NAVIGON dropped us a note to say that, as promised, their latest update to MobileNavigator [$89.99 for North America - iTunes link] for iPhone is now available via the iTunes App Store, and it includes Traffic Live as an in-app purchase (currently on sale at an introductory $19.99, $24.99 thereafter). Here’s how it works:

Traffic Live utilizes crowdsourced real-time speed data from over 1.3 million drivers including other NAVIGON app users (who opt. in to participate), commercial fleets such as trucks and taxis, as well as regular drivers with a GPS system. So if for example several vehicles on a road report slow speed, the system recognizes congestion and provides an alternate and faster route.

If you add the Traffic Live service, let us know how it works for you.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

NAVIGON MobileNavigator Updated, Traffic Live Available via In-App Purchase

UPDATE 3: As pointed out in the comments, there’s no sign of ad support in Google Maps Navigation (at least not yet). It’s just free as in free.

UPDATE 2: According to Gizmodo, Google:

implied they are working closely with Apple now on [Google Maps Navigation].

iPhone 2.2 saw Google Street View, could iPhone 3.2 see Google Maps Navigation? Let the drooling begin!

UPDATE 1: Replaced video with official version, moved TechCrunch preview below the fold. Enjoy both!

ORIGINAL: Just a few hours ago TiPb posted about the rumors surrounding a free (with ad support, of course) Google Navigation app, and now TechCrunch has the goods — it’s real, and it’s (so far) exclusive to Android 2.0. And we quote:

• Search in plain English. No need to know the address. You can type a business name (e.g. “starbucks”) or even a kind of a business (e.g. “thai restaurant”), just like you would on Google.

• Search by voice. Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): “Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco”.

• Traffic view. An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch on the indicator toggles a traffic view that shows the traffic ahead.

• Search along route. Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.

• Satellite view. View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google’s high-resolution aerial imagery.

• Street View. Visualize turns overlaid on Google’s Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.

• Car dock mode. For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm’s length.

To quote our own editor-in-chief, it looks “bad@$$”, and so far it also looks exclusive to the US, and to Android 2.0, at least for now. But come on Google, you want to give it to everyone outside the US too, right?

[via Chad!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Updated: Google Maps Navigation [Free as in Just Free] for Android 2.0 — Coming Eventually to iPhone

Google already provides the free Google Maps service (with Street View, pictured above), but could they be planning to step up to full on turn-by-turn navigation? Forbes thinks so:

Google, which generally gives its software away for free and recoups its investment through advertising, would likely sell ads within the navigation application rather than charge users, experts say. The ads could be particularly valuable because the program would know users’ precise locations and destinations, allowing advertisers to pinpoint specific kinds of consumers. Google recently started running sponsored link ads in Apple’s ( AAPL – news – people ) iPhone map application, which it helped build.

Forbes cites competitors who think Google will enter the “small but lucrative” space, and it would be a great value-add to Android, extending Google’s control over the software to an area some carriers still want all to themselves (with the monthly subscription feeds that go with it).

Before international readers get too excited, however, like Google Voice, it might be US-only, especially at first. That, and other factors have potential competitors already getting their shots in:

“Millions of customers use our service because of its reliability, ease of use and additional features,” [Mary Beth Lowell of TeleNav] says. [Steve Andler of Networks in Motion] contends the mobile market is different from the Internet, where “everything’s free and always in beta. People are willing to pay a premium to have something work all the time on their phones.”

Translation: they won’t try to compete with Google on price.

But what about you? Would you let Google monitor your GPS coordinates and activities, and send you targeted ads, in exchange for free navigation?

[via Fierce Mobile Content via Engadget Mobile]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Google Working on Free [Ad Supported] Turn-by-Turn Navigation App?

(iGo My Way 2009 – North America For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

iGo My Way [$79.99 - iTunes link] is the fourth turn-by-turn app I have reviewed. As with the other three, I have used the app around town as well as planning for a long trip (the same trip I have taken with the others). It generally suggested very reasonable routes, it had the vast majority of POI’s that I was looking for (in fact, I don’t recall a single instance where I couldn’t find something). So how did it compare in the long distance travel?

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code for this app.

Let me start off by saying that I found the interface a little difficult at time. When you start, there is a screen with three main buttons and a map. Tapping the map at the top brings you to your current route and directions. The other three buttons are destination (to program a route), my route (for details on your current route), and settings. Maybe it is just me, but at times I found the layout a little less that intuitive. If I wanted to alter my route, for example, I kept going into “destination” instead of “my route”. While I am sure I would have eventually learned the different buttons, it didn’t strike me as the most obvious layout.

