Summary of navigation programs for N80

[cmlewan]

This is a subjective comparison. Also, there are probably errors in it, and I'd love for you to correct them, if you spot anything!

As far as I know, there are five navigation programs that supports/is expected to support S60 3rd. Nav4all, Wayfinder, Navicore, Route 66 and Tomtom (not ready for S60 3rd yet). Only with the two first ones, you don't have to store big map files on your memory card.

Nav4all is free and is still a full-functioning navigator program. It has actually more functions (and spoken languages) than Wayfinder. But the maps are crude (the roads have no width for example) and buggy and the voices are unclear, data sounding. The route calculation is also sometimes strange/very strange. It shows that it is free. But it's acceptable for some use.

Wayfinder (about €149 for Western Europe life-time maps, but you pay extra annually for traffic or speed cameras) is clearly better. It has a strange zoom bug (bug, I'd venture to say) which means that you can't lock the zoom level, it's automatically adjusted to a level that the program finds appropriate. Wayfinder is also critizised for having annoyingly frequent voice prompts. You can't adjust this (but it's one thing that the Wayfinder team is working with right now!). Finally, Wayfinder only has traditional 2D maps, no "Tomtom" 3D maps. The Wayfinder team is considering this. Other than that, Wayfinder is really nice with a clean GUI, also for the 2D vector map!

Navicore is reviewed on http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum...1&postcount=14 . From what I understand, it may be better than Wayfinder. Navigation screen displays include 2D and 3D. Voice prompts are more well thought-out. The big problem, as I see it, is that you have to keep maps on the memory card. The following below represents the space it occupies:

Skandinavia 180 Mb
Alps 210 Mb
Benelux 125 Mb
France 252 Mb
Germany 245 Mb
Spain and Portugal 145 Mb
Italy 225 Mb
UK and Ireland 140 Mb

All of Western Europe takes 1522 MB. Therefore, Navicore is personally unusable to me. I will probably stay with Wayfinder. In Sweden, I have a flat rate 3G/gprs data rate and 3G/gprs prices in all of Europe will hopefully go down this winter, because of recent requirements from the EU.

There is Route 66 7.0 which also stores its maps on the memory card. But these maps take even more than the maps of Navicore. Here, most of Europe take 4 GB so you simply can't fit all of it in! You have to load and remove maps on a regular basis if you travel abroad. A review on http://bonte.co.uk/myBlog/?p=168 .

There is no Tomtom 6.0 for Nokia N80 yet. Tomtom also stores map information on memory cards. There is no reason to think that they would be able to fit Western Europe on less than eg. 1 GB either.

[dez_borders]

Originally Posted by cmlewan

This is a subjective comparison. Also, there are probably errors in it, and I'd love for you to correct them, if you spot anything!
...
All of Western Europe takes 1522 MB. Therefore, Navicore is personally unusable to me. I will probably stay with Wayfinder. In Sweden, I have a flat rate 3G/gprs data rate and 3G/gprs prices in all of Europe will hopefully go down this winter, because of recent requirements from the EU.

There is Route 66 7.0 which also stores its maps on the memory card. But these maps take even more than the maps of Navicore. Here, most of Europe take 4 GB so you simply can't fit all of it in! You have to load and remove maps on a regular basis if you travel abroad. A review on http://bonte.co.uk/myBlog/?p=168 .

There is no Tomtom 6.0 for Nokia N80 yet. Tomtom also stores map information on memory cards. There is no reason to think that they would be able to fit Western Europe on less than eg. 1 GB either.

Your comparisons are very well thought out an informative - thanks!

FYI, the latest 2006 TomTom Western Europe maps are around 900Mb.

However, and purely my own preference, I prefer the maps on memory card rather than downloaded via GPRS, as many forum users do not have access to as affordable a GPRS bundle as you have. For instance, I have T-mobile Web&Walk unlimited browsing but T-Mob bans some streaming services from use on their W&W bundle, and I suspect GPRS GPS Streaming of maps would fall under this ban.

It's worth mentioning that with 2Mb Mini-SD cards available on eBay for under £15, you could do worse than buy a couple of cards, keeping the UK Maps permanently on one card and and load/exchange the Europeman maps onto the other card as and when you plan to travel abroad.

With a decent card reader on your PC, you can copy the 900Mb TomTom Western Europe maps onto a 2Gb Mini-SD card in well under 5 minutes.

I am still awaiting TomTom for Symbian 3rd Edition, as I believe it's the best GPS app available on Symbian smartphones.

Dez

[tomnufc]

Just out of interest how big are the TomTom UK only maps? Also can you store them on your own memory card rather than swapping over all the time?

[lovher]

is there any maps for other countries such UAE or middle-east countries

[dez_borders]

Originally Posted by lovher

is there any maps for other countries such UAE or middle-east countries

Have a look on the TomTom website, there's a full list of what's available.

[dez_borders]

Originally Posted by tomnufc

Just out of interest how big are the TomTom UK only maps? Also can you store them on your own memory card rather than swapping over all the time?

200.8Mb for the latest GB map on the TT website

I think the map that used to come free with TomTom was about 100Mb.