4071 miles with ALK's CoPilot Live - One Guy's View

I just completed a wonderful trip that covered 4071 miles of driving through 15 states over the past 20 days. The journey began in Iowa with a trip to Washington DC. From there, we wandered down to Florida, returning to Iowa at the end of the trip.

This journey also marked the first time that I decided to try smartphone based satellite navigation for the entire trip. This is far from the first time I've driven these types of trips with a GPS. Since the early days of the original Garmin StreetPilot III, I've traveled 10's of thousands of miles with, at last count, over 8 different GPS devices. Before this trip though, none have been a smartphone based solution.

Let's get to the verdict on smartphone navigation first. It has arrived - it is ready for prime time and it can easily be considered someone's primary navigation tool. My hardware was a CDMA phone on the Sprint network - a HTC Touch Pro 2 running Windows Mobile v6.5. From the title of this post, you can assume that I used ALK's CoPilot Live v8 for Windows Mobile - a solution that stores maps locally (on an SD card) and does not require a cell signal for basic navigation functionality. This was a stable solution for the entire trip. I was able to navigate while placing calls, receive calls while navigating, receive and respond to the occasional text message and even use Google Maps simultaneously on occasion. For me, the days of thinking that a stand alone PND is needed for "real" navigation are gone - so is the justification for spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated PND.

On this trip, I ran the above setup simultaneously with my Garmin Nuvi 760. I did this for backup and also for comparison. This will not be a comparison of Garmin vs. CoPilot Live. Garmin will only be mentioned herein as a point of comparison and reference.

ALK's CoPilot Live v8
I selected this as my software solution because in my opinion, it is the most complete of all of the Windows Mobile smartphone navigation solutions. It offers local map storage (about 1.5 GB), frequent map updates, an huge feature set and connected features. Finally, the price of ALK's CoPilot Live is small enough for it to be a "why not" decision. If the solution completely fails (which it doesn't) I am not out enough money to care.

For this trip, I had the latest CoPilot Live Windows Mobile software version. The maps were updated to the most recent full web download as well as the most current map "maintenance" update on the phone (one of which was released mid-trip). The Garmin Nuvi 760 also had current firmware and the latest quarterly Garmin map update.

Feature and More Features
CoPilot Live offers a huge selection of options for the user. The feature set is robust even when comparing it to the most robust PND's on the market - at a fraction of the cost (assuming you already own a smartphone of course). Some of the features to note includes:

• User importable POI files (in CSV or OV2 format). This is a great feature that is found no where else but standalone PND products. This feature allows you to build a robust collection of POI's for your trip in a product like Google Maps. Using Google Maps, you can nail the exact location of the POI, down to the driveway using satellite view, then export the POI collection from Google Maps, convert it to OV2 and import it into CoPilot Live where you are able to navigate to it.
  
• Multi-point routing. On a 4017 mile trip - this is a must. This feature allows you to create multiple stops alone your route or can be used to control your route to force it to use certain roads.
• Detour. This is a feature that excels in CoPilot Live. Garmin users have been frustrated for years by the grade-school detour function in the Nuvi's - longing for the days of a real detour function that worked from the older StreetPilot line. In CoPilot Live the user controls the detour by selecting a specific road segment(s) to detour around. Another must feature on a long trip.

CoPilot Live - The Details
When you open CoPilot Live, I find the user-interface to be very well done. This is a product that doesn't require a manual for basic use. The majority of the screen is dedicated to the map. There is an (optional) compass on screen (hear that Garmin?), manual zoom icons, a single MENU button, and some small icon indicators that show the satellite signal status, traffic server status, ALK Live Link (location-based social network) status, and the routing profile type (car, RV, walking, etc.).

Pressing the MENU button brings you the features of CoPilot Live in all its glory. A wonderful feature of CoPilot's basic map screen is that if you tap any road on the map a pop-up flag tells you the address of the point you selected. Very nice. You can also tap any on-screen POI's displayed (more on this later) and it will tell you the details of the POI, including the ability to navigate to it.

Even with Windows v6.5 (some would say) limited resistive touch screen, my user experience with CoPilot Live far exceeds any experience that I've had with any Garmin PND, short of the Nuvi 885T with its robust voice command functionality. This software simply works like a touch screen app ought to work - with the ability to "throw" menus and lists up and down in a quick and fluid motion. Bravo to the UI designers of CoPilot Live.

When you select the MENU button, you are shown the most common choices:

• Destination (The POI Database)
• My Places (Personal Favorites)
• Quick Stop (A select shortcut to a few common traveler POI categories)
• Detour
• Live Services.

Selecting Detour allows you to pick an "alternate route" where the software does the thinking for you (not sure of the methodology here) or "Avoid Roads" which is the more powerful of the features. With "Avoid Roads" you are presented with a list of your upcoming maneuvers from which you can click on any of them to take them out of the route. You are then shown a map of an alternate route with that segment removed, along with the change in miles and minutes for the newly selected route. You can cancel or accept the change. You can also come back later and clear the previously detoured roads - a nice touch. The detour functionality is well implemented and a very nice feature.

The only room for improvement here is to allow the user to detour partial lengths of a road segment based on distance. Let's say that your route contains a 30 mile segment on I-80 and you come upon a road sign that warns of construction for the next 5 miles. When I select I-80 on the maneuver list, I'd like to be able to pick from a variety of lengths, up to the "entire segment" in order to detour around the construction but then jump back on after that.

The Destination option brings you to a robust selection of options to find your desired destination. The options include:

• Address - Self explanatory. More on this in a minute
• Points of Interest (The full POI Database)
• Contact - Route to anyone in your smartphone's contact file.
• Pick on Map - select any point on the map to navigate to
• Intersection - Self explanatory
• PhotoNav - Navigate to geocoded photos
• Coordinates - A GREAT feature that allows you to enter latitude/longitude coordinates and navigate to the location.