To program a route, you can go into desintation. From there you can select an address, a point of interest, a location on a map, of a list of favorites. In addition, you have your route history at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, there was no contact integration. I did find the interface for choosing a destination based on address to be very straightforward – you choose the state, city, street, etc. At any point you can go back and change any of the options. The POI database was very complete (as complete as any of the other apps I have seen), and choosing a point of interest was another straightforward process.

Once your route is calculated (based on preferences), you can make changes like selecting various route alternative. It includes shortest, economical, easiest, and fastest. One really nice feature is that it shows you the distance and the driving time for each of these, and you can select back and forth to see how they look on the map. I wish the display map had more details instead of just a red line showing your route – city names, highway names, or things like that would be appreciated. One nitpick – I had a default “shortest route” option selected. But when I compared with other routes, sometimes the fastest route was listed as many as 10 miles shorter than the shortest route (see the image below). Ummm…need to work on those routing programs!!

You can also choose to look at places around the destination, where it will give you a list of POI near your planned destination. Lastly, you can change any of your route settings (such as vehicle from car to taxi, bicycle, bus, etc). You can choose different preferences (avoid toll roads, avoid ferries) at this point as well. At any time, you can come back to the “my route” screen to get these options again.

Unfortunately, there were limited options to preview or browse your route. You couldn’t do anything aside from viewing a simple over view map – no listed directions, no detailed summary, nothing like that. There was an option to preview the trip, but it would simply plan an animation of your route – not something you had a lot of control over. You didn’t have any option of travelling “via” a specific road, highway, or city, so you couldn’t plan a multiple itinerary trip.

The settings button allows you to change default settings – sounds and warnings, regional settings, etc. Many of these are things that you only need to access once, but the settings also included the default routing options (route type, avoid/use highways, avoid tolls, etc).

When actually driving, I found the iGo app very good. The maps that are displayed are very detailed, to the point of telling you at times when you may need to switch lanes for an upcoming turn. The app (in general) avoids giving you specific distance estimates, instead telling you that you have “more than 50 miles to go” or “turn in more than 1 mile”. I found this to be beneficial sometimes (like when I am just starting a new leg) but at times I wish they gave me more detailed distance (like when I have five miles or less until a turn). Because there is no way to preview the direction in advance, you also can’t look ahead to see what you will do after the specific leg of the trip. You had limited option for data to display on the map – you could choose from distance left, time left, or ETA (or all three). There was supposed to be an option for an audible speeding warning, but I never heard anything so it was not very effective.

My biggest complaint with the app was starting it up. Multiple times, at least 70% of the time, the app seemed to “freeze” when starting. If I rebooted my iPhone and went right into iGo, I had no problems. But if I ran another app, ANY other app first (voice memo, iPod, anything), the app would freeze and not load about 70% of the time. I don’t know if this is a problem with my iPhone (it is jailbroken) or with the app itself. Right now I don’t seem to be having that issue – but it happened enough times, on multiple days to make it a major concern. I did get around this by installing backgrounder and having the app run in the background. Then, when I wanted to go back into the app, it was already running so I had no problems.

The app also seemed to lose the GPS signal more than any other GPS app I have. It usually found it again within a minute or so, but that didn’t happen to any other GPS app I have tested. The ETA’s seemed to be off for longer distances – at one point it said I had about 70 miles left, and the trip would take about 2.5 hours. Unlike some of the other apps, the screen blank was disabled, meaning the app stayed on even without me doing anything (which I think is good). And like some others, this app could be viewed in landscape mode (a big plus!).

Conclusion

All in all, while I felt the user interface was a little less polished than some others, the quality of the maps, the good POI database, and the options for trip planning were nice pluses for this app. However, the problems with the app starting up prevent me from giving it a high rating. This may be due to my iPhone, and thus may not be an issue everyone else is going to experience, so take that into consideration. But if I can’t even get into an app to run it, pluses (like good maps, nice options) and minuses (no contact integration, shortest route isn’t always the shortest) take a back seat. At $79.99, this is a pricey app, so caution should be used before purchasing (check others to see if they had the same startup issues). As it is, I give it three out of five stars – if I didn’t have the startup problems, I would probably give it three and a half or four stars out of five. (I welcome and will post any comments from the app programmers in response to this review)

Pros

• Very detailed maps
• Great side by side comparison of routing options
• Good POI database

Cons

• No “travel via” option
• Some problems with starting the app
• Route options aren’t logical
• Limited trip overview options

TiPb Review Rating

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App Review: iGo My Way 2009 – North America

(Goviko Navigator for iPhone Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

Gokivo [$4.99 - iTunes link] is the next GPS application in the increasingly long list of iPhone GPS turn-by-turn apps. First off, when I started the app, I got a little confused because it looks almost exactly like Google Maps (in fact, it may literally be the same). But the interface expands beyond Google Maps. When you put in a term for searching, you get an expanded list of options – including using local Yahoo lists, categories, your contact list, etc.

