Review: Snapshot of Windows Phone Satellite Navigation Apps

One of the fastest growing application areas for smartphones has been satellite road navigation. The form factor, touch screens and recent ubiquity of GPS receivers in these devices has seen their usage soar in this market. When Windows Phone 7 was released last year, one of it's many failings was the inability to offer turn by turn navigation due to the manner in which it handled memory and running programs, essentially meaning that only one non-system program could be running at any one time.

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has addressed that issue and applications can now run in the background allowing a navigation program to continue operating even if a phone call or SMS text message comes in. This ability has now prompted the release of a few satellite navigation programs. This month's release of the Nokia Lumia series has added some frisson to the market, being a free of charge program, while others cost in the range of £30 to £73 to buy from the Marketplace.

The first commercial turn by turn navigation program to be launched was Navigon, and this is the one I purchased for my HTC Titan, at £55 for the European version (though the price has now risen to a whopping £73). In the last two weeks, GPS Tuner have released Navigation Europe and Navigation UK and Ireland at £31 and £35 respectively. This is available as a free trial allowing 24 hours use following the first route to be planned.

Although Nokia Drive is a native Nokia application, some of the ROM chefs have been able to extract the necessary files, making them available for installation on most developer unlocked WP7.5 phones. There is likely to be a tightening up of the encryption of this application in due course to ensure it's uniqueness to the Nokia platform but in the meantime many users have installed it. At present, I have installed the Nokia Drive XAP file on my Chevron unlocked Titan and it appears to work fine.

This brief review is aimed at giving my own personal perspective on these three programs. Bear in mind that much of the testing has been brief, especially with the 24 hour limitation of the GPS Tuner trial version. Hopefully it will stimulate some discussion and readers may provide some additional feedback on features I may have missed. I shall try to give a side by side comparison of these products within each area of interest. I have called the programs Nokia, Navigon and Navigation throughout the review.


Installation
The two mainstream programs are simply loaded from the WP7 Marketplace. Navigon cost a heady £72.99 with no trial version. Navigation Europe by GPS Tuner costs £37.50 and the UK and Ireland version £30.99. Nokia Drive, as mentioned earlier is not commercially available except to owners of the new Nokia devices. In terms of file size, Navigon is a full 2.3GB with no option for breaking down the installation. Navigation is 170MB for the UK map with other Eu maps downloadable at will for the full Eu version. Nokia Drive needs 230MB for the UK version. Each of these installs the base program which can be loaded over GSM or WiFi, then prompts the user to connect to WiFi when the program runs for the first time, to download the required maps.

Navigon Nokia

GPST Navigation


Multi Tasking capability
For the sake of regularity, I tested each of these programs for any issues when receiving a phone call or SMS message during an active navigation session. I am pleased to report that all of them passed the test, allowing a phone call to be taken, or an SMS to be read before using the back button to return to active navigation. In fact after a phone call, the navigation screen reopened automatically with all three apps. There were some differences in hand over speed, with the Nokia being immediate, Navigon about three seconds and Navigation about five seconds.


Planning a route
There are some significant differences in the manner and accuracy of entering the desired location. One matter of disappointment for me is that none of these offers the ability to use a specified starting point, so pre planning, for instance a holiday route in advance, is impossible. All use the current (or last known) GPS position as their starting point. Neither of the commercial programs has the facility for entering seven character UK postcodes. You can only enter the initial five characters to populate the rough location. From there you will need to know the street name or the road number to hone down the eventual location. Another negative is that none of the programs caters for multi stop trips, so each leg will have to be treated as a new journey.

Navigon

These two programs also show differences in how a location is entered by name. I live in a small village called Radwinter near the town of Saffron Walden. With Navigon I can enter Radwinter as the town, then select a local street. With Navigation, Radwinter is not recognised so it is necessary to enter Saffron Walden as the town, then a combination of street name/village to get the full address. One interesting error is that both incorrectly list Ashdon Road as Ashdown Road. Likewise near my office both incorrectly name Potters Mews as Potters Muse so presumably they use the same mapping data.

Nokia

Nokia does accept and recognise full UK postcodes. The downside of this one is that it needs a data connection to obtain location information before planning the route. The other two work fully off line.

GPST Navigator

Navigon has the ability to select a destination via the map screen. When in the 2D map, zooming/scrolling to a location, then tapping the top icon allows the centre of the screen to be set as the destination. The middle icon of the same screen shows the whole route in overview.



Navigation is the only one to include a proper turn by turn Itinerary. Tapping each location of the Itinerary shows the selected turn in the top half of the screen.



To accept a destination all have a Go button or similar. With Nokia you can swipe between matching address choices if a postcode search has not been used. The right pane shows the address and the left pane shows a map of the selected location, which can be committed by touching the Start button. Once a location has been selected it is not possible to reposition the location marker with Nokia.

Navigon Nokia
GPST Navigation

Navigon is the only one that shows a choice of three routes; pressing the colour coded graphic commits the route. Navigation simply has a Go button to start navigating.




In Use
One of the requirements of a satellite navigation program is that it gets you to your destination in a timely manner. Despite the lack of postcode search, both commercial programs managed to select what I consider an acceptable route for the 21 mile journey from my office to home, which usually takes 35 minutes. Nokia on the other hand went for a really wild option routing me for 27 miles at an estimated 48 minutes. Undaunted, I decided to test it by taking my usual route and seeing if it re-routed me. After 5 miles, it still hadn't re-routed and now showed my home journey as 31 miles and 57 minutes. Cancelling the route and redoing it succeeded in choosing the correct journey from its new starting point. Interestingly, the reverse journey used the correct routing. Some commentators have said that Nokia uses an online connection to plot the route as well as locate the destination. That might account for what I saw, as the chosen route was so different from my optimum route; maybe it was unable to re-route itself. Whether or not this is a true reflection of its capability is unknown, and one errant journey is not enough to prove a consistent problem.

All three have excellent spoken directions, giving timely warnings of upcoming turns. Navigon is the best here as it is the only one to use TTS voices which announce road names or numbers with the instruction. Navigon's spoken commands are a little more precise as well.

Nokia and Navigation use a dedicated part of the screen to show route instructions and driving information. Navigon uses a small area above the screen for the driving information and the turn information is superimposed on the main map screen. The driving information is, frankly, useless as the font is too small to read when the device is mounted on the dashboard, even with my HTC Titan. The other two are very readable at the expense of a smaller map display.

Navigon GPST Navigation

Nokia

Nokia and Navigon have options for 2D or 3D map displays, and both are good. Navigation is 2D only which makes it look a little dated. None have elevation or topographical overlays.

Navigon Nokia

Navigon has an 'block'feature which allows a route to be automatically replanned to avoid a variety of distances ahead should there be delays or roadworks etc.




Other Features
All three have the ability to navigate to Points of Interest. Navigon has a menu for navigating to a Contact from your main contact list, but in use I found this very unreliable. Even contacts with full postcodes often gave options up to 100 miles away (and often omitted the correct contact!); this is probably a function of the poor postcode implementation for UK addresses.

Navigon has a 'reality scanner' feature in which the phone's camera shows the view ahead, with any available POIs being displayed in a band across the centre of the screen according to their direction and distance. Pressing the arrow button opens an info screen with an option to navigate to the selected POI.



Navigon also includes live traffic information and safety camera locations within the purchased product. I have seen valid traffic warnings but not yet encountered how they work on a valid route.

Navigon and Navigation both have options screens from where features such as routing types, vehicles and voices can be set. Navigation has a Map screen to select which map(s) to download.



GPST Navigator

Navigon

Overall
Each of these three programs has much to commend it but none of them meets my ideal. For a free program, Nokia does the job, and it has a very easy interface. Its maps and graphics are clean and modern. It can be forgiven its lack of features though the routing issues are more cause for concern. As some of this is done online I'm sure Nokia will be able to adjust some of the parameters. Fast app switching is instant, which suggests Nokia integrates better with the WP7 OS.

GPS Tuner Navigation is competent and has a couple of features missing from the others. It looks good graphically but doesn't integrate with the Metro interface. Screen redraws are slower than the others. The 2D interface is a little old fashioned. Routing is accurate however and spoken directions are clear. The 24 hour trial period is very handy.

Navigon can be frustrating but overall has the most to offer, albeit at a much higher price than the others. It includes the whole of Western and Central Europe but lacks the ability to download individual countries. The 2.3GB file size may be a bit tight on some 8GB devices. The inclusion of such features as live traffic, safety cameras, contacts navigation and the 'reality scanner' add value, but one wonders why core features such as full UK postcode search, and offline route planning are not part of the package.The display of driving information also needs a serious rethink- speed, ETA and distance to destination are simply too small to read without compromising safety. Navigon has the best 'look and feel' integration with the Windows Phone Metro interface.

So, that's my potted opinion, based admittedly on limited use, especially for GPS Tuner Navigation due to the expiry of the trial period. If I've missed or misinterpreted anything, please post your views.