought too good to be true, as if things are cheap then my experience is they are cheap for a reason, but this one worked out much to my surprise.

So thought I would write them up and share.

Sat Nav Apps

SmartNav A sat nav that does not have a map but relies on graphics and a lot of spoken instructions, the backend is supplied by trafficmaster and as such it's claim is that it is the most advanced traffic warning sat nav you can get. On route to the Scottish curry night it completely missed navigating 2 exits off roads and was hopeless navigating around Glasgow city centre, warnings were not given far enough in advance and often you would arrive at the junction waiting for instructions. On the way home from Blackpool one night it failed to warn of a 12 mile traffic jam on the M62 and took me straight on to the back of it.

Price: £35 lifetime subscription would be a complete waste of money.

Amaze GPS A sat nav with maps that used to be free but now they have realised that in good old rip off Britain they can charge for it even though it is still free in most EU countries. This features a map with very low quality graphics and a display that stutters along very annoyingly, it struggled with my nephews post code which is on a relatively new estate but my TomTom recognises this so think even though mapping is supposed to be live the maps must be fairly old. The ETA given with this unit was also very very optimistic and I think it thought I ws flying a lear jet not driving a Volvo it was always a good 20 - 30 minutes out even on a clear run.

Price €24.99 per year and would be another waste of money.

Wisepilot Actually downloaded from the Blackberry App store, a fully featured sat nav with a few very nice to haves, all trips can be saved and synchronised to a wisepilot web account, perfect for business mileage you just save trip and when you do your expenses the data is all there. A very nice display, speed cameras and traffic are included only gripe is map is a little basic but you soon get used to it. Used this coming back from the Scottish curry night guided me flawlessly out of the Glasgow one way system and back on to the motorway, voice instructions are clear and can be routed via bluetooth to the car speakers, these are supplemented by clear on screen graphics in the top left hand corner of the screen showing you our next 2 moves. Also features loads of POI's with phone details so you can phone restaurants direct from the sat nav screen. No problem with full post code search on new estates either, this software I can recommend and price includes global maps not just Europe.

Price €19.99 per quarter or €59.99 per year. I've gone for the quarterly subscription whilst I evaluate it further and see just how much I use it compared to the TomTom.

GPS Speed Camera Detectors

As I said at the beginnng I was looking for something basic for my daughter to warn her of speed cameras but whilst still being very legal (at the insistance of SWMBO). I was going to get an Inforad V4 same as mine and was searching on e bay when I found the "Indic8tor" £19.99 checked it out and it used to be £100 and is currently £59.99 on the manufcturers website, database is PGPSW so best there is so was it too good to be true? well I thought it was worth a punt at £20 so ordered one, fitted it yesterday to the Volvo instead of the inforad(2 minute job) and so I could compare directly to My TomTom with the PGPSW speed camera data base on. In theory the Indic8tor and TomTom shoud always spot the same cameras, so off I went on my local test route which covers a few fixed post installations, gatso, truvelo and mobile camera vans. The Indic8tor so far has never missed one and alerted exactly the same as the TomTom. If you want a basic peice of kit without spending a fortune this is a bargain, just search indic8tor on e bay and you will find it or the item number from where I bought mine is 320600404285. Seller has 100% feedback, I ordered mine at 3pm on Friday and it arrive 10am Saturday morning, quick or what?

There are a few reasons why the detector is cheap, firstly you have to purchase the speed camera database downloads. I year is £29.99 and you get 3 months free so 15 months costs £30, £2 Per month which is very reasonable for database and sotware and firmware functionality upgrades.

So the cost of the unit + delivery+ database = £60 still a bargain for a unit of this quality,miles superior to the Inforad units.

Unit displays time when stationary, your speed when moving and you can programme an overspeed alert.

The e bay units come with a serial cable for updates so make sure your computer has a serial port (most modern ones don't) I downloaded the update software onto an old Dell D400 laptop and it performed fine. If you don't have a serial port then a serial to usb converter is £14.95 from the indic8tor website, or if you order from the manufacturers website at £59.99 it is shipped with a usb cable as standard.

Will keep it in the Volvo to test it on my motorway commutes this week but so far so goo but I am extremely impressed :thumb:

Picture of unit in my Volvo

NewImage.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice write up Ian. Another Sat Nav option for Windows Mobile Smarphones. Iphones and Android is Co-Pilot Live. £26.99 for UK and Ireland maps.

I have used it extensively and find it works well. I am less sure about the traffic, which tells of problems, but does not give the length of jam or delay. It includes a speed camera database, which seems to be comprehensive and is updatable.
 
Nice write up Ian. Another Sat Nav option for Windows Mobile Smarphones. Iphones and Android is Co-Pilot Live. £26.99 for UK and Ireland maps.

I have used it extensively and find it works well. I am less sure about the traffic, which tells of problems, but does not give the length of jam or delay. It includes a speed camera database, which seems to be comprehensive and is updatable.

Thanks David, I originally started of with co pilot as that is what I used to run on my Palm, but I could not get it to download and run on the Blackberry just kept throwing up a lot of errors, the support were not very good either kept saying it was because the download corrupted over a non 3G connection. Even when I downloaded it at home on a full 3G connection with Vodaphone sure signal it still would not download,so eventually I gave up and the main reason I sought alternatives.

But I do agree when co pilot works it is a very good application.
 
I've used OVI Maps (Nokia Maps), it has speed limit info and speed camera warnings in addition to standard navigation. But I assume it is not available for other phone brands.

I've seen a cheap S40 phone with this application while it is more common on S60 phones.
 
Update

I have now bee running the Indic8tor on my daily commute of 90 miles and it really is good perfect camera recognition and so far has never failed.

If you want basic speed camera protection then all the details are in the OP but this unit is fantastic value for money :thumb:
 
I've been running the TomTom and Navigon apps on my iPhone since they came out .

They use different maps so sometimes an address may be on one but not the other . Both warn of speed cameras .

Moderately expensive at £60 ish , from memory . However , if you have more than one iPhone or iPod Touch , you can copy apps from one device to another within iTunes ( when upgrading devices ) without needing to buy it again , but the app will still be on the original device too .

The free Google Maps app can be handy too , but does not do navigation - Google Earth and streetview can be handy as well and are free to boot .
 
with the indic8tor, if you already have access to the PGPSW database can you use those files and the devices software, or do you have to subscribe to the indic8tor update service ??
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom