Magic Earth Pro - Navigation on Android and iPhone (formerly Route 66 Navigate)

Uriel

Uriel

Uriel

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Tried out Route 66's Navigate 6, which launched a few days ago. You download the app for free and then can get free worldwide Navigation, traffic and speed cameras via the in app store for 30 days. Maps and HD Traffic both from TomTom.

I tried it both ways on my commute today and came away impressed. I ran it at the same time as TomTom and although the traffic info is the same, Navigate 6 appears to have a more aggressive avoidance algorithm. TomTom has a 4 minute delay threshold for redirection and this seems to be less. It diverted me around two jams that TomTom would have needed manual intervention to avoid. The very similar ETAs generated make me suspect that it's using Tom-Tom's IQ Routes, or least has their Speed Profiles integrated into the maps.

The mapping and search interface is a big improvement over TomTom. Addresses and points of interest can be found in seconds.

It uses Android's native text to speech and while this isn't as natural sounding as Tom-Tom's TTS, the instructions themselves are clearer.

Definitely worth a try if you want to try out a new Satnav app.

Edit: after a few days using the app - it appears that the routing and traffic avoidance in Navigate 6 seems pretty much functionally identical with http://routes.tomtom.com, at least for short distances. You can use Tomtom's online route planner to preview the routing behaviour in this app, which is slightly different to the Tomtom app itself.
 
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Navigation is one-off €14.99 for UK or €19.99 for Europe. HD Traffic is €9.99 for a year in the UK or €14.99 for Europe.
 
Over the last few years, I've used Co-Pilot, Sygic, Navigon, TomTom, Waze, M8 and a few other free ones.

Sygic was promising, but ultimately not quite there. The routing was poor and it's been obvious that a major overhaul is needed. The developers have indicated they intend to implement IQRoutes but it's been a long time coming.

HD Traffic on TomTom is very good, as it combines with IQ Routes to give some fairly sensible diversions. When I last tried Sygic it didn't have an automated, on the fly divert system in place. Without that it's barely worth having. Navigate 6 and TomTom both work in the background to divert on the fly. Given the way HD Traffic works, it really needs IQ routes or a similar historic road speed database to get the best out of out.

One thing that's a problem with TomTom is HD Traffic sometimes doesn't include all the info you get from a TMC feed. I've seen it miss the odd rural road closure that Tom-Tom's own TMC feed on their PNDs has picked up.

The traffic on CoPilot is far less detailed, giving info on far less roads than HD Traffic.
 
There's something funny about the 3 route option. I think that it's only using historic traffic and not current incidents. I've used it to set a route and then had it immediately show traffic or the route over-ruled by automatic traffic redirection.

I agree about preferring a traffic bar. Tomtom has one too. It seems there are two types of traffic shown in Navigate 6. One is what I assume to be historic database traffic (Tomtom's speed profiles or IQ routes), and current traffic incidents. Historic traffic just shows as a line on the map. Current traffic has a box you can select on the map and get info about. The next current incident is shown in a status bar at the top with a distance to start, and then distance to end once you're in it.

Navigate 6 does have lane assist but I don't think it's full screen or included in voice directions. Like Tomtom (which uses the same maps) it's a little inconsistent. When it works it just shows a lane diagram box on screen.

I had no problems with postcodes or addresses. I just typed them in and it immediately started finding them on the fly.

The routing seems to be mostly identical, or at least very close, to Tomtom's IQ Routes, which I've found to be the best satnav routing system (out of Google, Waze, Sygic, Navigon, Co-Pilot, m8). However, the traffic avoidance is more aggressive than Tomtom.

Had it detected traffic on the main route when it sent you off and back on
to the dual carriageway? I've seen similar behaviour in Navigon when I was diverted off the M62 and back on sliproads to get around a 'phantom' traffic jam when the motorway was actually completely clear. Tomtom seems to avoid this behaviour by having about a 4 minute delay threshold before sending you off route automatically.

When I last used Co-Pilot, it used Nokia / Navteq's traffic (same as shown on Bing maps), which has very poor coverage for anything but A roads and motorways near me. Is this still the case?
 
Technically, Tomtom's HD Traffic (or Traffic 6, as it's known in TomTom land) is claimed to do what you're asking for. Whether it achieves this in real life is another matter.

The second thing is whether Navigate 6 implements it in the way that TomTom do.

This is what TomTom claim: http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...affic-Alerts-Drivers-Slow-Approaching-Traffic . I think it lives up to those claims - some of the time...
 
muon said:
The real problem is that traffic is something that is always changing and so by the time Sygic picks up traffic it can be too late to divert anyway. The same issue exists for Copilot but it does tell me earlier! I swear there is a serious problem with Sygic on traffic.
Click to expand...

