GPS: More Screen

GPS: More Screen for Less Money

NOT LONG AGO, most GPS
devices had 3.5-inch
screens. Today, a
4.3-inch screen is
standard, and some
displays are even bigger—
4.7 inches (Magellan’s Road-
Mate 1470), 5.0 inches (Tom-
Tom’s XXL 540S), and even
7.0 inches (Magellan’s Road-
Mate 1700), for instance.
M e devices are getting less
expensive, too. You can Q nd
full-featured portable units
with text-to-speech, lane
assist, and big screens for
not much more than $100.
And they’re getting more
connected. Both Garmin and TomTom released Internetconnected
devices in 2009. A
GPS device with a live Net
connection lets you search
for fuel prices, weather data,
airport departure/arrival info,
and points of interest (POIs),
using Google’s Live search.
Still, smartphones continue
to grab the lion’s share of
the connected GPS market.
AZ er changing how people
think about smartphones,
can Apple’s iPhone do the
same for the portable gps market? New iPhone GPS
apps from TomTom, Navigon,
and others have
changed the GPS landscape.
M ese apps cost from $35 to
$100—cheap enough to convince
people that they don’t
need a dedicated GPS.
Google’s recent announcement
of a full-featured free
navigation application could
disrupt the GPS market even
more as additional Android
phones start to ship.
M ough 2010 is likely to be
tough for manufacturers of
dedicated GPS devices, some
excellent personal navigators
are on the market today.
TomTom XXL 540S
If a 4.3-inch screen feels too
small, you’ll love the TomTom
XXL 540’s 5-inch display.
M e XXL 540S uses Tom-
Tom’s IQ Routes feature to
calculate routes and estimate
time of arrival based on historical
tra] c data rather than
on speed limits. In my testing,
the routes it generated
were the ones I’d normally
take. And ETA projections
were fairly accurate, even without a live tra- c receiver
(a $60 extra; that price in -
cludes a year’s subscription
to tra- c data, which costs
$60 per year therea> er).
A> er generating a route,
the 540S provides excellent
route-viewing options, in -
cluding browsing a turn-byturn
list of directions, viewing
maneuvers as images,
showing a route summary,
and demonstrating the trip.
H e 540S was a bit slow at
initially calculating routes
for longer trips, but recalculations
a> er missed turns
were I ne. H e device pronounced
street names clearly
and at a volume adjusted
to the vehicle’s speed.
Garmin Nuvi 1690
H e Nuvi 1690, Garmin’s I rst
connected GPS device, is a
good start but has room to
improve. It oQ ers Bluetooth
phone connectivity, text-tospeech
conversion, a built-in
cellular radio, lane assist with
junction view (showing simulated
highway signs), a 4.3-
inch screen, and optimized
multisegment routing.
H e 1690’s menu structure
matches that on other Nuvi
models, but with connected
services sprinkled throughout
the menus in (for the
most part) appropriate locations.
For example,
the connected services
in the tools menu are
Flight Status, Weather,
Ciao, and Currency.
Other connected
services appear in the
Where To menu. H e
I rst screen oQ ers
Google Local search
and White pages as
options. Google Local
provides online access
to the same 13 POI
categories as does the
‘Points of Interest’ icon. Just
as when you’re searching the
POI database, you can use
Google Local to search areas
nearby, in a diQ erent city,
close to a recent or a favorite
destination, or (if you have
an active route) along the
route you’re currently on।



source: pc world