NAVIGON Release First WP7 Navigation App With On-Board Maps

MaFt

Yesterday NAVIGON launched their Mobile Navigator software for Windows Phone 7 and are the first company to offer on-board mapping on the platform. Other navigation apps are available but they require a data connection and the maps are downloaded 'on-the-fly' which can get expensive, especially when driving abroad. They were the first to launch on the iPhone too, which surprised many people as it was TomTom who were at Apple's press event showing off the new navigation capabilities.

As with the iPhone and Android counterparts, NAVIGON have redesigned the user interface to match the look and feel of the host operating system - you can see this in the screen shots later.

The app features Traffic Live, Reality View Pro, MyRoutes, Lane Assistant Pro, Speed Assistant, speed cameras, text-to-speech, different voices/accents, pedestrian navigation, Reality Scanner (augmented reality view of POIs) and Google Local Search. It can be used in both portrait and landscape orientation and features the usual 2D and 3D mapping as well as favourites and automatic day/night mode.

The download itself is only 5MB and once installed you then need to download the maps which take up about 2.3GB of space. You also need to be running Mango on your device (Windows Phone 7.5).

Full European mapping version costs £51.49 in the UK Market and $69.99 in the USA Market

MaFt · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 10:25 am Post subject:

And the USA Mapping version is avaialble for $29.99 from here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/f7a3b10b-302f-49b2-92ae-b77a7392789e

MaFt

MaFt · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:23 am Post subject:

The [link=http://www.navigon.com/portal/int/uebernavigon/presse/artikel/111011_WP7_Vollversion.html]official press release[/link] says that the prices are an introductory offer:

elyl · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:25 pm Post subject:

This is actually pretty decent, particularly since anyone could have released any old crap with offline maps and it would still have sold on WP7, just due to the fact all the other navigation's data-only.

I just wish there was some way to load the speedcameras. Mad

Also, there's no way to download just the UK map, you need a full 2.3Gb free to download the entire European map, which is a bit of a pain.

alix776 · Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:34 pm Post subject:

Yes if you only want UK maps then off board maybe cheeper but for the money I think it gives good value hopefully I'll be downloading it in the next week or so hopefully this will kick start other houses to release for the patform though it won't happen soon I think it'll be another six months the to see how Nokia handsets take off before other jump on navigon has been available in Germany on wp7 since it was released though this was done with a carrier
_________________
currently using aponia truck navigation on windows phone. Good bye IOS don't let the door hit you on the way out .

Oh the joys of being a courier.
device Lumia 950 xl

neil54 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 13, 2005 Posts: 5

This is a pretty good first attempt for WP7.5, but there are an awful lot of missing features that I feel are important.

The greatest of these is the lack of UK7 postcodes. In my rural area of East Anglia, a 5 character postcode often only gets within a mile or so or a destination and unless you know the road number your destination is on, it can be a very hit and miss affair.

There is also no 'offline' route planning. You can navigate to a destination but can't enter a different starting point.

Finally, there is no way of entering or optimising multiple stops. Not a big omission but other platforms have this and it can be useful.

The routing is very good indeed- on a par with iGO and much better than CPL. It also seems pretty quick on screen drawing. The Navteq maps are very good as well. Fix the issues and this will be a first class program; until then it is a bit pricey, though that's academic as it's the only one until GPS Tuner get their version out!

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