Mobile Travel Assist, S60 Edition
by Volker Weber
I have been waiting to tell you about this software for quite a while. Navman has a new Series 60 application which lets you navigate using your standard Symbian phone. Today I have tried it with my Nokia N70 and I was very impressed. You can see some screenshots above. (No, I wasn't driving.)
Navman is not the first company to bring onboard navigation to mobile phones, but what an entry this is. My (still in bea) package consists of a 512 MB Mini-SD card and the Navman B10 GPS receiver. I have tried a lot of those receivers lately, and the B10 is the first one I like:
- It has a physical on/off switch, not a button you have to hold.
- It has LEDs that I understand: Flashing every second means "searching", flashing every three seconds means "found".
- This holds true for both the Bluetooth and the GPS LED.
- It is small enough to put it on a keychain and has a hole for a lanyard.
- It has excellent reception and gets a first fix in seconds.
- It charges over USB.
The software runs nicely on my N70, it does not drain the battery quickly when I used it for three hours today. Navigation was flawless, with excellent instructions in a somewhat metallic voice. So far I have only selected waypoints by address, but you can also use the Navpix feature found in other Navman units like the recently announced N-series and the iCN720/750. It uses the Nokia camera to take a VGA picture which it geocodes with Lat/Long from the GPS receiver:
You can send the picture onward via MMS to direct others to the place where you currently are. Or you can use them as bookmarks of where you were.
So far I have been unable to retrieve addresses from the Nokia address book, but that may be due to bugs in the beta version. The feature is there, it simply did not work as I expected. The map on my SD card is supplied by NAVTEQ as are the POIs.
Next week I shall have the final version.
Comments
Why oh why - are there no E-Series phones on the compatibility sheet. I would love to have a good navigation solution (like this one seems to be) on my E60..
Your E60 runs on Symbian OS 9.1. All the listed phones have prior versions.
