By Justin Lee | No Comments
Posted: Friday, August 7, 2009 at 6:51 pm

Navigon is back in the North American market with their Navigon MobileNavigator for iPhone / iPhone 3GS running OS 3.0 or higher. We are quite excited to review it, the app seems to be very similar to their in car devices with a clean interface and good feature set.

One big difference with other iPhone apps is that the 1.2 gigs of maps are downloaded into your iPhone, so you do not have to pay any data charges or monthly fees to use this app or worry about cellular signal dead zones.

The North American app costs a $99 from the Apple Itunes app store and is presently on sale till August 31st 2009 for a rock bottom price of $69. There are also versions for many other countries as well, including a version for all of Europe.

EDITORS NOTE: Since we’ve reviewed this app, there is now Text to Speech (free update) and Traffic (one time fee only!), making this one of the most featured filled in car navigation apps out there for the iPhone.

MobileNavigator takes only 7 seconds to boot to the warning screen, about 20 seconds for GPS signal lock. From there you can Enter an Address, Search for a Point of Interest (POI), Take Me Home or Show Map of current location. At the bottom of the screen you can access your recently visited locations, or even use your Contacts if they have complete addresses in them. You can also configure favorite destinations and of course the all important Take Me Home button as well. Entering your destination can’t be any easier with the big on screen keys and intelligent text inputting that eliminates any letters that don’t exist for the city you are in.

The first thing most people play with are the Options, which is missing from the main menu for some odd reason. You can’t get into unless you are in a route or if you hit Show Map first then Options. Here you can disable the Speed Limits warning that is enabled by default, change the distance units, and other basic functions such as disabling night mode. There are no means of changing the zoom level, I personally found it a little “far” but it does zoom in far enough or shows Reality View Pro that I will discuss later on.

Locking onto a signal takes about 20 seconds, a little slower than most stand alone GPS apps. But this could because of the GPS chipset located in the iPhone and iPhone 3GS. If you load the app from the same location you last left it, it is much faster.

I happen to be headed to Portland Maine from Montreal Canada the weekend this app was released and was excited to test it out on a 5 hour road trip. I did a side by side routing using my existing Garmin 255 and the algorithm for Navigon’s MobileNavigator was just as good as the Garmin. The only problem is, you’ll need to invest in a proper iPhone mount that will allow you to plug in the iPhone into a car charger, the iPhone with the GPS on is a battery hog and you need to plug it in for any trip for more than 30 minutes.

While navigating, the screen is easy to read with no extra clutter. You can change the distance or time to arrival by tapping it on screen. The bottom street indicator can be changed to your next street name maneuver or to show your current street you are on by simply tapping it on screen as well.

Reality View Pro is a great feature, when you come to an important interchange or exit. The software will show you a picture of which lane you are suppose to be in full screen. The Reality View Pro makes it easier for you to change into the proper lane in advance.

There is also Lane Assist Pro that will come onto the screen if Reality View is not available, this little lane indicator will have arrows indicating which lane you should be in. The little Lane Assist Pro icon is very useful in case the lane you are in exits and you should be in another lane, this only works on major highways.

The POI’s that appear on the map as you drive can’t be customized, but you will be able to modify the poi icons with the free update. Many poi icons show brands instead of generic icons and that makes it easier to spot them, such as Shell branded gas station for example.

Using POI’s is easy, if you are looking for a gas station, you can add it to your existing route (interm) or just search for a nearby one. By the way, if you are looking for the only Walgreens (Pharmacy) in Portland, Maine…don’t follow the POI, it will bring you to an office building in the middle of nowhere. Not Navigon’s fault, it’s the provider of the POI’s for that given area who messed up the address or maybe there is an office called Walgreens in there. All the other POI’s we searched for were spot on including some restaurants and gas stations. You can’t call POI’s for some odd reason even if there is a telephone number attached to the listing, Navigon will be providing a free update this summer to address this.

The “Save My Location” button is useful if you parked your car in an unfamiliar city and want to ensure you get back to it fine. I wouldn’t go hiking with this function, but it’s great for city streets.

There is no text to speech as of this writing, however; there was as surprise with this lack of text to speech. Interstates voice directions in the U.S are read out via text to speech: “Take I-10 South” instead of just “exit on the right”, this surprise doesn’t work in Canada however. Navigon will be updating the app soon to include full text to speech for all street names/highway names (no word if this will be free).

Another fix on the way is if you are playing music, it won’t mute the song when a voice prompt is said and you may have problems hearing the next direction.

The app functions in landscape or portrait; so if like using 2D in landscape mode you can switch it to how you like by simply rotating your iPhone on the fly. I preferred the portrait mode for 3D as I can see the streets further ahead. Mounts can be cheaply found on Ebay which keeps the costs down for this app.

Navigon chose to use Navteq maps which are highly accurate and up to date in North America, there is no word yet on how much map updates will cost or if you will be able to purchase other countries separately.

A very important question that everyone is asking is, what happens when someone SMS’s you or Calls you? A window will pop up where you can choose to accept the call or read the text message. If you accept the call or SMS, it will kick you out of the app, so you might want to only do this if your next “turn” is far away. Once you are done, the app will re-launch and resume happily where it left off.

Navigon included many Languages with the North American version. However, you cannot change the language from inside the app. In order to change the language of the MobileNavigator, you must change your entire iPhone language. It is nice the app automatically sets the language to what you are using on your phone, but makes it difficult to change quickly if needed.

If you have no dataplan or a very expensive one and wished you could use Google Maps to walk to nearby destinations. Navigon hasn’t forgotten you, since all the maps are downloaded onto the iPhone storage and doesn’t need to access any wireless data. You can activate the Pedestrian mode in the Route preferences and you can use it instead of using data for Google Maps to walk to where you need to go. You can even walk with it and the voice/display prompts will route you just like a car (minus the highway on ramps of course), there are some gps signal problems if you are close to tall buildings and the GPS signal may get lost.

All in all Navigon has done very well with the MobileNavigator. The only problem that might prevent you from buying this app is the lack of text to speech (for now) and no pricing available for map updates or the ability to buy other countries. There will be a free update coming soon to address the music volume problem and the ability to call POI’s. Overall I can recommend this app for those of you looking for an turn by turn GPS navigation software for your iPhone or iPhone 3GS.

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