Navmii - A Simple Road test (Not a review)

SimonCatlin

Navmii and 224 miles today.
I bought Navmii on download yesterday for my Nokia N97, as the only other options available are Nokia Maps, which does not support any POIs, Google Maps, which does not support Turn by Turn (both these require Data connections), McGuider , where there is a massive warning about copying from the memory card and allegedly not for sale much longer and Sygic Mobile Maps 2009, which technically I had to buy from France..

Road test
So today I left West London, heading for Wickwar (Gloucs) and then to Hungerford and back to West London. Due to a lorry breaking down on the M4 at J2, I had to take a different route from normal and head towards J3, which is lucky as that was what Navmii wanted me to do, which is not what other nav programs normally suggest, which was my first warning of what seems to be an errant routing program. Instead of coming off at J18 as normal, it wanted me to come off at J16 and take B roads, claiming it would be quicker. I disagreed and carried onto J18 and I have to say the re-calculating was accurate and quick, once Navmii realised you knew best.

Another issue I have is the ETA, which is probably the worst I have ever seen on any Sat Nav program. Autoroute suggested 1hr 50 mins. Tomtom 1hr 56mins and as I have been to this location several times I know 2hrs is what is required without getting a NIP in the post within 14 days. However, Navmii suggested 2hrs 23 mins. This ETA did reduce the further I went down the road. This 10%-20% error in over calculation of time was evident in every segment today.

I know Teleatlas provide their data, but there were many, many inaccuracies in the map. Once it gave me the wrong numbered turn on a roundabout. The system does have a speed warning system (which is silent and would benefit from the availability of warning sounds). The speed warnings were 60mph on the M4 in several places (70mph), 40mph in a national speed limit area on a B road, 30mph in a 40 etc. The 30mph over speed in a 40 would not be so bad, but a (PocketGpsWorld) speed camera warning is included and warned me of the 40mph camera (location was Old Sodbury). The speed camera warning is excellent with a clear tone and clear graphics.

The system currently lacks custom POI, but I understand this is weeks away and I reserve judgment on it until it appears. The UI is clear, but has some issues. Their virtual keyboard is too small to be used on the road in real situations in portrait mode. In Landscape, the N97 keyboard is set to have the SHIFT key turned on so instead of pressing something like GL12 you get #:12, without pressing the shift key to get to correct characters (impossible when driving). The product does support 7 digit postcodes, but not house numbers. The included POIs have a flaw in that it only lets you select the nearest 8 items, not any POI further away. So today I was searching for a car dealer in GL12, but I was in W7, so all I got were the nearest car dealers to me in West London. I could not see a way of searching for any other dealers.

Other items of note, was that Navmii jumped around while navigating and tried locking onto side roads next to the M4 this afternoon, but not this morning, which maybe just GPS signal strength. There is no way to review the GPS signal strength from inside Navmii.

There are some good points here. I liked the clear display. I liked the download option. I liked the Sales team, who were honest about timescales and capabilities. I like the PGPSW database that is easily updated. It works well in portrait and landscape and shifts seamlessly between the two. It is quick, and in the 4 hours and 30mins I was in the car today, it never crashed. Considering I was running a twitter app, email refresh, music player and an FM transmitter and GPS, Navmii did well (iPhone users try running more than one app?). The Nokia N97 has an FM transmitter, so you can listen to music and have Turn by Turn on your radio, which is neat, although, Nokia Maps does fade the music down for the instructions. I cheated and turned up the volume on the spoken words, which were concise and timely.

So overall a good basic package, if overpriced for the UK market at £44, especially as Co-pilot Live for iPhone is now £25, but with the N97 so poorly supported, it is a pleasure to see Navmii.
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iPhone5, TomTom, Google maps, Navfree, Viewranger and Apple Maps (ekk)

geolife · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 09, 2009 Posts: 2

Hello, thanks for the test.

An update (free) for Nokia is coming out soon in which most of the problems you described are sorted out.

Navmii does allow to lookup more than 8 items in the POI search, it is actually limited by the distance that is about 50 kilometres.

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