Unboxing

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The Wait is over...

In June at the WWDC TomTom officially announced an app and holder were coming and for the past 2 months ive been waiting for it to appear. Well now, finally after all the wait, its here TomTom for the iPhone. In this blog post I will review the App and see whether or not its a great addition to the iPhone App Catalog or has the wait been for very little?

For the testing of the TomTom iPhone App I am using version 1.0 with the UK Maps costing £59.99 from App Store installed on a iPhone 3GS 32GB. At this point I haven’t got the Holder as it is not available at time of writing.

After initially install the TomTom and loading it for the first time it seems to load the app really quickly. Within just a few seconds your are able to access the menu to input the destination you wish to travel to which is great.

TomTom Main Menu

Menus

TomTom have done a great job with the overall design of the app. Rather than using the standard layout of majority of TomToms they have gone for the more native layout of the iPhone and it works really well. The icons look fantastic on the iPhones screen and the navigation through all the menus is simple and very responsive.

The Main menu features quick and easy access options which help you navigate around the app quickly and effectively. TomTom have created larger buttons as well so that you can use the App at a distance and easily hit the correct button. The menu flys up and down by the flick of your finger and the elastic band effect is also present in the App. Overall TomTom have done a great job with the menus and overall look of the application and allowing the user to either navigate through the menus in portrait or landscape is again another great bonus.

Settings

TomTom Settings Menu

There are several settings available with the TomTom for the iPhone however there are also several that appear to be missing which means several TomTom features are missing from the app.

Firstly you are able to set your home location. This is just to make navigating from where you are a little easier by saving you from having to type this in everytime. There is the option to change the voice settings but sadly these seem a little restrictive as there doesn’t appear to be a way to add voices nor is there many to choose from and the English UK Man (Tim) doesn’t sound very English to me.

Simple Map settings such as map colours, show streets on the map and poi’s can be found under “Map”. The layout is the simple on and flick to off tab buttons that are standard with the iPhone.

The Route Planning settings allow you to turn “TomTom Safety Cameras” on or off. These are basically speed cameras however in the UK they are referred to as “safety cameras”. Also you can turn IQ routes on or off. It is good to see that the TomTom App does come with these two features and IQ routes for anyone who isn’t sure what they are, is simply a way which TomTom uses historical information of routes to give you the clearest and quickest route to your destination. For example if every Tuesday at around 5pm traffic levels seem to be high on A34 TomTom will try and navigate you away from this road at that time. It’s very clever!

Selecting your Destination

TomTom Route Type

TomTom allows you select your destination using either a favourite place you have marked, an address requiring number, street, and city, a Poi from a large range that TomTom has pre installed including, beaches, cinemas, petrol stations, restaurants, hotels etc, Postcode if you know the number and postcode you wish to go to, or a contact from your iPhones Contacts Book. So all the options on the standard TomToms are here with the added option of the ability to pull in addresses from your contacts!

The TomTom gives you all the options in which sort of route to take when travelling. You should always pick the fastest route over shortest as fastest is the safer option and avoids narrow roads. TomTom also adds the walking route type and bicycle route now could this mean TomTom are planning to release a iPhone holder for a bike maybe? The only downside I would say is I left the TomTom app on the menu screen, i.e not navigating for about 2 hours and the battery in the iPhone went from 100% to 14% therefore I would only use this for walking/biking short distances unless you have got a charger at your destination or something like the mophie battery pack.

Navigating

TomTom Navigating

TomTom Navigation screen is really clear. The colours can be changed from within the Map settings and the Navigation screen can change to night view from the Main Menu.

The iPhone has a great screen the colours are vibrant and clear, the screen can be very bright or nice and dull for night driving. The map jumps off the screen which is great as this was a problem with my TomTom PND as the screen wasn’t as bright nor could it display as many colours which meant the screen looked rather pale in bright light.

The Navigation screen can display Poi’s on the maps as you can see with the image on the left the map is showing a bus stop. The maps can be set to show which poi’s interest you or can show none at all.

TomTom Speed Cameras

The TomTom app is also able to navigate in widescreen which in my opinion makes the navigation a lot clearer as the bottom bar is more spaced apart. You can see in the wide-screen picture how the speed cameras are shown. The unit will alert you with a sound and on the screen it shows the max speed you should be going and the distance in yards or meters to the camera.

The voice informs you of when you what direction to travel in but sadly it isn’t that clear. This is due to the iPhone speaker not being very great at all. However the iPhone mount promises to improve this so i would definitely consider getting this if you choice the TomTom app.

The iPhone never lost a GPS signal and found the satellites within seconds of starting the navigation. The accuracy seemed perfect with it following me exactly where I was and auto updated when i purposly left TomToms route.

Calls

One problem I have found with the iPhone is the support for calls. If someone calls you the call goes over the top of the app. So if you decided to answer the call you won’t get any navigation, no voice, no images. Personally I believe if you answer the call when driving the call should be minimised so the app can still be used. When the call is ended or you decline the call the app reappears and carries on from where you are not where you were so it is keeping up with your position. One thing I will note is the TomTom mount says it supports Hands Free calls, so whether this will change when used with the mount I’m unsure but I do hope it will.

Another calls problem is there is no option to call a contact or open the Phone dial screen when in the app which means if you want to call a contact you have to close the app which seems rather silly considering my old TomTom had this option built right in.

What’s Missing?

There is several parts of the standard TomToms which aren’t available in the TomTom app.