To use the app, you simply choose your destination (either as an address, contact book entry, local business, etc). From there you can choose to “Bo Navigate” (which is the Gokivo app). Warning – don’t choose “directions” – this is the Google map directions. I had a slight problem once where I went into “directions” and actually got into Google Maps, and I couldn’t get back to the Gokivo app. There are no settings initially to choose route types or preferences – those can be adjusted later.

The directions provided seems pretty straightforward. It didn’t have some of the features that the other apps has (like speeding warning) but it did have traffic warnings. You can also view standard options like ETA, distance to arrival, etc. The POI database appears to be based on local Yahoo data, so it is pretty robust. I put in some obscure locations and it was still able to find them with relative ease. The choice of routes was pretty standard, no real problems or anything, although as with all the apps the ETA was slightly longer than I have seen in reality.

You can review your directions before you take the trip, either in a list form or in a simulated trip form. It does have text to speech, so it reads the road names for you (a feature that I think is great). Because the maps are (seemingly) based on Google maps, there is little footprint on your iPhone. So you do need to have a phone (or internet?) connection to use the app – the maps aren’t stored on the device. You can also play your music while in the app.

The app use is very nice – the voice is clear, the directions are announced in plenty of time before the actual turn, and the map itself is easy to read. There wasn’t any option I could find to add an interim destination, but all destinations are saved in recents, so you can easily reroute yourself if you change your plans. The maps are very clean – not a lot of clutter making them very easy to read while using the app.

So let’s discuss the pricing plan, which has it’s plusses and minuses. The price is only $4.99, and this gives you 30 days of access. However, unlike the AT&T Navigator, you don’t automatically get rebilled for a new month. You can choose to purchase a new month, or you can wait until you need it again, then purchase a new month. Each month that is purchased is $9.99 [Gokivo has announced this will soon drop to $4.99 -- Rene]. This is, IMO, better than the automatic billing of AT&T Navigator, but ultimately I still prefer to have an upfront cost and not be billed every month. But if you would be using a GPS app sporadically, this may be an ideal solution for you – provided you will have phone coverage where you are going.

Conclusion

All in all, I think Gokivo is a strong competitor in the GPS turn-by-turn market, giving it’s variation on the monthly pricing scheme. I still don’t like the fact you need to have a data connection, and I found the menus to be a little difficult to use while in the car (unlike the apps that have very large, easy to hit “buttons”). But for people who will only sporadically use a GPS app, this might be a top solution. Combined with their use of Yahoo for a POI database, it holds its own in the market. For a $9.99 initial price (for one month, too bad they don’t give you two months or something to start!), I give it four out of five stars.

Pros

• Text to speech
• Simple interface
• Pay as you go
• In app song control
• Uses Yahoo for POI

Cons

• Pay as you go
• Buttons for in car use not intuitive
• Need to have data connection (maps no on device)

TiPb Review Rating

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App Review: Gokivo Navigator Turn by Turn GPS for iPhone

TomTom has finally gotten around to revealing the price point for their much anticipated iPhone car kit, which provides its own GPS as well as iPhone charger, loud speaker, and hands-free dialing.

TomTom car kit for the iPhone will have a recommended retail price of EUR 99.99 or USD 119.95.

The TomTom car kit will be available this October and will be sold separately from the TomTom app. It will be compatible with the iPhone 2G, 3G and 3GS.

When you add in the price of the TomTom iPhone app, that more than $200 for the combo, not exactly a bargain compared to a stand-alone GPS device. Then again, this saves you having to carry around a second device just for GPS, so does convenience trump cost, or does TomTom need to rethink their business model here?

Could they offer a second version of the TomTom app — one that only works with the car kit — at a greatly discounted price for those who shell out for the car kit? More importantly, should they?