This is the main thing I dislike about Co-Pilot and Sygic (aside from Sygic's sometimes crazy routing). I do not want to have to press buttons on the phone while driving.

On Tomtom, Navigon, Navigate 6 and Waze, redirection for traffic detected after the start of a journey can be automated. The latest version of Google Navigation (for Android Jelly Bean onwards) also automates rerouting for traffic(previously it just calculated diversions with the initial route).

So far - I'm most confident in Tomtom's traffic in their own app. That has a 4 minute (or there-abouts) threshold for time saving so it doesn't tend to do things like take slip roads to get around traffic on a motorway. Most importanly the data is good - with many jam positions accurate to within metres. I haven't quite got my head round the way Navigate 6 handles re-direction yet - other than it's a bit more gung-ho than Tomtom about diverting off the main roads to get around traffic. I suspect it's looking for either 1 minute or any time saving at all.

The Tomtom app traffic system has a 40 minute traffic horizon for jams and 160 km (100 miles ish) for road closures. I haven't yet worked out what Navigate 6 is doing regarding horizon. When browsing the map in Navigate 6 you can see traffic indicant and flow data anywhere but in Tomtom there's roughly a 100 mile radius for incidents to be downloaded. The furthest traffic incident shown in the Navigate 6 status bar I've seen was 36 miles away. There seems to be traffic shown on the map that doesn't get shown in the status bar as an indicent. I think this may be average speed info from historic traffic.

Of the navigation apps I use, Navigon seems to have the furtherst traffic horizon, showing incidents up to about 150 miles away.

I've not yet tried Navigate 6's manual rerouting feature but I gather that it checks your route for traffic every 5 minutes and informs you if it has detected faster routes. I'm unlikely to bother with this unless I have a passenger as I prefer not to interact with the phone while driving.

My Tomtom HD Traffic subscription expires this week so I'm going to use up the 30 days with Navigate 6 before renewing it.

Regarding one of of Muon's other criticisms of Navigate 6:
- It will show current speed if you tap the remaining distance in the bottom right corner. This changes to current speed. Likewise, tapping the time remaining will give you an ETA. There really is enough screen space to show all of these though so it's annoying having to choose.
 
I only know what it says on the website - "available soon".

Edit: After using the app for a few days, it seems that the routing, ETAs and automated traffic avoidance behaviour are functionally identical with http://routes.tomtom.com (although they seem to be running different revisions of Tomtom maps). This is a more aggressive re-routing behaviour than the current Tomtom Android app v1.3.

I've edited the OP for reference.
 
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Navigon gives me hopelessly optimistic ETAs. I very much doubt they're legally achievable. The voice directions are great though.

Navigon's traffic is basically the TMC info provided by Inrix to various satnav manufacturers. It's pretty reliable for closures on A roads and motorways. For general traffic flow is quite bad. I'm not sure it's actually capable of showing traffic for B Roads downwards.
 
Google's not bad at all - and I can certainly recommend Ivona TTS. However, Google doesn't currently show road closures in the UK - only traffic flow (although they are supposed to be incorporating Waze incident reports sometime around now).

The article I linked in this post may be of interest: It's systematic comparison of the success rate of various traffic services for detecting traffic congestion. Basically - Tomtom was most successful, then Google, with Garmin's services (the Garmin SIM is essentially what you get with Navigon) coming in way behind.
Uriel said:
University of Michigan compares success rates of predicting traffic jams from Tomtom, Google, Inrix, Garmin.

Tomtom comes out top for accurately predicting traffic jams (not particularly surprising, as the study appears to be funded by Tomtom). However, I will say that I've been using all these services (except Garmin HD) for at least a year and the findings of the study do reflect my own experience.

I've pulled the article from Google's cache to avoid needing a sign-in to view the article.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...2/100187/102967.pdf+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

As per my thread in mobiles, Navigate 6 for Android (and iPhone soon) currently has a 30 day free trial, including HD Traffic from Tomtom. If you regularly travel in congested traffic I'd say it's worth a go. I've had it divert me around several confirmed jams since I started using it in the last few days and it diverts around traffic more readily than Tomtom's own Android app. Where HD Traffic falls down is that it sometimes misses road closures reported by the standard RDS-TMC traffic service provided by Inrix (and used by non-live Tomtom PNDs).
Click to expand...
 
muon said:
However, it is very smooth and quick and the routes appear to be sensible. Although it did once want me to leave the dual carriageway only to rejoin it in the roundabout underneath it??
Click to expand...

I think I've figured out why this is. When N6 initially plans a route or sets traffic to avoid, it looks for time savings on a fairly aggressive basis. It seems to divert around traffic incidents within at least an hour's drive. The trouble is, some of those incidents will have cleared in minutes. It appears that N6 doesn't usually change back to the clear main route - certainly not very quickly anyway.

Unfortunately an hour is rather a long time for 3-5 minute delay incidents to remain in effect.

By comparison, Tomtom does remove diversions if the reason for them is no longer in effect.
 
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Well, it's been a few weeks since my N6 trial finished. I initially bought another month's HD Traffic from Tomtom (£3.99) but it's got to my HD Traffic renewal time again - and I think I'm going for Navigate 6 instead.

The main reason is the Tomtom HD Traffic renewal is about £26.99 for the year. It's cheaper to buy Navigate 6 navigation (£11.99) with HD traffic (£7.49) for a year than just to get the year's HD Traffic with Tomtom.

There are some things I'll miss from Tomtom though:
  • Ability to program avoiding part of route.
  • Ability to block route immediately in front of you.
  • Ability to manually avoid traffic incidents
  • Adding via points as co-ordinates, address or postcode (N6 makes you select them from the map).
  • Route immediately returning to default when traffic delay expires.
  • Keeping track of things sensibly if GPS signal lost (e.g. tunnels)

Most of the things I'll miss from Tomtom are due to disappear when it's "upgraded" to use the same Nav4 / Navkit system as the new Go 400, 500, 600, 5000, 6000 units. Navigate 6 works so similarly to them I suspect that it may well be based on Tomtom's own Navkit development kit and basically be the same thing with a different skin on it.

I mainly use navigation for traffic avoidance during commuting. N6's more aggressive traffic avoidance seems to suit me, although it does give the odd strange diversion off main routes, seemingly trying to avoid the odd traffic light etc.

Regarding the differences in routing: Essentially, Navigate 6 looks for the absolute fastest routes it can calculate, including traffic, during route planning and offers you options up to the fastest 3 different routes. I haven't yet pinned down what criteria will cause it to redivert once on route and diversions often remain in place after traffic has expired (I've reported this to the N6 development team and they are working on a fix).

Tomtom initially plans the fastest route according to its historical road speed database (speed profiles / IQ Routes). If traffic is detected on the route it will then check for faster alternatives but it looks for several minutes clear saving (meaning that minor 1-2 minute delays are not avoided). In practice, it will miss some of the local diversions that Navigate 6 can work out, even if you manually program it to avoid incidents. Once the journey is in progress Tomtom keeps checking traffic vs key diversion points where it can re-route around the traffic. Small local diversions are detected very late, whereas Navigate 6 tends to pick them a long way in advance.

I note that Google's traffic service has been improved by incorporation of Waze indicent data, including a data feed from the Highways Agency. I'd be happy using Google Maps to navigate and avoid traffic for longer journeys but its pathalogical attraction to staying on main roads means I don't like it for use as a commuting aid, where I'm already familiar with the various routes. Waze itself has potential but there are currently nowhere near enough users near me to give early warning of traffic. If Waze one day incorporates Google's traffic flow data (or Google Maps incorporate Waze's routing), I'm fairly confident it can dominate the market in urban traffic avoidance - especially as it's free.

I still have Navigon with traffic on my phone too. The traffic indicents are accurate enough but currently limited to Motorways and primary A Roads - which again limits it as a commuting aid. Its ETAs are always hopelessly optimistic to the point of requiring illegal behaviour to keep up with them. Navigon does, however, pick up some road closures usually missed by HD Traffic (e.g. the A57 Snake Pass and other high routes in Derbyshire when it snows). For this reason, I sometimes use it to check my routes for traffic when I'll be navigating with Tomtom / N6.

Sygic's another navigation app with potential, using Tomtom maps, but crippled by hopelessly silly urban routing. There was talk of them using Tomtom's IQ Routes / Speed Profiles in future but that's gone very quiet of late. I've not used it since they incorporated Tomtom's HD Traffic but I gather you have to avoid indicents manually - so I'm not interested in trying it again.

I liked Co-Pilot Live Premium when I last tried it a couple of years ago, but again its traffic data is limited to major routes. It also didn't have automated dynamic traffic re-routing and required a button press to accept faster routes it found. That's a major no-no for me but I'd be interested to hear if they've sorted it out yet.
 
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Just an update on this, over the last few months Tomtom's HD Traffic has received a major upgrade. Where as it used to only reliably pick up traffic down to B Roads (most of the time), it's now reliably picking up traffic even on fairly minor roads. It's also detecting road closures more regularly than it used to (supplementing the journalistic information it gets from the Highways Agency and Transport for London). I first noticed the improvements while still subscribed to HD Traffic with Tomtom.

Navigate 6 has been a direct beneficiary of the improved traffic info but its routing algorithm does a much better job of finding routes through and around the traffic than Tomtom. It's much more aggressive fastest route algorithm will divert off main routes much more readily than Tomtom if there's congestion. The improved traffc information has made a fantastic difference. When it diverts around and through traffic, I can now be much more confident that it won't divert me into other trouble than when I initially used the app. Over the past couple of weeks it's literally saved me several hours that would have otherwise been spent sitting in traffic (verified by unfortunate friends and colleagues). Even when traffic's clear, routing is usually extremely sensible.