The address & intersection search functionality is the most rigid (this isn't good) of any PND that I've ever used. You absolutely have to nail the EXACT address or you will not find your location. This includes knowing the exact prefix (NE, SW, etc.) and suffix (St, Dr, Ave, etc.) of the address or intersection. To illustrate this frustrating behavior - consider the well known intersection of State and Lake in Chicago, IL - the site of a major subway transit hub station.

When searching for an Intersection, first you must know the city. At first blush, this doesn't seem to be a big deal. But consider a suburban area in San Francisco or other major city - are you positive that you know the exact city boundaries to know what city as address is in? Contrast this to Garmin's method of searching where the City is optional. If you don't enter a city, it shows you all occurrences of the address and lets you decide.

Back to our State and Lake example....once I enter the City, I am asked to enter the first street name. I type LAKE and am presented with:

• East Lake Street
• Lake
• Lake Street
• West Lake Street
• others....
  

I'll pick Lake, because I don't know the prefix and suffix of the infamous State and Lake intersection. I am then asked to enter the second street name. I enter STATE. Nothing is found. I then go back and select East Lake Street. When I enter the second street name as STATE, it finds nothing. I then go back for a third time and pick Lake Street. I then enter the second street name (STATE) and it again finds NOTHING. I go back for a 4th time and select West Lake Street. I enter the second street name (STATE) and it finds NOTHING.

I've gone through 4 attempts and CoPilot Live is convinced that State & Lake in Chicago, IL doesn't exist. Try this on a Garmin and you'll find the intersection of State & Lake in about 15 seconds. Try it in Google Maps and you'll find State & Lake as quickly as you can type.

I don't pretend to know the technical details of the technical challenge of this task. All I know is that CoPilot Live utterly fails when it comes to easily finding addresses and intersections in a user friendly way. It badly lags the standard set by the competition.

If anyone is successful in searching for the intersection of State and Lake in Chicago, IL - I'd love to hear how long it took you! Here is what it ultimately takes:

• First you must know that State Street is this specific location is actually NORTH State Street.
  
• When you scroll down the list when typing STATE, you eventually find North State Street.
  
• The Lake Street intersection, according to CoPilot Live, is actually WEST Lake Street. This isn't technically accurate though, because State Street is the dividing line between West and East in Chicago. Both West Lake Street and East Lake Street intersects with State Street. According to CoPilot Live East Lake Street and North State Street do not intersect.
• Once you look for North State Street and West Lake Street, you will find this intersection.

No one except an expert in Chicago streets would know the details necessary to find this simple intersection in CoPilot Live. The rigidity of this feature is maddening and I'd love to hear ALK's defense for it.

There are multiple options for searching for locations. You can select:

• Nearby
• In Different City
• On My Route

Unfortunately, CoPilot Live inexplicably leaves out "Near My Destination" as a search option, despite it showing up only in the Live Weather functionality (see later). Near My Destination is a very useful feature in an unfamiliar area. Example: You land at an airport and are traveling to your hotel - show me restaurants "near my destination" so that I can go there first, without going to the hotel first, but without straying too far away from it either.

My other complaint with the location search and selection functionality is that there is no way to search for a POI and add it to your current route unless you start in the Plan or Edit Trip module. For example, if you are traveling down the road and you are in routing mode and decide you are hungry, you might start to search for restaurants. If you find one, when you select it and route to it, that action completely replaces everything in your current route. Contrast that to a Garmin Nuvi when if you search for and select a POI while routing, the Nuvi asks you "add to current route" or "add as new destination?"

My Places contains

• Presets for Home and Work.
• Recent (a list of recently found/used locations)
• Favorites
• Edit (a method of editing your Favorites list)

This all works well and as expected. My biggest complaint about Favorites is that there is no way to see a map of your Favorites location when you select it. When searching for POI's in CoPilot Live, there is always an option to "Show on Map" to see the location visually. There is no such functionality for favorites.

There are actually multiple pages of buttons after selecting the Menu button. Page "2" offers you:

• Plan or Edit Trip - a robust trip planning module and allows you to manage your trip, including multiple stop trips. A wonderful feature here is the ability to save your trip to local storage and recall it later for use.
  
• Driving Views - set defaults for 2D, 3D, etc.,
• Save Current Location - quickly turn your current location into a Favorite. Very frustrating that unlike "Send Location" the actual street address of your current location is never exposed to you here, or in the actual Favorites section of the software.
  
• Settings - more on this later.

Page "3" offers you:

• Get Maps (download new maps directly from your smartphone. Great but at 1.0 GB+ in size, the use is limited).
• Updates - where you download monthly map maintenance updates.
• Switch Maps - allows you to switch between maps if you have several Countries for example.
• Send Location - A nice feature to text message your current location, converted to street address format.
  

Page "4" exists but is inexplicably blank. Not sure why - but the extra page button click is mildly annoying.

Plan or Edit Trip - The Details
Let's look at this feature in more detail. The Plan or Edit Trip function will either be blank (if you come to this feature without being in a current route) or it will contain your current destination if you are already in routing mode. There are 4 options here:

• Add Stop
• Options
• Show Route
• Go

The Add Stop feature takes you to the full "Location Selection" functionality of the product. You can add stops by searching:

• Address
• My Places
• Points of Interest
• Current GPS Location
• Contacts (from your smartphone contact file)
• Pick on Map
• Intersection
• Coordinates (Latitude/Longitude)
• PhotoNav

This is a very robust and well done selection of selection options.

Once you have all of your stops entered, you can have the software auto-optimize them in the order that makes the most "driving sense." You can also manually arrange stops to meet your needs. Other options include determining the fuel cost based on a user entered MPG and $/Gallon.

You will find a "Take Breaks" feature here, that seems to be intended to introduce overnight stops. You select options like "every x hours, take a break for y hours." 'X' can be no less than 4 hours and 'y' can range from 1/2 hour to 8 hours.

A feature that I use a lot from the Plan or Edit Trip menu is "Show Route." It shows the overall calculated route, including total distance and total travel time. This makes for a good reality check to ensure that CoPilot Live is taking you on the route that you think it should take you on.

