Because for so long this has been a hobby of mine - so many years now already - last time I checked it's been almost 7 years from my first NUVI 310 PDA from Garmin - I decided to share with you some personal thoughts and experience related to modern drive navigation targeted on mobile phones.
As I was telling you, my first encounter was a Garmin PNA, a.g. NUVI 310, running RO.A.D 2006 map - that's one of the best outsourced Garmin compatible map on the market for our country, Romania. That my friends, with later updates - official and not always very orthodox ways of getting latest flavour from the developer, was and still is the standard in local map coverage here. You can check online and see for yourself what I'm talking about.
But enough about Garmin Romania a.k.a. Sheba Distribution SRL and their work right now - simply because starting from last year when they decided to add great improvements for the product itself and involve into a rightful battle against piracy - that blocked them to evolve so many years - the price tag became unncacesible and they immediately sloped into professional zone targeting hobbyists and enthusiasts not average consumer like you and me who simply wants to get from A to B on the roads. It's some other level of map coverage detail and some other type of work involved thanks to Mr. Bogdan Condurateanu who did a great job in all this years and was a pioneer himself in Romania when started 'Proiectul Romania Digitala' (Digital Romania Project) along time ago...
So, starting from title I decided to share with you some other interesting stuff regarding car navigation and choices when it comes about mobile opportunities.
I will not get into detail about every app available on the market right now, nor the functionality of this apps (hopefully I'll have some time in the near future to start this subject), just a fair comparison of Romania's map level of detail provided by tho different map providers on the market right now.
First one, and possibly one of the largest map provider for the whole world is NAVTEQ, a NOKIA Company basically - available on the stage a long time ago from now, and with a strong relationship with the U.S. navigation solution company GARMIN. Navteq along with GARMIN spoiled us time and again with City Navigator® Europe NT witch is again one of the best solution for the whole EU this time including Romania (not so lately so good developed though - they also had to start from scratch and did a great job lately). I'm not currently a user of GARMIN anymore simply because I have migrated to mobile solutions, two years ago to be more exactly - first one was a Nokia E72 and now a great Android device witch is a Samsung Galaxy I9100.
Of course I keep on going back to my first love, Garmin, and I have to mention a small thing about a Symbian app that was available for years for Symbian users - giving them the possibility to use Garmin maps on their phones... It's about Garmin Mobile XT that I don't really know if it is still available to buy officially from them.
Now it's time to NOKIA :) Why? Because ever since they have decided to give away freely the maps from their own cartography baby NAVTEQ for the clients and owners of such mobile gadgets, things started to get attention to many people. OviMaps was the first name if you remember the logos:
Now it simply changed its name into NokiaMaps (witch makes more sense), and it is available free for anybody online and of course for Nokia smartphone owners as a navigation solution. A GR8 one I might add.
Because Symbian it's slowly dying and Nokia is slowly sinking meanwhile Andoid it's gaining more and more attention on the market, the rightful step is to talk about Android alternatives.
So here there are besides free Google Navigation witch is a mess:
First one is from the great Garmin again and is called NAVIGON Mobile signed Garmin Würzburg GmbH (that's GARMIN Germany of course) . With it's pluses and minuses this one is overall a good app and a fine in-car navigation solution for Android mobiles. Here is the QR code for the product we are interested here in Romania, attention everybody, it's not free as it is normal in this case, and besides Google Checkout you will be provided also with in-app purchase add-on's including updates for the maps provided by NAVTEQ. One of the things I find extremely interesting about this app is Google Local Search that gives you the chance to search for a specific POI on your route with the help of Google Maps.
On the other pole, last but not least comes in the picture very powerful another great app from our friends in FYROM, more exactly Croatia, and this is Mireo with their solution called DON'T PANIC and is available even as a trial also on Google Play (opposed to Navigon witch is NOT). Mireo is not foreign from GPS business at all and a fearful competitor worldwide and very present even on PDA's right now. Why? Because they have more than one contract with map providers like TomTom one of the biggest competition for NAVTEQ; but a great move was to integrate alongside TomTom and own maps (because they have done locally exactly what Sheba did in Romania), other independent map providers from different companies / countries, giving the user the best choice to use the more adequate map with the most detail for it''s country - an in-app system works here as well but don't forget this time, in contrast with NAVIGON you can buy only the map for the country you're interested in. In this case however you will have to pay again for every map upgrade unfortunately - witch is not so good right now but this is about to change maybe in the future if the things are going in the right direction for them, and have the opportunity to get latest map upgrades for free for the the device's life - as it is right now for some Google Play Mireo's flavors - or maybe paying a fee. You can get it from Google Play for free as a try & buy app.
Well, lately it seems like they hit the jackpot with their exclusive Suncart 2012.3 release, witch has more improvements on map detail level for us here than even Nokia or Navigon has integrated - on some parts, especially when it comes about riding the big-ones - and I mean here the main roads anh highways, big cityes and so on. The routing is great and customizable, easy to configure and ... but enough with the words, you should try for yourself and come with your own conclusion.
In the end, I would really like to give you some screenshots from the actual maps provided by the three providers I have talked about, and the level o detail on each and every one of them as they are right now on 10th of June 2012.
In the end, I wish you all, a nice ride, and... drive carefully!
Enjoy!
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