REVIEW COMMENTS: Navman 4400

[Dave101]

Super review Dave, any idea when the fixes you remarked about at the end of your summery will be done? I have just purchased a 2210 (my first PDA) and would like to get a GPS.



Dave


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Near Wickham Hampshire

[Dave]

Unfortunatly not, I've spoken with Navman NZ and they are a priority, but they believe it may take some time to complete these and test.

[nftang]

I have an iPAQ h2210 and Navman 4400 pair which Navman representative has aforesaid OK. I also experienced ocassional lockups, some in roundabouts.



Also, even in normal operation, I need to soft-reset the iPAQ to turn it on after either a self turning off or manual turning off. When I uninstalled the SmartST pro, the power-on became normal!



Really hope that Navman could provide a fix in the nearest future. This is very disappointing.

[nftang]

About the lockups in roundabouts, I can recall that it often happened when the car has turned over a half circle. Sometimes, it also hang when the car moved backwards after some forward driving. This tends to lead me to think that in a roundabout situation the software might suddenly miscalculate the position of the forward moving car in a backward position (resolution claimed by Navman is 5 metres) if the radius of movement is lesser. I don't know if SmartST Pro expects to handle an anomaly like this.



Maybe it is due to something else if this only happened on some new iPAQs (including the older 5400).

[Dave]

Bingo! That's what I see.

[gambitgander]

You will also find with the H2210, that if you turn it off while Bluetooth is connected to ANY bluetooth device, you will never turn it on again, without a soft reset.
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Who's Your Daddy?

[Dave]

gambitgander, don't have a problem with the 2210 and Bluetooth in this manner. I always leave it activated, switch off the 2210 first, then the Bluetooth GPS and switch it on 8 hours later and it all works well, no soft resets.

[ChrisJones]

Hi all. Enjoyed reading all the reviews on PocketGPS. As a newbie to the world of pocket PCs (just bought an Ipaq 2210 which I think is fantastic) I am eager to get a GPS and stop losing hours trying to find my next appointments! I thought I had decided on the TomTom bluetooth until reading this review. I saw somewhere that the all bluetooth receivers use a battery that has a relatively short number of recharge times before it was useless. This is one of the reasons I was attracted to the Navman. The article that I read said that the manufacturers of other devices was banking on people wishing to change the GPS hardware reguarly as technology increased so little regard was made to the units working for a long period of time. I know for a fact that if I am about to pay £300 for some hardware, I want to know that it will work until I decide I want to change it rather than being forced to replace it. Is there any truth in this? Can the other products batteries be replaced at a reasonable cost?

I like the Navman offering and software looks good (particuarly like the fact that you get ALL europe maps instead of having to spend an additional fortune for each country!). However, the TomTom does look a more proffessional device.

Thanks for your assistance and again thanks for such an informative site.

[Dave]

Thanks Chris for the comments about the reviews, I'm glad you like them. Regarding battery, most BT GPS's do have an lifespan of 400 charges. A little over a year. After which time the battery will degrade quite quickly. This isn't unusual. Think about mobile phones. Most of the batteries there have a 400-500 charge lifespan. It doesn't mean the battery will be useless at the end of 400 charges, it just means that as batteries go on, the more they're charged, the less use you will eventually get out of them.

The Navman 4400 is different in this respect, because it does use regular batteries. However, most of the current BT GPS's manufacturers do say that eventually they will offer replaceable batteries, we have opened several and they are easy to disconnect and change, but whether this happens depends on them. The batteries in most BT GPS's come with the same rated battery and the same connectors, so I suspect they will become available at some point, you might even find them at a local Maplin store perhaps. If not now, probably in the future. They use these style of batteries (like with phones) because they can reduce the overall footprint size of the device, but there is always a trade-off when doing this, hence the battery.

The decision really is up to you at the end of the day, a lot of people wire the Emtac or TomTom BT GPS's up to the car accessory socket and have them charging all the time, or when the ignition is on, so a lot of people may not be too worried about battery useage.

[Justin]

[halljkl]

Hello,

I have the IPAQ H2200 and the NAVMAN 4400 GPS Reciever,

I have TOMTOM Navigator 5 installed on my PPC,

my GPS Reciever Pairs with my PPC via the bluetooth manager it connects and works though the bluetooth manager, then when opening TOMTOM NAVIGATOR 5 its says no gps device even when seleting the correct Com Port.

It works fine with Navigator 3 but i need Navigator 5 on becuase i am going to America and need Maps.


Please let me no how i can make it work

e-mail brian.hall97@tesco.net

or post reply

Lewis

[Tim Buxton]

In TT5, try selecting the the Navman BT device as Other Cable GPS at 4800 baud, then give it a minute or so outside to get reception.
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Tim

[halljkl]

Thank You So Much!!!!!!

It Now Works

I cant Thank You So Much!!!

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