Free satnav? hmmmm

SoundsGood said:
Doesn't seem to offer anything more than their current smartphone Maps software? Which is as good as a TomTom in my experience.
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It offers turn by turn directions via gps? The current software only shows maps and gives you directions but doesn't track you or give you directions.
 
Janesy B said:
Er you can't pull down the maps from GPS. Any tomtom device has the maps stored on the device. It doesn't pull them out of thin air.
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I was thinking, obviously wrongly, of storing the maps on the SD card and then using the GPS data for navigiation - obviously this would mean Google using a fat version of there software.


M.
 
Dup said:
So it's useless then? maps over 3G whilst driving? Errr... nah.

On the other hand I hope they drive down the cost of the TomTom iPhone cradle for me.
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No, it will be like the brilliant orange maps, you input your destination, it takes 2 or 3 seconds to download the route, then thats it unless you go off route, it doest use the connection again.
 
Spuderoony said:
How on earth would that be of any use? Are you suggesting you'll type in what speed you'll travel at and it will 'guess' when to tell you to turn?! :p
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erm, no... i was refuring to caching the maps relevant to the route your taking so they don't have to be downloaded on the fly, rather than downloading them over the air as you drive.
 
Siliconslave said:
erm, no... i was refuring to caching the maps relevant to the route your taking so they don't have to be downloaded on the fly, rather than downloading them over the air as you drive.
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Which was a wrong assumption I made - I expected the maps to be downloaded and the onboard GPS to do its thing.



M.
 
Dup said:
So it's useless then? maps over 3G whilst driving? Errr... nah.

On the other hand I hope they drive down the cost of the TomTom iPhone cradle for me.
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Quite, it sounds totally useless. Cellular networks are absolutely nowhere near reliable enough to support realtime streaming of maps while driving. Even in central london it wont work properly.

Driving down competitor costs is great, but this as a system is useless.
 
you are making the assumption that data coverage is as shoddy elsewhere in the world as it is here. Saying that I've never not got at least gprs on my phone which is fine for maps
 
GeX said:
you are making the assumption that data coverage is as shoddy elsewhere in the world as it is here. Saying that I've never not got at least gprs on my phone which is fine for maps
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I am making the assumption having used HSDPA in most major world cities. If its not consistent enough in major conurbations, then what chance do i have when driving across the english countryside, let alone the american or Australian outbacks?
 
Jez said:
Quite, it sounds totally useless. Cellular networks are absolutely nowhere near reliable enough to support realtime streaming of maps while driving. Even in central london it wont work properly.

Driving down competitor costs is great, but this as a system is useless.
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Actually it works fine on my Blackberry
 
Hmm this sounds quite useful to me. Back when I had the SE P800 I was a wayfinder subscription. That's going back over 5 years now and at that time wayfinder was able to offer this over a simple GPRS connection.

Data tended to be downloaded in chunks and could actually be downloaded from their website and placed on the device. This was obviously at a tiime when data storage was a lot less than it is today!

I would think that provided your network connection can drop back to a simple GPRS connection then you'll be fine.

The main issue I had when using the device was the input which you couldn't do whilst driving. Voice recognition would sort that as I use that with my current Tom Tom with no issues whatsoever.
 
Jez said:
I am making the assumption having used HSDPA in most major world cities. If its not consistent enough in major conurbations, then what chance do i have when driving across the english countryside, let alone the american or Australian outbacks?
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Afaik Australia is trialing hsdpa2, which will offer better connection. As I said tho, you don't need much speed, gprs is fine for maps on my hero.
I also don't think this app is aimed at cross country trekers!
 
GeX said:
Afaik Australia is trialing hsdpa2, which will offer better connection. As I said tho, you don't need much speed, gprs is fine for maps on my hero.
I also don't think this app is aimed at cross country trekers!
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True, i welcome the app and the affect it will hopefully have on competitor pricing, but i cant see it replacing a good old reliable satnav just yet :)
 
I would like to see how this plans out, I don't think Google are that stupid to launch an unworkable product.
 
I very much doubt it will download the maps as you're going along, what would be the point? If you've put in a route it will download all the maps for that route. You could even sync the routes map before you left over wi-fi. Obviously if it works this way then traditional satnavs will still have the benefit for instances where you're lost rather than route finding. There's nothing to stop them having maybe a skeleton map pack download, although I don't think they would because the benefit of having live data is that it's as up to date as it can be
 
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