[Via GPSTracklog via TUAW]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TomTom iPhone Car Kit Pricing Revealed

NAVIGON North America [$89.99 - iTunes link], just let us know that, fresh off adding text-to-speech for street names, they’ll soon be adding real-time speed information from actual drivers on the road, traffic messages, road sensors and cameras, and historic traffic flow data to reroute iPhone users around problem areas.

Billed as NAVIGON Traffic Live, it will be available in October and sold as an in-app purchase to existing MobileNavigator users. The added functionality will run $24.99, but go for $19.99 special introductory pricing at launch. And as with the main app, there’s no monthly subscription cost.

Will iPhone users be willing to pay more to get more? That remains a question. We’ve asked before for premium apps, and said we’d pay a premium price for them, and this is certainly an example of that kind of App Store model.

However, by aggressively adding new features so rapidly, NAVIGON is setting the pace when it comes to turn-by-turn GPS navigation on the iPhone. Users of up-front, subscription, and even crowd-sourced mapping apps will all benefit from that.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

NAVIGON MobileNavigator North America Brings Traffic Live to iPhone Turn-by-Turn GPS Navigation

(Sygic MobileMaps US for iPhone Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

In the turn by turn wars, Sygic has entered the fray with their Mobile Maps US. They also have versions for a number of other countries. Like all turn by turn apps, this one allows you to create navigation routes, utilize points of interest (POI), and assists in the actual driving of the route by giving you turn-by-turn directions. So how does it compare? Read on to find out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code for this app.

First thing I want to say is I love the interface. Probably this was my favorite of all four apps I have tested so far. The buttons are clear and large, meaning they are easy to read and easy to selection. The options make sense (such as “route”, “settings”, “navigate to”). I never found myself trying to figure out what button I needed to hit.

The routing overview options are great – you can see the instructions, see the route as images, see a summary, see a demo of the route, and even show a large map with your route. Likewise, when choosing a navigation point, there are a number of clear options – point on a map, GPS position, city center, address, POI, etc. Unfortunately there is no integration with your iPhone contacts – something that I would consider almost essential for any turn by turn GPS app.

When creating a route, you have some nice options I haven’t seen in some of the other apps. You can choose shortest and fastest (pretty standard), but you can also choose economical, pedestrian, and bicycle. Unfortunately you need to choose these in the settings, and can’t adjust them on a trip by trip basis. You do have the option of requesting an “alternate route” once your route is created, but it will still use your existing preferences. You can also choose to add an intermediate point (travel via…) if you want to go by a specific city or town. You can also choose to avoid an upcoming segment (the next mile, the next ½ mile, etc). Unfortunately, you can’t do this in advance to avoid a specific segment of the trip, it only avoids the next immediate segment. Lastly, you can choose to avoid traffic delays, but I am not sure if this downloads actual traffic data, or bases it on travelling through a city center (or historical traffic data). I tried it a couple of times, but didn’t find any change in my planned route.

When driving, you can have a speed warning option turned on, that will warn you when you are going over a speed limit by a user-defined amount. There is supposed to be an audible warning, but I never heard one. In addition, the speed limits seemed somewhat variable – sometimes they were accurate, sometimes they were wrong, and sometimes they were missing. You have the option of defining some of the data that appears on the screen – ETA, distance remaining, speed, time remaining, etc. I like this a lot because it enables everyone to choose what information they would find most valuable. The driving interface is nice, pretty standard with views like “night time view”, and it can be viewed in landscape mode as well. The turn by turn directions are good, although it doesn’t read the street names (it does read highway route numbers, though). The voice also includes little qualifiers like “turn immediately” if you need to make a quick turn following another turn. I find information like this helpful when driving. You can also see the POI on the map as you are driving (and can choose which icons you are able to see). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyway within the app to disable the screen off function, so my screen kept turning off as I was driving.

So those are some of the good features about the Sygic app. Unfortunately, there were two really big flaws that were glaring. The first is when it comes to routing options – the routing options make no sense. Just like the other apps, I used this app to plan a route from Edinburg, TX to Terlingua, TX. A trip that I know is about 600 miles. I choose the shortest route, and it had me driving up THROUGH San Antonio – adding about 100 miles to the trip. I tried to hit “find alternate route”, and it took me up through Fort Worth…adding another 150 miles to the trip. So if I followed these directions, a 600 mile trip would have turned into a 700 or 850 mile trip. It was only after driving for about an hour on what I knew was the shortest route (or at least a shorter route) that the app finally gave me the instructions I wanted (which was calculated out to be shorter than the 700 miles it had suggested originally).