• No TomTom Services – i.e. no Traffic Information, no Fuel Prices, no Weather Services and no Local Search with Google. – I believe this is probably because TomTom charge it’s PND customers £7.99 a month for these services, so they wont want to give this for free however it does seem rather silly when the iPhone has a constant built in Internet connection.
• No Text to Speech – Many TomToms have the ability to read whats on the screen i.e “Take the next Left towards Birmingham, M6″. This is very useful when going around a roundabout or when you need to get in the correct lane of the Motorway.
• No Map Share – Another feature missing is Map Share. The maps are only updated every so many months and only if the Highways Agency informs the Map provider of changes. What Mapshare does is it allows users to report errors and these are then updated to all the devices using Map Share. This way users tend to have an up-to-date map earlier than Official updates.
• No Advanced Lane Guidance – I have heard users saying there is no advanced Lane guidance which shows you via an image which lane to get into. This is very useful on the Motorway.
• No Option to add voices, car icons, overlays etc.
• No Voice Commands – Finally many TomToms have the ability for the user to say where they want to go using there voice.

Overall

Overall I feel the TomTom application is a good addition to Appstore for £60 for the UK Maps or £80 for the Western Europe Map. Considering the cheapest Wide-screen TomTom the XL Classic Regional v2 has the same features of the iPhone UK Maps App +Map Share for £159.99 the £100 difference does seem good and you are getting value for Money. However I feel until official pricing of the mount for the iPhone is released and it’s currently been suggested it could cost £113,  it might be worth waiting to see if this will add more features and then way it up against the cost of an actual TomTom Device.

I found the app easy to use very accurate and it’s a great navigation app for a fantastic mobile device. I just feel TomTom or restrictions set by Apple have limited the use of application but I am hoping TomTom may add these features in the future.

Finally if your after a app on your iPhone that will get you from A to B I can say TomTom will do this perfectly. It is a great app just lacking on the little extras that would make it perfect overall I give it a 7/10.

What are your thoughts? I’d like to know what you think…

Luckily the intermittent web access I got allowed me to pull in my twitter stream and so I was able to keep in touch with the majority of happenings within the world of Tech. So what has happened well…

Apple introduces the iPhone 3Gs

It was obvious Apple were going to unvale a new iPhone but I must say I expected a little more from the fruity company. A Digital Compass, and Voice Commands, 3MP Camera oh and an up to 2x speed increase are nice additions/upgrades but somehow i expected more. I don’t know what exactly but something a little more. Firstly the Digital Compass does seem to be a good idea. The ability to not just locate yourself using the GPS but know which way your facing could be useful but I am not sure how useful it would be to me. However I must say this past week has been so much easier thanks to my iPhone the maps did help a lot, when I got an Internet connection to load the map that is so walking around York the compass may have been useful. Next is Voice Commands, brilliant about time, well for voice dialling anyway. But I don’t know why Apple couldn’t just let 3G users get this ability in the 3.0 software. After all it’s software that runs it not hardware but I suppose there would be an even bigger reason why not to update! Apple have upgraded the camera to 3MP, wow nice, my Sony P1i (not a specific camera phone) had a 3MP camera back in 2007 now I know the iPhone isn’t a camera phone but come on i would of thought Apple who love to go that little bit better could of put in a nice 5MP Camera! So whats next? Arh an up to and I have to stress “UPTO” 2x times faster. This is probably great for those more demanding apps and especially when you have 8 tabs open in Safari but for me I haven’t come across many “Speed” problems but have come across battery problems. Well not problems, but I do find the battery dies after a fair amount of use throughout the day and I don’t mean constant use! Apple claims the new iPhone 3G S does have a better battery life but not all users may notice! Oh 1 final update is the phone will be available in 16GB and 32GB – which was also obvious!

TomTom for the iPhone

At WWDC TomTom announced that they have developed an App which brings the TomTom to the iPhone. This is no real surprise as TomTom had developed an App for the iPhone ages ago but the iPhone didn’t have the APIs TomTom needed. However when the 3.0 software preview was shown and Apple announced a Turn by Turn API it seemed obvious to me TomTom would officially release the App. It seems in order to use the TomTom software which will be available from the App Store soon you will need a special TomTom Holder as it enhances the GPS of iPhone which in my opinion is needed as the iPhones GPS doesn’t always seem accurate.

That’s enough iPhone …. for now on to Windows 7!

No IE for Windows 7?

No IE with Windows 7

It seems that Microsoft are not bundling IE with Windows 7, well that’s if your a European customer. For along time the EU have been putting pressure on Microsoft and fining them over antitrust charges after receiving complaints from other browser developers who claim that users don’t use their browsers due to IE being bundled with Windows and therefore giving Microsoft an unfair advantage. Therefore the next release of Windows will give users the option to install IE but it wont be installed automatically. European Regulators suggested that Microsoft give users the choice of which browser they wish to install however the response to this suggestion wasn’t well received by both Microsoft and other browser developers so it seems Microsoft feel the best option is just not to provide any unless the user wants to install IE. I personally use Chrome for the majority of my Internet browsing and am using it now to blog to you! But many applications seem to require IE in order to work correctly this is gradually opening up to other browsers but there is probably going to be a reason I shall have to install IE when using Windows 7.

BT – Sick of Video Services “Free Ride”

Finally BT (British Telecom) who are the main providers of Internet in the UK have gone public with the “free ride” that video services such as BBC iPlayer are getting and are requesting funds from the BBC in order for people to have access to the iPlayer service. BT have recently admitted throttling the iPlayer which has restricted some users from being able to stream the service without interruption. However BT is saying the iPlayer is using far to many of it’s resources and affecting the whole network. I recently had problems with streaming from the iPlayer especially during peak times so it wasn’t a surprise when i heard they are throttling the service. Also in the BBC’s defence the iPlayer is only a small part of the Internet UK users access, I haven’t heard BT complain about YouTube!

Anyway that’s my update for now, and I am now back on track!