Within the Plan or Edit Trip functionality, there are some roadblocks. If you have multiple stops in your route, CoPilot Live does not show you the ETA at your final destination. It only shows you the ETA at your next destination. Let's say that you have a 4 hour trip and you have a stop at a fast food restaurant and a rest area. It is utterly irrelevant what time I arrive at the fast food restaurant. What I want to know is what time I will arrive at my final destination, in order to determine how quickly I need to get through the fast food restaurant.

There is a way to get this information that involves changing an interim route stop to a "waypoint." When you do this, then you are shown your final destination's ETA. However, when you set a stop as a waypoint, it doesn't actually route you to the exact location of the waypoint. Instead, it routes you "towards" the waypoint but when you get within a few miles of it, the program says that you are close to your waypoint and then recalculates the route to your next location. If you don't know the exact location of your waypoint, then this feature doesn't work, because it will never route you exactly to it.

There are a few uses of the waypoint functionality that makes sense. For example, you can quickly/graphically set a bypass around a city. You can also use this to force a route a different way than what might make mathematical sense without worrying whether you have accurately pinpointed an actual location on a legitimate road on your desired route.

Multi-Point routing is great, but CoPilot Live really needs to figure out a way to show you your final destination's ETA.

Settings in Detail
The Settings features gives you the following options:

• Routing: Set personal preferences for Vehicle Type (Car, RV, Motorcycle, Bike, Walking). Set Toll Road preferences. Set scenic route preference, propane-restricted tunnels, ferry preferences and whether to cross international borders.
• Map Styles: Separate map choices for Day or Night.
• Map Display: Heading up or North Up in 2D mode.
• Sound: Volume setting, "welcome message" on/off, mute and button click sounds
• GPS: Current lat/lon, date/time, speed, elevation, and a satellite reception map.
• POI Display - Nice feature! Allows you to select which POI's to display on the map and when to display them. This is great for driving down the interstate. You can have it show you gas and restaurants on the map as you drive. Clicking any of the icons shows you what the POI is and allows you to route to it.
• POI Alerts: This allows you to be automatically alerted to a POI category (or group of categories) at a preset distance that you specify. This includes setting whether the POI must occur ON your route or NEAR your route. This is a great feature. I use it in conjunction with a custom Timezone POI file that I downloaded and imported. Now CoPilot Live automatically alerts me as I approach a change in timezone. Very nice!
• Manage POIs: Here you can manage the POI files that you import.
• Turn Warnings: Set when you'd like to be notified of an upcoming turn.
• Driver Safety: A setting to "Display Map Near Turns." As far as I can tell this feature does nothing in the US.
• ClearTurn: A setting to "Display ClearTurn Near Exits." This is another feature that I find no evidence that it actually does anything in the US>
• Language and Voice: Voice Settings, including TTS.
• Speech: Sets whether TTS is used in some program voice prompts.
• Day/Night Mode. Settings to switch between Day/Night Mode. An expected feature, but a disappointing implementation. CoPilot doesn't use an astronomical clock in its programming. The switch between day/night is at a fixed time of day and is unrelated to the sunrise/sunset times of the seasons. That means that at 7pm at night in the middle of summer, CoPilot Live will switch to night mode despite there being full sun out. Annoying and disappointing.
• Units of Measure: Metric or English. Note that despite this setting, the Traffic application (not discussed yet) still reports problems on freeway exit and entrance ramps as "Slip Roads" using terminology from the UK.
• Screen Orientation: Portrait / Landscape or device setting.
• Backlight
• Info Bar - Some nice customization options for what is shown on screen during routing.
• Themes - A feature without a purpose. Only default is available.
• Routing Profiles - Allows for permanent settings of routing profiles, including whether road types are favorable or not (4 levels of options) and the speed at which to set for that road type. The program allows you to set multiple profiles and use them at your whim in an individual route. A useful options might be a routing profile for your car and routing profile for your RV - each with different options set for speed and road preferences. Great idea, but the feature simply doesn't work. When you create multiple profiles and change the road preference or speed settings in one profile it changes it all profiles. Great idea - but sloppy implementation.
• GPS Track Playback. Allows you to play back "tracks" of a previous journey. You can also upload tracks, presumably which feeds ALK's mapping database. Unfortunately, I've never gotten this upload feature to work (yes, I am using WiFi) after many, many tries. The feature ultimately says either it has encountered a server error or a memory allocation error.

Live Services
Live services brings to life everything that smartphone based navigation should be. There is a decent bandwidth data connection at your finger tips - my expectation is that a good smartphone navigation software should use it - or it failed to live up to its potential. ALK has implemented a decent set of connected features including:

• Live Local Search (provider undisclosed)
• Live Traffic
• Live Link (a social networking location sharing app)
• Live Weather
• Fuel Prices

Local Search allows you to search online for Nearby or In Another City for any search term you enter. Inexplicably, there is no "along route" option here, despite that being a standard search type in all other areas of the application. There is a nice feature here to view the results of the search on a map so you can see where the results are compared to your current destination.

Live Traffic is powered by Inrix. CoPilot Live, when it comes to traffic data, is the most robust traffic solution available that I am aware of. It contains all of Inrix's markets. I've found the traffic data to be very accurate. Unfortunately, the implementation of traffic in the program has dramatically failed. See "The Ugly" commentary below.

Live Weather returns a simple 5 day weather forecast either Locally, "At My Destination" or "In Another City."

Fuel Prices does what you expect. Again though, there is no "On My Route" functionality. I am not sure that a Fuel Price search function makes sense without an "On My Route" option, especially for Freeway driving.

I'd like to see more done here. I'd like to see Twitter integration to post my location periodically on a long trip. I'd like to see movies times and locations.

The Ugly
OK - so despite a few bugs and complaints sprinkled throughout the discussion above, it would seem as though the CoPilot Live solution is the ultimate navigation solution. CoPilot Live is a very good choice, however, it is not without its issues - some minor and some major. Now let's discuss the major issues.