In addition, if you go off route, rather than trying to calculate a new route based on your current location, it seems to try to only get you BACK on to the previous route. So this app was telling me, at various times, to take a u-turn, drive back another 15 miles to the point where I went off the planned route, then continue from there. If I cancelled that route and created another one, that’s when it would then give me the best route from my current location.

Lastly, the maps seem very out of date. One of the first things I noticed was that the map for my home town didn’t have my street on it. Now, my street is fairly new (within the past 5 years) so maybe that was a simple mistake. But when I was planning my trip to Terlingua, TX, Terlingua didn’t even come up as a town in Texas! So in addition to missing roads, the app is missing whole towns. This may not be a factor if you are living in a large metropolitan area, but if could be a concern if you are living somewhere less developed (or travelling somewhere like that).

Driving around town I had no problems with this app. It seemed to have most of the POI that I was looking for (although the database was a little bit lacking). It also generally suggested reasonable routes to take (even if they weren’t the exact same ones I would have suggested). The real problems with this app came with the long distance travel.

Conclusion

All in all, there are many things I like about this app, but in the end the two glaring problems prevented me from giving it a strong recommendation. This app may be fine if you live and travel only in large, well known areas. But if you plan to go to smaller towns or visit newer roads, you will have a hard time using this app. These facts, combined with a few other flaws (lack of contact integration, poor route planning) leads me to reduce the rating, despite the great user interface and some nice features and options I haven’t seen on other TBT apps. For $39.99 [on sale, typically $59.99], I would expect to get accurate maps and better routing instructions. Three out of five stars. (I welcome and will post any comments from the app programmers in response to this review)

UPDATE

I just received an email from Sygic – contact integration and text to speech (reading road names) are going to be in the next update.

text-to-speech, i.e. voice guidance announcing the name of the next street or road in North America, Australia and New Zealand, the ability to choose addresses straight from iPhone contacts and navigate to them, smooth fading out of the music playback before the voice instructions, enhanced GPS lock, smoother position display when moving on the route. Also, the navigation will automatically resume after completion of phone call, without the need to tap the ‚Accept’ button anymore.

Pros:

• Includes nice routing options
• Can avoid upcoming route segments
• Nice interface and customization options

Cons

• No contact integration
• Maps out of date
• Sometimes route choices are questionable

TiPb Review Rating

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Review: Sygic MobileMaps US

(Co-Pilot Live 8 for iPhone Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)

With CoPilot Live North America [$34.99 - iTunes link] The march of GPS Turn-by-turn apps continued. (See the App Review master list, above, for reviews of AT&T Navigator, Navigon Mobile Navigator, iGo My Way, and Sygic Mobile Maps). In the interest of full disclosure, I received a promo code to review this app.

GPS Turn-by-turn apps all want to achieve the same goal – become the ultimate navigation assistant to help you when you are driving. So far the apps I have reviewed have had strong points and some weak points – each having some features that are nice, but no one app dominating the competition. CoPilot Live falls right in, with some compelling features but also lacking some features to put it over the top.

Let’s start with the interface. I love it. In my mind, a GPS TBT app should be easy to use and operate – large button, easy to read screen, easy to program, etc. For the most part, CoPilot live does a great job. When using the menu, the buttons are large and easy to read (and hit). The features are clearly outlined, and there is a systematic approach to the layout (I had very little hunting around trying to find a specific feature). Having said that, some of the buttons were a little small – including the button to get to the menu. Like some of the other apps, when typing in an address or name, this app would try to anticipate what you wanted, providing a list of matching names. I find this type of interface very helpful, as I don’t have to type out the entire name myself.

This app did have contact integration. One interesting thing about the contacts – not all of them were listed. I think it only lists contacts that have an actual address – which makes sense, if you think about it. The five or six I checked matched that criteria, but I didn’t check all the missing contacts. If that is accurate, I say kudos to CoPilot Live for including this feature which makes sense, but is missing from other apps!

The POI interests can be viewed while traveling, and entered as a destination as well. Like Navigon, the POI database seemed a little sparse – it didn’t have the school I work for listed as a POI, and it is the tenth largest University in Texas (or something like that). Hopefully this will be something that can be added to in future updates.

I liked the use of the app as well. It was quick to pick up a signal, and I didn’t lose it once. You can choose POI to be displayed. There is supposedly a feature for lane assistance, but I couldn’t get it to work – possibly due to the fact I live in the outskirts of civilization here in Texas. WHen you have a map created, there were also options to choose an alternate route, and the option to avoid certain segments of your trip! Something I have been looking for in the other apps. Unfortunately, I tried it out, and it didn’t seem to make any different in the trip plans (the route was still listed as the same). It’s possible that I needed to actually REACH that road to avoid it, but I am not sure (especially since I asked to avoid a 163 mile segment of highway…I would have thought it would recalculate a large portion of a trip in that case). Unfortunately, there is no option to indicate a preferred road.

