Smart2go/Nokia satnav software for WM5

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

First thing to get out of the way. This is a first day test of BETA software. My review is based on my personal experience.

Ok second thing, it’s FREE. For this reason alone you should go get a copy and have a play.

The currently supported devices are
DOPOD 595 & 838
HTC MTeoR & TyTN
Nokia E61, E70, N73, N80 & N93
O2 XDA Trion
Qtek 8300, 8600, 9100 & 9600
Palm Trio 650w (should be 750W?)
T-Mobile MDA Vario II
Vodafone Compact III

And finally Generic Windows Mobile 5, this is the one I downloaded for my XDA mini s (I might try the Qtek 9100 version later as that should be the same)

I chose to download via PC and install from the memory card but there is an option to do it over a SMS link but at 5Mb this would be a bit steep for anyone not on an unlimited data package.

Once downloaded installation was straight forward (but slow) be warned the 5Mb file unpacks to 20Mb on the card once installed (without maps or voice files)

After starting the first time it also installs a license manager program (only 500Kb) which is needed to upgrade to the full navigation package.

Pairing with a Bluetooth receiver is easy and the program will automatically search for a receiver if it cannot find a built-in one.

I have used both a HOLUX 240slim – SiRF III and a generic (i.e. cheap from ebay) receiver – Trimmble FirstGPS chipset and it had no problem talking to them with no need to set baud rates or comm ports.

WARNING when you first start to play with this you should be connected to the internet by WIFI or active sync as it will have to download some maps to start with and this sucks Mb fast. However once you have used it once you should be able to use the Nokia Maps manager (http://www.smart2go.com/en/help/maploader/) to download the rest of the maps you need (can be done via activesync or direct to the memory card) I haven’t tried this yet as (work PC wouldn’t talk to the server) so I’ll try it later and post an update.

Also when you start to navigate for the first time it will ask you to set the language and download the voice files (2.6Mb). One feature seems to be that when it downloads it shows how much it is downloading (for the maps) and how much in total (i.e. for the voice file). This should help keep you reasonably informed as to how much data is being sucked up (that said I’m dreading my bill now as I did all the updates over GPRS)

What I did do was spend money on the upgrade already. I started playing with the planning functions and it seemed straight forward enough (for an experienced user of half a dozen previous GPS systems). I don’t think the user interface or address entry system is quite up to TOMTOM standards (but not much worse than previous first versions).

So money, How much I hear you cry. Well not too bad but not peanuts either.

For UK & Rep Ireland
1day = £4.27 ~ 6.40Euro
30days = £5.26 ~ 7.90Euro
1year = £39.50 ~ 60.00Euro
3years = £46.09 ~ 70.00Euro

I went for the 30day (only £1 more than the 1day) You can pay 4 ways, either on you phone bill (phone sends premium rate messages but charges £6 not £5.26), Visa, MasterCard or AmEx. I tried the text message way but it threw up an error so I paid by Visa instead. Just entered the numbers and it went through, then asked for a name & email. The email contains you proof of purchase and your license code which will be needed if you reinstall or change devices (this suggests a transferable license?)

The list of countries available is quite wide

Alp Region (Austria/Switzerl./Alpine parts of France/Germany/Italy)
Asia (incl. Middle East)
Australia
Benelux plus (Netherland/Belgium/Luxemburg/parts of Germany & France)
Canada
Eastern Europe (Czech Rep./Slovakia/Hungary/Poland/Greece/Baltics)
France-Benelux (France/Netherlands/Belgium/Luxemburg)
Germany/ Austria/Switzerland
Hong Kong/Macau
Iberia (Portugal/Spain/Gibraltar/Andorra)
Italy plus (Italy/South of Austria & Switzerland)
Middle East (Saudi Arabia/United Arab Emirates/Qatar/Bahrain/Oman/Kuwait)
Nordic countries (Denmark/Sweden/Norway/Finland)
Russia (Greater St. Petersburg/Moscow & major roads)
South Africa
Southeast Asia (Singapore/Kuala Lumpur/Bangkok)
Taiwan
Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau*
Turkey (Istanbul/Ankara & major roads)
UK & Rep. Ireland
USA (without Alaska)
USA/Canada
Western Europe (A/B/CH/D/DK/ESP/F/FIN/I/IRL/L/N/NL/P/S/UK )

And the costs for each vary so you will need to investigate that for yourself.