Maps
To say I am disappointing in the maps isn't quite accurate. When I bought this program for less than $35 I anticipated the maps would be less than perfect. I anticipated the worst and hoped for the best. I got neither. The maps aren't horrible but they aren't great either. I guess I ended up getting what I expected for $35. Given how good CoPilot Live is when it comes to the user experience, I wish ALK would just buy Navteq maps and charge us $50 or $60 for the program instead.

My first GPS experience dates back to the days that Navteq only had coverage in major cities. To get "nationwide" coverage on a Garmin back then, you had to combine the Navteq product with a product called MetroGuide. You'd deal with fun things like Navteq knowing about a highway bypass around a city but MetroGuide not, so the highways don't met up - resulting in a massive detour or a "you can't get there from here" message.

Since the day that Navteq starting accepting user error reports, I've submitted them. I've tried to religiously submit them. Back then, you'd wait 12 - 18 months to see your submission reflected in your PND. I have submitted more map error reports to ALK in the 10 months that I've owned this product than I have to Navteq over multiple years.

On this 4o71 mile trip, I have tracked (and will submit to ALK) a total of 19 map errors that impacted my trip. Of these 19 maps errors, NONE of them were problems on my Garmin Nuvi 760. ALK does have a MapSure program that promises corrections based on map reports within 45 days. This has resulted in the maps in my area being, perhaps, a little MORE accurate than Navteq, based on quick 45 day turnarounds to my own reports in my area. However, overall, from my experience on this 4071 mile trip, the maps we are starting with in CoPilot Live have some significant accuracy issues. What is most disappointing is the nature of the errors that I found:

• Getting the direction of highway/interstates wrong. For example, calling something Highway 5 North when it is actually Highway 5 South. This happened at least 4 times on this trip alone. This happened when traveling northbound on I-55N and turning onto I-270W in the St Louis, MO area. CoPilot calls this I-270N - it's not, never has been and this intersection hasn't changed in years.
• Completely wrong configurations on major roads. For example, the intersection of the Florida Turnpike with I-75 in Florida isn't correct in CoPilot Live.
• CoPilot Live thinks you can go from Osceola Parkway eastbound, to I-4 southbound to US-192 westbound in Orlando. You can't - and you haven't been able to for years.
• Major POI's not correct. CoPilot Live took me to the old (closed) Indianapolis Airport Terminal that closed 1.5 YEARS ago.

While ALK might have saved us a few dollars by not using Navteq maps, it results in a program that I will forever second guess because of finding so many errors in the maps compared to the same trip with my Garmin Nuvi.

The mapping data also appears to not have any speed limit attributes as is common now on Garmin and TomTom devices. I do not know this for a fact, but base it on my experience using the program. The biggest issue I encountered was when routing on what is technically a state or county highway, but it runs through a city. In the Route Profile settings, you can set a divided highway favorability and speed. I favor divided highways and set the speed for 45 MPH. However, there is a big difference between US-280 that runs through the country through Georgia and Alabama (allowing you to bypass Atlanta when coming from Florida) and US-280 through Birmingham, AL that routes smack through the center of the City and contains numerous stoplights, congestion and slow driving.

To CoPilot Live, these two contrasts appear to be treated the same - from what I conclude is the lack of knowledge of speed limits like Navteq data. Garmin fought me tooth and nail as I traveled US-280 through Birmingham, AL. It nearly begged me to get on an Interstate through the City. I stayed the course because this was a 4071 test of CoPilot Live, but Garmin, armed with Navteq data clearly had the upper hand in this particular situation.

That is not to say that Garmin lead the way when it came to routing. It didn't. Based on my tweaked route preferences, CoPilot often picked the better non-Interstate routes and Garmin would reroute and attempt to "catch up" to what I was doing. Various times, the Garmin would recalculate and eventually knock 20 minutes off a 4 hour ETA. CoPilot worked well in these circumstances. But CoPilot clearly needs some differentiation between a rural and a city highway when lower speed limits and stoplights are involved.

Traffic Feature
Very seldom do I find such a dichotomy in a product. With CoPilot Live's traffic features I've found one. There is no better solution from a traffic content standpoint. Having access to the complete Inrix data, delivered over a robust high speed data connection is about as good as it gets. The implementation of that data within the product is a complete disaster however.

Here we have an app that is reporting traffic incidents and those incidents (when you read the text descriptions) are reporting flow rates (i.e., congestion: 25 mph) yet the applications doesn't take any of that data into account when determining a route, calculating a detour or displaying your ETA. Despite reporting traffic data to you, that traffic data is not used when calculating a route. While you do have the ability to manually detour around a reported traffic incident, the applications gives you no data by which to make that decision. Should I detour around this Interstate backup? Hmmm....CoPilot Live is reporting that the detour is +3.5 miles and +5 minutes, however, that information doesn't take traffic information on the proposed route into account either. And the +5 minutes doesn't include any delay on your current route because the program isn't smart enough to tell you the delay resulting from the very traffic delay that it is reporting to you.

This all came to head crossing I-80 through Chicago to Indiana on this trip. The Inrix data was very, very accurate, reporting the multitude of problems that existed on this stretch of Hell Highway. As CoPilot Live continued to report "Traffic Incident" our response after awhile was "no shit." We are SITTING in the traffic, we know it is there. The question is what do I DO about it? CoPilot Live, unfortunately, gives you no ability to answer that question.

A traffic solution that doesn't take the very traffic it is reporting into account in the program in any way is undeserving of being called a traffic solution. I turned to Garmin's old-school FM-TMC traffic to get me through this mess and, despite low bandwidth, limited segmented flow data and mediocre coverage, it at least worked.