In short, it now utterly outperforms every other navigation app I've tried (Tomtom, Navigon, Sygic, Google Nav, Navfree, MapQuest, Waze) when it comes to automatically finding the best route through traffic. I find myself actually wanting to drive in the busiest part of rush hour to see what it will come up with.

I still have my doubts about HD Traffic's ability to consistently automatically detect road closures when the information isn't provided by a highway authority. I saw some examples of automated road closure detection in York and Bristol with the recent floods but it was by no means complete. I'm keen to see how it copes next time there's a decent snowfall that closes a few roads round here. I'll report back when it does. In the event of a closure, Navigate 6 still doesn't have a roadblock or avoid part of route function. This is a significant omission (HD Traffic can't catch everything) and I've complained to the developers about it. They responded, and I'm hopeful that one day these features will make it into an update.

Aside from the free trial, it's still cheaper to buy Navigate 6 and a year's traffic than it is just to get a year of the same service from Tomtom. Unless Tomtom significantly improve their Android app, I don't think I'll be going back.
 
Further update: the app has been updated again for Android and is now called just "Navigate".

The latest update now has a feature to manually add roadblocks during navigation, in case HD Traffic doesn't know about problems. This can be done either blocking the next xxx yards of the route via the menu, or selecting part of the map. They can only be added to the planned route and not anywhere on the map. They can't be saved and are effectively lost should you stop navigating, but the feature is enough to work around my main concern about the app's former inability to effectively rout around problems.

I'm very pleased, as I'd contacted the customer support team to request the feature. Pretty much every update so far has included features I'd requested, so they are clearly listening to their customers.

With the latest update, I now believe that this is the best navigation software available on a smartphone by some distance. It certainly is for routing and automated redirection around traffic. It's not on par with Tomtom or Navigon for multi-point route planning (via points need to be added on the map and not via a menu / search) but I would rarely use that feature anyway.
 
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If you download the maps over wi-fi there's no warning.

For daily commuting with live traffic on, it uses about 30mb a month. This is more than TomTom, which would be about 7-10mb over the same period.

As for testing, it really comes into its own when it actually detects some traffic to avoid. I recommend the automatic traffic redirection option. It seems to need about a 3 minute saving to redirect when you're on route but when it does, it couldn't be clearer to the user what's happening.

I'd suggest that Waze has the potential to offer similar traffic detection and routing if it had enough users. Whenever I've used Waze though there have been nowhere near enough other users to make the traffic live up to it's potential. Google's routing is too dumb to really take advantage of their own traffic data. The TomTom traffic in Navigate 6 is sourced from all TomTom live, units, licenced apps like this, anyone on Vodaphone or with an iphone that hasn't opted out. It's a lot of data and the algorithm can theoretically detect traffic congestion on any road. Add that to the traffic data they get from the HA, Traffic Scotland and TfL and it's pretty comprehensive. It doesn't get all the local authority data shown on. roadworks.org or Inrix though.

Edit: to see what it's capable of, find some nearby heavy traffic on the map and plot a route through it.

As for Satellite layers, I've never used them other than to have a quick look. The free trial is functionally identical to the paid version though.
 
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I suspect that this is a reflection of Route 66's contractual arrangement with their mapping provider, TomTom.

They will probably have a contract that requires TomTom to give 2 years notice before ceasing map updates provision to Route 66. In practice Route 66 Maps and Navigation was launched for Android in 2011. Shortly after Navigate was launched all licened users of Route 66 Maps and Navigation were given a free upgrade to Navigate, including map updates. If it is a contractual limitation, Route 66 can't promise to supply Map updates beyond 2 years, even if they intend to provide them.

By comparison, TomTom's buyout of Teleatlas means they are effectively their own mapping provider. Map updates will just be subject to company policy and not a 3rd party agreement.

On costs, last time I checked, it was cheaper to buy Navigate and subscribe to traffic for a year than to get a years traffic subscription from TomTom. I wouldn't bother to use either over the many free alternatives if it wasn't for the superiority of the traffic data and related routing. Therefore costs beyond the end of the traffic subscription (assuming both have a perpetual license) are irrelevant to me.
 
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TomTom's current app won't last that long. Some time ago they announced they would be updating both their Android and iPhone apps to the navkit api used in their Go x00 and x000 range.

It looks like that the upgrade will just be something similar to Navigate for a higher price.
 
Looks like the re-routing trigger may be less than I'd thought in Navigate. I had a "an alternative route has been detected that will save you 1 minute" re-route today. As far as I can tell, it had initially plotted a route avoiding traffic and the main route became clear during my journey.
 
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