There are a number of live features that are supposed to be added – including weather (where you are, or your destination), traffic, and friends (which I assume finds contacts in the area?). However, the traffic and friends options were greyed out. The traffic is listed as being a premium extra that you have to pay for in future updates. The weather worked very well.

Another nice feature that I have only seen sporadically is the ability to add stops during your trip. You can even optimize them and plan for rest locations. While driving, you have various settings you can tweak – including when the app will warn you about an upcoming turn, how the map is viewed (2D, 3D, or 2D with next turn). You have preview options of seeing the whole trip, running a simulation of the trip, seeing an itinerary, or even going through the trip turn by turn. Nice options there. The screen itself also allows for two displays – you can have things like speed, ETA, distance left, etc. I didn’t see any option for speed limit warning, although other reviews have mentioned them. I might be blind, or it might be limited to other maps (UK or Europe, for example).

The biggest issue I had with CoPilot live was the choice of routes. Again, for small, everyday routes, the directions seemed very accurate. If the road was listed (there were a few times where newer roads weren’t on the map – my home street was not listed for planning directions), the route was very straightforward. However, for longer routes, I had some problems. You can choose between a quickest, shortest, and economical routes (with specifications for avoiding tolls roads and similar options). Now, I plugged in the same trip I have been doing for all the apps – Edinburg, TX to Terlingua, TX. About 600 miles as I drive it. The shortest route came up with the standart shortest route (by miles) at about 590 miles. However, the quickest route had me going about 100 miles out of my way, up to San Antonio. And the ETA’s for both of the trips was, well, insanely wrong. The trip has taken between between 10 and 12 hours. The estimated travel time for the quickest route (690 miles) was 18 hours. For the shortest route (590 miles) it was over 20 hours. Now, I could understand if it was driving back roads the whole time, but we are talking about driving on highways with a 70 or 75 mph speed limit!

As I previously said, I tried to “tweak” my route by indicating sections of the road to avoid (hoping that it would get me a route that I have taken in the past), but the map didn’t appear to change – despite the fact I said I wanted to detour around 163 miles of highway. Maybe some of these issues are due to the fact I am not trying it out in a big metropolitan area, and if you live in an area like that you won’t have any of the problems. But ultimately the app is supposed to be for anywhere in North America, so I should still be able to use it here, out in the middle of no where.

Conclusion

All in all, this app had some very strong points and some areas that clearly needed work. The interface and some of the options were absolutely great, but ultimately it is about driving and the routes. As such, given that it estimated a trip I know only take about 10 hours as a 18 to 20 hour trip, I can’t help but question the accuracy of it’s route choices for long distance trips. Some of the features (like road detours) didn’t seem to have any obvious effect on the routes and maps, but it could be that the effect would only be obvious when I got to that segment of the trip. At $34.99, the app is far from the most expensive, and for that money it delivered a reasonable GPS experience. But until the routing issues are fixed, I can only give it three and a half out of five stars.

Pros:

• Great interface
• good integration with contacts

Cons:

• POI database is lacking
• Some features appear to be disabled or don’t work
• Trip time estimation is way off

TiPb Review Rating

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App Review: CoPilot Live North America Turn-by-Turn Navigation for iPhone

UPDATED: Here’re the US deets: TomTom US & Canada [$99.99 - iTunes link], TomTom Australia [$79.99 - iTunes link], TomTom New Zealand [$94.99 - iTunes link], TomTom Western Europe [$139.99 - iTunes link]

ORIGINAL: TomTom [iTunes publisher link], the long-anticipated turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone is beginning to appear in international App Stores, starting with New Zealand and according to our tipsters, rolling across Australia and the UK.

Cost wise, the different versions (US & Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand) range in price from NZ$105 (US$70) to NZ$179 (US$120).

Hopefully it will hit all the stores, including the US (and Canada!) sooner rather than later. If you find it in your local App Store, drop us a note in the comments. (Still no word, however, on the accompanying dock that was announced at WWDC 2009…)

[Thanks to Tyler from App Advice, David, Niall everyone who sent this in!]

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UPDATED: TomTom Turn-by-Turn Navigation for iPhone Beginning to Appear in International App Stores