Conclusion
I find ALK's CoPilot Live solution to be a very good solution in the smartphone marketplace. It has a robust feature set that rivals even the best PND's. The user interface is the best of any device I've used. As with any device or software, there are limitations and problems that sometimes get in the way of a flawless user experience. In the case of CoPilot Live, the map problems and the ridiculous traffic "feature" rise above the category of minor issues to the category of major problems. That being said, before and after this trip, CoPilot Live is and remains the solution that I use first mainly because I've not found anything else that is better. Without these issues, I would be a wholehearted fanboy of CoPilot Live. With them, I use it because I've not yet found something better yet, but continue to look hard for and anticipate other options.

My Review and Commentary on Sprint Navigation powered by Telenav

Telenav recently had a blog post announcing the Review Us contest. See their blog post by clicking here. Here is my review of Sprint Navigator v2.8 for Windows Mobile.

I recently updated my HTC Touch Pro 2 to Sprint Navigation v2.8 from TeleNav. I have been on a personal quest to find the "right" navigation solution and have been for over 10 years now. My usage of a GPS falls into three categories: 1) navigating in familiar territory, but needing very accurate ETA's to know my arrival time at a familiar destination, 2) navigating in unfamiliar territory on business, again, where good arrival times are very important and 3) navigating on vacation where POI search and other "novelty" features are used more often.

About Me

Over the last 10 years, my experience with navigation devices includes: Garmin StreetPilot III, StreetPilot 2610, StreetPilot 2730, Garmin i5, Garmin C330, Garmin Nuvi 760, Garmin Nuvi 885T, Sprint Navigation, Dash Navigation, Toyota Gen6 in-dash and Hertz Neverlost. Yes, the exception of the Hertz Neverlost system, I've owned all of those devices. I am a bit of a technology fanatic and love navigation products.

Where does Sprint Navigation Fit?

Sprint Navigation is, of course, a solution that first and foremost doesn't require a user to carry another device. That, in and of itself, could be a strong motivation for some users who prefer to carry a single device. In addition, navigation solutions on a cellular phone by definition are "connected" navigation devices, meaning that the software has a data connection available to deliver content to the application. While some separate navigation solutions do have data connections through a cellular network, it requires a separate subscription cost in most cases. Sprint Navigation is powered by TeleNav - a company that has been around the phone-based navigation for quite some time and can easily be considered the leader in this niche. I find the Sprint Navigation product to be far more superior to the Verizon VZ Navigator product.

When it comes to navigation on-board mobile phones, there are two options: maps stored locally on your device or maps that are delivered through the phone's data connection.

There are very strong pros and cons when it comes to determining whether you want to use locally stored or "connected" maps. The method of map storage can be more important than the features of the application for some users. If you want to use your navigation solution irrespective of whether you have a cellular data connection, then locally stored maps are your only choice. Sprint Navigation is not for you if this is your desire. However, locally stored maps take at least 1.5GB of storage space. With the low cost of large microSD cards, this concern is trivial in my opinion. Ask yourself whether you will use the navigation solution in areas where you have no cellular coverage to determine which approach is best for you.

The benefit of maps delivered through the cellular data connection is (theoretically) the maps can be more up to date.

Summary

Let's begin with the summary. Below you will find detailed discussion about why I summarized it as I did. How you rate Sprint Navigation depends on what you are comparing it to.

· When compared to other phone-based solutions with connected maps TeleNav leads the pack: 10 stars

o Comment: No other solution that I’ve seen competes in features, stability or the visual appeal of the product.

· When compared to other phone-based solutions irrespective of map delivery method, TeleNav is competitive: 7 stars

o Comment: Subscription fee is more costly than locally stored maps and with that, consumers expect more features. In some key features, TeleNav lags their competitors rather than leading them.

· When compared to other navigation solutions irrespective of platform, TeleNav has pros and cons: 5 stars

o Comment: TeleNav doesn’t deliver the breadth of features in a dedicated PND despite it being a capable product.

Cost Structure

There is a difference in cost when comparing Sprint Navigator with other solutions that store maps locally. Sprint Navigator is a reoccurring monthly subscription cost. This is typically in the range of $9.99 per month, though many Sprint plans include this as part of the plan - a significant benefit. Solutions that store maps locally, such as ALK's CoPilot Live v8 have a fixed upfront fee.

3-Year Cost Comparison

Assuming you keep your navigation solution for 3 years, your costs can vary greatly:

· Sprint Navigation

o 3 years @ $9.99 per month = $359.64

· ALK CoPilot Live v8

o ~$40 upfront (assume $20 version updates in years 2 and 3)

o ~$20*3 for connected services

o Total Cost over 3 years = $140

· Navigon:

o ~$100 (locally stored maps - no connected services on some platforms)

· Garmin Nuvi 1690:

o ~ $369

o $60 (connected service in year 3)

o $99 Lifetime map upgrade

o Total Cost over 3 years = $528

As you can see, Sprint Navigation offers a more economical cost than a Garmin Nuvi 1690 over 3 years. However, it is important to note that this does not mean that the feature sets and capabilities of the products are equal. There are definitely capabilities that a Nuvi 1690 has that Sprint Navigation does not and that may justify the cost difference for some users.

When compared to the ALK solution, you can see that there is a significant difference in cost when compared to Sprint Navigation. Justifying this cost difference is going to be the biggest long term struggle for a solution like TeleNav in my opinion. TeleNav has to knock us out with features that leverage their connected abilities to justify a price difference like this. Given the capabilities of a product like ALK CoPilot Live v8, I am not confident that they've done it to date. More on this later.

Nuts & Bolts

Let's get into the nuts and bolts of the application. First let me say that I've always found the TeleNav solution to be completely stable. I don't recall a crash of the application - ever. I have also found their software to be very nice visually. This is not a program that you need any kind of manual to operate. Just dive in and go. Very nice.

Main Screen

Very simple - easy to understand. Choice are: Drive To, Search, Maps & Traffic, Share & More. Very self explanatory. I know where I need to go. Well done.

“Drive To” Screen

This screen gives you a list of options that fill my Touch Pro 2's screen vertically. They are: Resume Trip (the last trip canceled), My Favorites, Recent Places, Address, Intersection, City, Business, Airport, Contacts. Very self explanatory.

