Review: Magellan Roadmate GPS for iPhone

Updated on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 11:01AM by jcost

A little late to the game, but a welcome addition to the iPhone is the Magellan Roadmate 2010 North America GPS app. Some of the features of the Magellan include spoken street names, highway lane assistance to let you know which lane to be in before a turn comes up, a pedestrian mode for taking it with you while walking, and iPod controls for changing your music without exiting the app, just to name a few.

Easy to Navigate

It's quick and easy to get going. Press MENU, Click ADDRESS, and then enter your specific address.  Then keyboard entry is excellent and quickly predicts what you are trying to enter and provides a selection to choose from.

Once you have done that, you are presented with an overview screen which shows your routing preferences and a large GO button to begin.

Click on it, or you can click on a few of the objects to change various options, such as clicking on the CAR to switch to pedestrian mode.  From this screen you can also choose to view the map or see the turn by turns listed in text, and if you don't like what you see, you can click the Routing Options and it will show you possible variations, such as Fastest Time, Shortest Distance, Most & Least use of highways.  You can even do a trip simulation.

It's pretty straightforward and easy to use.  You can navigate to intersections, contacts from your address book, and over 6 million points of interest. 

You can use the map in horizontal or vertical orientation, which ever you prefer. It doesn't add any additional items to the heads up display so you aren't losing anything by choosing one over the other. It still shows the next turns, distance, speed, etc. 

POI

The points of interest are done quite well, broken down into categories. If I want to get to a Gas Station, I click POI -> Gas Station and then it presents me with different companies, not just what stations are  close to me; choose Show All, and it shows them in order of proximity.  Since it's category based, if I prefer 'BP' I can choose it and it will show me all of the 'BP' stations close to me.  The same is true for Restaurants and other POIs. It presents you with a list of categories and you can choose from there, instead of simply listing with proximity. 

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Review: iGo My Way 2009 - iPhone GPS Navigation

The GPS feature in the iPhone is one of the most exciting features. When you are lost you can pull up Google Maps and figure out where you are. You can use some of the cool 'around me' apps to find POI (points of interest) such as coffee shops, parking, banks, etc. It's really quite wonderful. Due to a licensing issue, you can't use the built-in Google Maps for turn-by-turn, so you have to look at third party solutions. 

iGo My way 2009 is one of the latest turn-by-turn offerings available on the App store. 

It uses the Navteq maps that offer detailed streets and up to date points of interest. With it's friendly interface and detailed maps, this puts it into a comparable field on par with stand alone GPS units, such as the TomTom or Garmin units. 

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