Navigon MobileNavigator App Bests Standalone Devices
by Adam C. Engst TidBITS
06 Dec 2010Perhaps my favorite piece of consumer electronics over the past five years has been the car navigation GPS device, and I've reviewed a slew of them in TidBITS in that time (see our series "Find Yourself with GPS [1]"). But don't go looking for most of those models because they likely aren't available any more-the field moves quickly, rendering older models obsolete.
My dirty little secret is that although I recommended these devices to friends and relatives, I never bought one for myself, since they were never quite perfect (though I liked the Garmin n=FCvi 255W quite a lot). I could see that the state of the art kept changing, and I didn't want to get stuck with a model that suffered greatly in comparison with later incarnations. You'll also notice that the last review in that series compared the device to early iPhone GPS navigation apps, G-Map and AT&T Navigator. I didn't feel that I could quite trust either of those in stressful driving situations.
Hence my gift suggestion this year, for anyone who has an iPhone and could use navigation help when travelling in unfamiliar environs, is a GPS iPhone app I've tested extensively and feel comfortable recommending: Navigon MobileNavigator [2] (hereafter referred to as Navigon). Put simply, Navigon is as good as or better than every standalone GPS device I've used, with only a few minor qualifications.
=2E..