My Favorites

This contains your personal list of saved locations. You can also store favorites by category. This feature somewhat leverages the connected nature of this program by allowing you to sync your favorites with a similar list stored on the TeleNav website. This is a nice feature and works well. On the TeleNav website, they offer a couple of browser plug-ins that make capturing addresses off the web very easy. These plug-ins capture the address off the web, place them in your favorites and then sync to your phone the next time you use Sprint Navigation. Very nice.

This is a feature where TeleNav has the ability to offer more, to leverage the connected features of their product and justify their continued subscription price. I personally hate storing my GPS favorites in multiple places. I don't like moving them from device to device when I switch devices. Nearly all online GIS solutions support GeoRSS feeds as a storage format for location data. Like regular RSS feeds, GeoRSS feeds can be subscribed to within any application that supports them. TeleNav could support GeoRSS feeds and allow us to subscribe (using the connected features of the phone) to any Internet-based location data in real time. If it is updated on the Internet, it would be updated in the software automatically. A real world example would be users that store their location data in Google MyMaps. Google MyMaps produces a GeoRSS feed that could be subscribed to in Sprint Navigation and your entire collection of Google MyMaps locations could be available at your fingertips. This is also a way that TeleNav could compete against the free navigation solutions from Google and Bing. Google Maps for Windows Mobile for example support Google MyMaps natively. It just doesn't have navigation features (yet). Why give up this feature to Google when there is a open standards way of offering the same feature?

Address / Intersection Entry

When selecting Address, Intersection, City, Business or Airport, you are presented with the option to "Speak it" or "Type it." There is an option menu that allows you to default to one or the other without prompting. "Speak it" is a nice option, but the implementation disappoints, especially after using free solutions from Google and Bing. Speak It does NOT use native voice recognition on the phone. It dials a number in California that you interact with using your voice. It then updates the application with the results when you hang up. This is better than nothing, as it does allow some handsfree use of the product. However, when compared to Google Maps and Bing's voice recognition feature where you speak directly into the phone, this is a disappointing and cumbersome implementation. It also takes a LONG time to interact with the robo-agent on the phone call versus simply speaking what you want to find into the phone. Not impressed with Speak It.

Address entry has one clumsy hiccup too. If I begin to enter the state "Missouri" into the State box, when I type M I, the results show the abbreviation for Michigan (MI) as the only option. It does not allow me to spell the State. I must know that the abbreviation for Missouri is MO and enter MO instead. This seems petty and clumsy.

Business

There is a fantastic array of POI's found under the Business icon. However, I find that their label "Business" is a bit of a misnomer. For example, you need to go to Business in order to find Wifi HotSpots, or Parking Lots, or City Parks, or Libraries or State Campgrounds. I don't consider those "businesses" in the traditional sense of the word. I would prefer that they stick to the nearly universally accepted term "Points of Interest" which is more intuitive. That said - the content here is great.

Wifi Hotspots tells you whether they are free or not. Very nice! There is a Gas By Price option that lets you pick the octane level. (However, there is no indication of how old the price data is). POI's are well done in this application.

Hopefully the fact that the POI’s are server-side means that POI’s will be more current. TeleNav could leverage the connected feature of this program by giving us a way to report bad POI’s directly from the POI listing in the application. These kinds of things would set them apart.

Contacts

This could be a very useful function. It brings your Outlook contacts into the navigation experience. If there is a contact on your phone and that contact has a properly formatted US address, you theoretically should be able to route to it. This works well some of the time. There are a couple issues. First, I have a very large contact file in Outlook. I have about 1800+ contacts. When I select the Contacts icon, Sprint Navigation presents me with a list of all of my 1800+ contacts - AFTER about a 1 minute wait. During that minute, there is no indication that the application is doing anything, other than it is not responsive to other actions. Certainly, I am not going to browse my 1800+ contacts to find the right one. This is purely a search function for me. Therefore, it doesn't do me much good personally, to have Sprint Navigation display my 1800+ contacts on the screen. I prefer this be a simple search function that THEN goes and retrieves only the relevant data AFTER I enter the search criteria. With 1800+ contacts presumably in memory now, anything I do, like entering characters in the Find field is slow to respond. There can be 10 - 20 second delays between entering a character and it appearing in the Find text box. This feature needs to be re-thought for people with large contact lists.

Second major problem with Contacts is that it is only useable with actual people (entries that have actual first and last name fields populated in Outlook). If the entry only has a company name, but no first and last person name - no go on this feature. The find field doesn't search the Company field at all. It does display all your contacts in the initial list that you can browse, including those contacts without a first and last personal name. However, even this listing that you can browse is not very functional. The list that you can browse does not show you the company name field either. So all you end up being able to see when you browse is the phone number(s) and street address. Unless you have the street address or phone number memorized, you have no idea which business contact you are looking at or selecting for routing. Even when you PRESS on a contact to view it, it does not show you the company field - only the street address.

This feature is a decent attempt, but really needs to be thought through some more, as it has limited use in real world usage.

The last issue with Contacts isn't a fault of the application, but a reality with how people store street addresses in Outlook. The application (or more likely TeleNav’s servers) has to take the street address from Outlook and geocode it to get latitude/longitude. This geocoding doesn't produce good results if the address in Outlook has unit numbers, suite numbers or other information other than strictly the street address.

Search

The Search menu is a very simple screen with What? Category? and Where? options. Category default to All and Where is set to Current Location - reasonable defaults for most people. The Where? option can be changed to a multitude of choices - very nice. You can also search "Along Route" when in routing mode. This is a nice feature. The Category? option can be refined to select a specific category to search within - further narrowing the results for relevance.

Search does contain sponsored ads which I find ridiculous for a paid application - especially one that is $9.99 per month. Shame on TeleNav for introducing ads into a program with an already generous cost.

