New Route66 Mobile Britain for Nokia 6600

[PeterB]

Several UK retailers are now offering Route 66 for Nokia 6600 mobiles.
As we are eagerly waiting for TomTom to do the same is there anyone with any comments or other experience of Rote 66 products????

The price appears to be about £280 with the software already installed on a 256 memory card, plus a bluetooth receiver.

Thanks

PeterB

[PeterB]

Just to keep up to date!!!!!!!!!!!! as Route 66 now has its own forum.

I have been running Route 66, Mobile Britain on a Nokia 6600 for about 6 weeks and find the performance comparable to a good PDA system.
The small screen size is NOT a practical disadvantage as the voice prompts are clear, even on the basic Nokia without a handsfree speaker attached.
Address finding is easy and routing and maps very good.
The free GPRS based TMC system works very well and updates as frequently as 10 mins, with automatic route updates.
On the downside you really need to keep the phone plugged in to conserve the battery.
The good news is that the price for the BT package has been reduced by 100 euros and for the software (on card) by 50 euros.

In my view this system is a serious competitor to PDA packages and I eagerly await the TomTom/ Symbian software to make comparisons.

Anyone else with practical experience???

PeterB
Kent UK

[stevencarpenter]

I have noting but good things to say about the product and support.

I have been using to software for 2 months with a Rikaline Bluetooth GPS.

I have already have one bug fixed and am waiting for a few others, most of them very minor grumbles.

I had used tomtom city maps but the support is rubbish (its like they just don't want to know). I used to use their product on a Psion Series 5 but it seems that their technical support has gone downhill since then.

City maps also do not provide route planning it simply puts a GPS location on the map. Doubtless that their full navigation package will do this but I have not seen it on the market as yet.

Route 66 for the Mac has been around for forever and it seemed a good choice when I was looking around for something for my phone, as I don’t want a PDA as well.

The best feature this product has so far is the ability to download travel information (presumably originally from Trafficmaster) via GPRS and the route planning software actually knows there is a jam and reroutes you. This has happened twice and it was a shock the first time it happened as a cool female voice said traffic delays ahead and I’ll reroute you.

As to costs difference between downloading traffic information via GPRS or having a traffic master subscription I am not sure but if it works around jams this has to be a good thing.

I know this kind of feature is not new, but to have this on a mobile phone certainly is!

The directions are clear and precise all kinds of support is there, 3D map view, night view and it can use your contacts list in your phone as directions so if you have a large contact list this can be the waypoints for travel which saves you time looking for directions. House numbers are supported as well as location by postcode area (BS12 1 for example).

One problem is that the 6600 has only one SPP for Bluetooth (I hope Nokia sort this out in later series 60 phones). This means if you have a bluetooth carkit and a bluetooth GPS you cannot use them at the same time.

However, before buying the product I asked if there was a way to drop GPS connection and connect to the Carkit for the duration of the call and then connect back to GPS receiver afterwards. Technical support assured me this very feature is in development and that was what persuaded me to go out and buy it.

Currently the software is smart enough to switch the display when a call comes in and switch back after the call is terminated.



I have however left the best bit till last…

A couple of days ago Route66 put the price down by 100 Euro and to all of us who bought it they offered us another free map as compensation (199 Euro value) if that is not great support I don’t know what is!

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