When Motorola (MOT), Verizon (VZ), and Google launched the Droid in November, investors drove down shares of TomTom and Garmin (GRMN), makers of devoted navigation systems. The reason: The mapping application constructed into Google's Android smart phone operating system provided spoken, turn-by-turn directions-for free of charge. Now that Google has taken the wraps off its Nexus One telephone, its clear navigation will only grow in strategic value.
I plan to appear at how the app works around the recent Google handset quickly. Inside the meantime, I've been working on the system around the droid inside the New York-New Jersey metropolitan location for the last couple of weeks. And I've encountered sufficient quirks-hello, London!-to conclude it's not rather time for you to give up a standalone device.
Inside your automobile, the most effective approach to use the droid for car GPS is using the optional $29.99 mounting bracket that attaches to the windshield or dashboard. The telephone senses when it's in the holder and automatically displays a unique interface that consists of big buttons for maps and navigation. On a limited occasions, though, my phone would slip back to its usual display setting, requiring me or my passenger to seek out and relaunch the plan.
Google's app provides a number of methods to input your location, which includes touch screen, the Droid's physical keyboard, and built-in voice search. I identified the interface a little fussy, requiring several poke and prod. (Drivers should not poke this, or any other screen, when the auto is in motion.)
I also had an issue utilizing the app's show. For a smart phone, the Droid's screen is often a pleasure-very bright, having a greater resolution than that of an Apple (AAPL) iPhone. But its 3.7-inch size, combined with the Google app's mapping layout, makes it substantially harder to find out than the 4.3-inch snow on the Garmin nüvi 855 method I applied for comparison.
After I was beneath way, driving instructions were delivered in a ringing voice that sounds a little like VIKI, the malevolent computer system in the film I, Robot. The technique gave me an abundance of advance notice of coming turns, which includes street names, and ordinarily picked fantastic routes. When I deliberately missed some turns, the droid took longer than the nüvi to recalculate. So I often was unable to take what would have already been a logical option route. Tougher to forgive were the app's sporadic bouts of confusion, such as the London episode.
Motorola refers queries about such hiccups in Google, which responds that their hardware concerns. Whoever is usually to blame, it really is disconcerting to become directed the wrong way down an one-way something that has occurred maybe twice in 5 years with the built-in navigation system in my car-and occurred inside per week of applying the Google app.
On the other hand, when I arrived at my destination, not only did the telephone announce it, but the view switched from a map to a Google street-view photograph. Pretty useful should you be prowling unfamiliar turf.
Google labels its nav app "Beta," a testing designation the organization usually maintains longer than its competitors do. I guess that's supposed to excuse the bugs in an otherwise superb app with a price tag no one can beat.
Oh, and to get to Penn Station from Cheapside, head toward the Thames, take a proper, and...Retain going.