There could be an improvement to the Along Route functionality that would be significantly beneficial to users. Right now the "Along Route" only shows you the total distance the resulting locations are away from your current location. TeleNav should take an example from the Dash Navigation playbook and show us how far the locations are AHEAD of our route AND *OFF* our route. For example, if I am traveling on the Interstate and I need gas, I can search Along Route for gas. There could be 2 stations that are both listed as 5 miles away. In reality, the first station could be 1 mile ahead, but 4 miles off the Interstate. The second station could be 4 miles ahead but 500 yards off the Interstate. Obviously, to most people, the second station would be significantly more attractive. There is no way to know this with this application or any other application that I know of (since Dash's demise). It is an opportunity for TeleNav to differentiate, since the heavy math behind this could be done server side.

Results in the POI searches are "rated" with stars. I have no idea what the source of this information is. Unless it is Yelp or TripAdvisor or some other well respected source of consumer rankings, I find little use in this feature and generally ignore it.

Maps & Traffic

This menu option shows you a map of your current location, as well as traffic conditions ON THE MAP if they are available. This is a nice presentation. There is an option menu that allows you to toggle 2D and 3D maps, share a location (via email or text message) and get a new map (for a location other than your current one).

The Share Location feature is very nice. The best part about this feature is that if the person you are sharing with also has Sprint Navigation, the location that you share with them can be routed to by them. This enables great "meet me" functionality.

There is another wonderful feature here called Cursor Address. This allows you to select a location on the map and have TeleNav reverse geocode it and give you the street address. This is great for determining where you are, what the address is for a noted feature around you, telling someone where to meet you, etc. The implementation of this is clumsy though compared to other options. ALK, for example, allows you to click anywhere on the map with your finger or stylus and the street address is immediately shown to you right on the map. This is possible though because ALK uses locally stored maps. TeleNav needs to do an online server look up, which is understandable. However, the method of picking the location still needs work. You cannot just point to a location on the map, then initiate the lookup function. The "selection cursor" is always in the center of the screen and you have to move the location of interest on the map TO the center of the screen. The problem is the map is not drawn in real time as you move it. So you have no idea whether you've moved the map far enough or too far until you lift the stylus off the screen and let the map redraw. It can take 3 or 4 tries before the actual location you want is in the center of the screen, ready for lookup. Very clumsy implementation, but a good feature.

Share & More

The Share & More screen gives you what you might suspect. You can Share Addresses from here with the default being sharing your current location. The My Stuff option shows you My Favorites, Recent Places, and Sent Addresses (those that have been shared). There is also a Record Location function which basically takes your current location and allows you to save it as a Favorite. This menu is where you will also find Preferences, Application version information, a Product Tour, etc.

Oddly, you will also find Movies in this section. Why TeleNav treats finding movie theaters differently from finding WiFi HotSpots or Gas Stations by Price, I am not sure. It seems to be a weird place for this search. It feels like this should be in the Business (though wrongly named) category. You can search by theaters or by movie, which is nice so you can ensure you are being routed to a theater that is playing your favorite movie.

What is not available in v2.8 is Weather functionality. This seems like an odd omission since it is readily available on other solutions and seems like an easy one to leverage the connected features of the product. In ALK's product for example, it is easy to find the weather near your current location or any other location for that matter. This is the sort of thing that TeleNav should be leading the industry with to justify their subscription fee and leverage their connected functionality. Instead, on this particular function, they trail their competitors.

In fairness to TeleNav, they do offer a TeleNav branded version of the software that is compatible with the Touch Pro 2, that does offer these features. Oddly, the version numbering of TeleNav’s branded application is different than Sprint Navigator’s version numbering. This makes it impossible to compare how Sprint Navigation’s version compares to what I could get directly from TeleNav, without comparing each feature line by line on the feature matrix.

It does appear that Sprint Navigation is “behind” TeleNav’s branded application in terms of features. This is disappointing. TeleNav actively promotes on their Twitter feed that they “power” Sprint Navigation, and Sprint actively promotes that customer are paying for the application through their plan. I would be disappointed to learn that TeleNav intentionally cripples the features of Sprint Navigation to protect their own branded product. I certainly would not consider paying TeleNav for a program that I already pay for through Sprint. More likely, I would suspect, is that the time it takes to work with a bureaucracy like Sprint limits the frequency with which TeleNav can introduce new features versus their own application. Whatever the reason, it is disappointing to not be able to enjoy the full TeleNav feature set through Sprint Navigation.

Of course, we could have it much worse by being Verizon customers, where they actually limit the use of 3^rd party solutions to force you into using their subscription application. Never, will I be a Verizon customer.

Traffic

Traffic functionality is built into the product. You can view real time traffic against a map from the Maps & Traffic menu. And, traffic is available as part of the routing process. When selecting a destination, first Sprint Navigation selects the route, then checks the route for traffic to determine if a better route is available. Traffic delays are nicely displayed on the navigation screen. While in routing mode, you can also select the Options menu and change to the Traffic Summary screen. This screen displays a list of maneuvers on the route and the real time speed of each road segment (if known). The total number of traffic incidents is displayed as is the total delay. Any segment can be selected and Avoid can be selected. TeleNav will recalculate the route avoiding that segment if a better route is available.

One annoyance with traffic is the application's insistence on reminding us that it is "Checking route for traffic" all the time. This disturbs conversations, Internet radio, cell phone calls, etc., to provide meaningless information. If I trust that I've set the traffic feature to work in automatic mode, just do it in the background please, quietly. If you find something, let me know. But you don't need to remind me every 5 minutes on a 5 hour drive that you are doing your job.

My main complaint with traffic is the lack of covered markets. TeleNav still only has 50 markets where traffic is available. This pales in comparison to any other solution, where the number of covered markets is between 90 - 130+ in other products. Again, this is an area where I'd hoped to see TeleNav leading the industry to justify their monthly subscription fee. However, it is a second example of them trailing their competitors. ALK's product brings every one of Inrix's markets to your smartphone. That said, there are issues with ALK's implementation of traffic as well, even though they have over double the markets covered that TeleNav has. A typical PND traffic implementation which relies on FM-based signals also has significant issues due to the lack of bandwidth to convey detailed information like highly-segmented flow rates, and coverage of secondary roads.