So what happened next, well basically I crashed it and had to do a hard reset. I won’t go into the hows as I just got a bit punchy and kept pressing buttons but I managed to get it stuck on the stop over addition section and back / select didn’t work.

That said after the reset it has behaved perfectly (remembering my last entered destination) letting me run it and plan & start to navigate a route with no problems.

(as a note the XDA mini s is only a 200Mhz processor with small available memory so getting it to lock up isn’t that hard so I won’t hold it against the software till I have tried it a bit more)

What I haven’t done is tried to drive a full route or test the rerouteing functions as it’s 11pm and driving round in the dark playing with a new satnav is dangerous.

So for now just first inpressions.

1. It is free to play with.
2. so if nothing else you can see where you are on the map (either moving or the map stays stationary & the icon moves).
3. It lets you search for Addresses, post codes (7 digit ish), locations, POI’s (some are built in, I haven’t found out how to add them yet) and plan a route.
4. The map is zoomable so searching by hand scrolling the map is easy
5. Multiple stops can be planned.

As for negatives
1. Data costs could be high, althought to be fair Nokia have tried to keep it down with the map manager app.
2. Not exactly a fast acting program, as phones are not usually blessed with clock cycles this could be a problem and I’d like to see how it behaves on the S60 phones and on a high spec WM5 unit.
3. As for the upgrade costs, well £6 for a 30day trial won’t bankrupt me and £47 for 3 years doesn’t look too bad either as the maps caould theoretically be constantly updated (speed cameras database?) even while on the move.

That’s it for now. I’m going to use it on the way to work tomorrow (and go the wrong way to see how it performs) and I’ve got a trip to Buckinham planned for Thursday so that should give it a workout (and possibly backrupt me in GPRS costs).

I’ll post updates as I go and add more info about the interface.

Finally the User Manual should be Here however as of 11pm Tuesday 13th Feb 2007 the only ones available were for the Series 60 phones.

If anyone has any questions post them below & I'll try and answer.

Take it easy

Steve
_________________
XDA Mini s (WM5)
Holux 240slim
TOMTOM 5
Destinator 6
Nokia Maps?

SimonCatlin · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:00 am Post subject:

Just a quick one...

If you have the maps loaded, GPS and licence, why does it need GPRS/3G?
_________________
iPhone5, TomTom, Google maps, Navfree, Viewranger and Apple Maps (ekk)

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

It seems to do some small talking to home (or at least it wants to be able to phone home). Also when you switch to navigation mode it shows a progress bar and takes about 2 sec to complete, If this was just checking a license number file on the memory card it shouldn’t take that long so it may be checking with a server. I’ll do a test with the GPRS disabled to confirm. That said I haven’t downloaded the full UK maps yet so it may still need to pull some detail from the maps server.

I've done some screen caps and used it to navigate now so I'll post an update later today.

Take it easy

Steve
_________________
XDA Mini s (WM5)
Holux 240slim
TOMTOM 5
Destinator 6
Nokia Maps?

mikealder · Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 1:08 pm Post subject:

You chaps messing around with this application might want to consider SPB GPRS Monitor to keep a tab on how much GPRS traffic is being used, certainly recommended before you get hit with a large costly bill, if your XDA Mini-S came from O2 then this software should have been on the applications CD - Mike

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

Well I've had a chance to play properly now and on the whole probably worth the £6 i've paid so far (+ data charges). Here are the rest of my observations.

Navigation

Once you start it you are presented with your current position. (see fig 1)

As I said before you have to plan a route first then select navigation

Picking the destination is full of options (see fig 2). I notice selecting from the phone book isn’t here with the WM5 version. I would hope this is an early addition to the next version (or available in the S60 version)

As with many other systems the recent option is the easiest.(See fig 3)

There is the option to select multiple stops which I have only seen in Destinator. This could be a major plus for companies with delivery drivers (assuming the addresses could be downloaded in bulk).

You can also select from POI which include many of the categories seen on other packages. I think this is also an area where the connected nature of the system could be useful with the potential to access a constantly up to date list.

Once the destination is selected you just select navigate to (see fig 4)

Once selected it will go off and check your license.(See fig 5) This takes a couple of seconds (I think it phones home but haven’t proved it yet).

If you do not have a license already it will take you through the purchase process. (See first post for details)

Figures 6, 7 & 8 show screen shots of the 3D interface. As with others there is a day & night mode, 2D & 3D and Speed, distance remaining & ETA are shown on the screen (also GPS reception – number of satellites in view)

Directions are repeated 3 times, the first is directly after the previous manoeuvre the next is 400yards from the turning and lastly at the turning.