No one has nailed traffic yet, in any PND or software, despite some being "so close." TeleNav has the best situation - they have server-based calculation capabilities that could handle lots of traffic information to determine alternative route options. They have connected smartphones as the delivery method where bandwidth is not a concern. Why they don't leverage this potential leading position and lead the industry in market coverage, I do not know.

Bottom line is unless you are in the top 50 markets in the US, forget about traffic being a useable function in this product. And even in those 50 markets, there are only ~35 of them that report speed (flow) information through the TeleNav product. The others only report incident data. Without flow data you have no idea whether another route choice is actually flowing better - you just know about an accident.

Traffic is nicely integrated into this product, but the data / markets covered are worst in class unfortunately.

Routing Screen

While in a route, users have the choice of a 3D or 2D map, either north up or direction of travel up. The screen is very readable and nice visually. The street names are written inside the lines of the street. The map uses different colors of streets to distinguish different types of streets (i.e., residential, major road, highway, Interstate, etc.). Highways and Interstates also have recognizable "badge" icons on the map. Parks tend to be colored green on the map and bodies of water tend to be colored blue. In general, the map is very well laid out and well done visually.

On the navigation map, you can manually zoom in and zoom out. One feature that I miss that Garmin does well is to auto-zoom the map based on the speed / distance to the next turn. The zoom of the map that I prefer is much different if my next turn is on the freeway in 150 miles, versus if it is two blocks away in town.

There is a visual indication of the direction of your next turn in the upper left hand corner. ALK does this feature one better if there are two turns that are in close proximity to each other. They show the second turn direction in a smaller icon adjacent to the next turn indicator.

There is a text row that indicates the next turn to make. There is a second text row that shows you the total distance to your destination and the ETA of your destination.

Routing

Every navigation solution is going to vary on the success of its route selections and ETA based on the how new the maps are. Sprint Navigation shows Tele Atlas 2010 in the lower left corner, so I'd suspect that the maps are fairly new. It is not known whether TeleAtlas users (other than TomTom) benefit from the IQ-type routes that TeleAtlas gathers which is a collection of real user speeds on roads instead of relying on just generic road classifications.

In general, I find the Sprint Navigation routes to be reasonable and the ETA's to be acceptable. I'd like to some some input into the route calculation algorithm however, by setting my own speed preferences for different road types.

With locally stored maps or a dedicated PND, I know when I update my maps, because I have to do it myself. There is something empowering about updating my ALK maps on a monthly basis and confirming that I see my map error reports addressed. Since TeleNav updates maps server-side, we never “see it.” It would be nice when I open the application, to have a message that indicates that the maps have been updated since the last time I used the application. It doesn’t really mean anything, other than a reminder to the customer that the maps get updated.

Other Miscellaneous Thoughts

Detour: This product technically has a detour function. But it is buried as part of the TraffiC Summary screen and is intended to avoid specific road segments that have traffic incidents on them. Depending on traffic conditions, TeleNav will not always avoid the segment you tell it to. TeleNav should bring a detour feature to the forefront outside of the Traffic functionality. From the Route Summary screen, I'd like to click on any route segment(s) of my choosing and say Detour to take that segment out of the route entirely.

Waypoints: There is no ability to do multiple step routing (i.e., have multiple destinations or multiple stops on the way to a destination). This is a standard feature in standalone GPS devices and is also part of the smartphone feature set now in products like ALK's CoPilot Live.

Expanded Connected Features: I'd like to see more advanced functionality that leverages the connected capability. For example, if the product supported multiple waypoints, I'd like to build the routes online, with multiple stops, and send the routes to the device.

Routes: I'd like to be able to save routes for repetitive use - routes with multiple stops. For example, a weekly route for me is: Work, Kid’s School, Kid’s Dance Studio, McDonalds, Kid’s Gymnastics Studio, Home. I’d like to be able to store that multi-step route, recall it on the days needed and have it show me the interim and final ETA’s so I know that I am on time at each stop (taking current traffic conditions into account). ALK’s CoPilot Live v8 will do that – this product will not right now.

Custom POI's: I'd like to be able to add my own sets of POI's in an industry standard format (like ALK's support for Ov2 files).

Route Options: Having server-side calculations capabilities, presenting the user with multiple route options to their destination could be a nice feature that offloads the heavy calculation lifting to the servers. My Toyota nav does this, as did Dash Navigation.

Summary

This is a good product. Its ability to find and route you to a single destination is straightforward and competent. You can trust the product to get you where you are going in a reasonably reliably route. There are some nice features in the product, such as Gas by Price, Wifi Finder, and a robust POI database. As a product that I receive free with my Sprint plan, it is a very usable solution. If I were paying $9.99 per month for it, my enthusiasm would be less but still positive. I feel that TeleNav should be leading the way in features in order to differentiate themselves from the competition and to justify their $9.99 subscription fee. Their subscription fee over a 3 year ownership period is the second highest way to own/use a GPS solution. Only Garmin’s highest end Nuvi 1690 is more expensive to own than TeleNav over 3 years. Most mid-range to low-range Garmin Nuvi devices are cheaper than TeleNav over 3 years.

Unfortunately, despite this being a competent solution, on some key features such as traffic and multi-point routing, TeleNav is lagging the competition. This is true not only when comparing more expensive solutions like the Nuvi 1690, but also when comparing to less expensive competition like ALK’s CoPilot Live v8 (a solution which is cheaper in the 1^st year of paying TeleNav subscription fees).

When compared to other phone-based solutions with connected maps: TeleNav leads the pack: 10 stars

When compared to other phone-based solutions irrespective of map delivery method: TeleNav is competitive: 7 stars

When compared to other navigation solutions irrespective of platform: TeleNav has pros and cons: 5 stars