This is often enough and I haven’t yet found a way to change.

There are also options during navigation to change some features of the route & map but I haven’t fully checked these.

The only fault I found was a bit of a bug, As with all satnav software it tries to put you on the road nearest your actual GPS position, this caused a problem in that my final destination was a road that ran along the side of a major By-pass and when I deliberately went down the bypass the software assumed I was on the destination road and declared I had reached by destination.

This hasn’t happened with both TOMTOM & Destinator so I think the mapping needs a few tweaks as this could cause a problem with missed junctions on the motorway where roads sometimes run alongside each other. I intend to test this fully tomorrow during a trip up country and I’ll post an update on my experience.
_________________
XDA Mini s (WM5)
Holux 240slim
TOMTOM 5
Destinator 6
Nokia Maps?

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

Just started using the map manager. Firstly it doesn't recognise my XDA over Activesync so I've had to use the memory card reader. Secondly when you select the maps and press download it starts to down load the maps from the nokia server. I can only assume that there is a bottleneck somewhere as it is predicting over 1 hour to download 115Mb (my connection is capable of 250Kbps).

Maybe lots of users downloading?

Take it easy

Steve
_________________
XDA Mini s (WM5)
Holux 240slim
TOMTOM 5
Destinator 6
Nokia Maps?

risky3301 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 01, 2003 Posts: 33

Great review............ one question, instead of downloading with the phone is it possible to download using a PC and then transfering everything to the phone, the reason for asking is that I'm very interested in up grading my present phone and sat nav and this would be ideal, the only problem is I need the UK, full Europe and Australia street level with voice, using the phone to download will be to expensive.

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

risky3301 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 01, 2003 Posts: 33

Thanks for the info

jlkk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 21, 2007 Posts: 1

Hi,
Has anyone managed to get it working with a PDA with built-in GPS ? I have a HP 6965. I managed to install the software ok and put in a map. When I startup the program, it always seems to be looking for a bluetooth GPS ignoring the builtin GPS. Is there any way to tinker with the setup?

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

alexasha · Occasional Visitor Joined: Nov 19, 2006 Posts: 5

Just installed it on qteck 8500 (Cingular 3125). Here are my observations
1.it works on 8500, but hangs on typing the destination. I think it is a bug
2. Even though I already installed application and it loaded some maps, MapLoader still does not recognize my phone. So it does not allow me to download maps.
3. I have efficasoft traffic monitor and it did not detect any traffic through this program - strange
4. I have not tried my GPS unit yet.

So, so far the main problem is that Maploader does not recognize my phone. Does anybody have any suggestions?

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

fred_yakk · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 26, 2006 Posts: 14

I tried using the software on my XDA with the sim card removed to see if it works without downloading data. Short answer NO.

Basically it constantly wanted to connect to the GPRS so I turned on 'flight mode'. This stopped it asking to connect but when it, finally, showed the map there was no detail and it wouldn't calculate the route (threw up an error message rather than a specific message). I had already loaded the full UK Maps onto my card so it seems the programs still needs to call home.

This is a major downer as far as i'm concerned as i'm not on an 'all you can eat' data bundle.

So after the testing would I recommend it? As an everyday Satnav system - No.

But if I had the right phone (built-in GPS, Nokia 95?, XDA orbit?) with the right data bundle (unlimited) I would definatly install it as a backup, it could tell you where you are in the world and give you routes to anywhere (for a small cost).

But for everyday use, I'd just buy TOMTOM and get on with it.

If Nokia were to make it more like the rest, i.e. only go online for specific added extras (traffic/POI) and function as a normal Satnav in 'unconnected' mode then it would be a contender and only usability issues would diferentiate it from the rest.

I don't know what Nokia's buisness model is with this, I can't think it can make money from the subscription fee's (unless everyone paid £5 a day) and it wont make money from the data downloads (unless there is a kickback from the operators). Perhaps they intend to charge for the software once we all finish doing the beta tests?

As I said in the first post, It's FREE. If you don't mind a few megs GPRS (or WIFI) cost and you have access to a compatable GPS reciever then give it a go. But if you are in the market for new satnav software, look somewhere else for now.

Take it easy

Steve
_________________
XDA Mini s (WM5)
Holux 240slim
TOMTOM 5
Destinator 6
Nokia Maps?

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