gps advice

plumber_carl

been looking at a nokia 5230 only because it says it as sat nav built in and as im going to London in September ,, and this would be great for finding places,, so i just popped in to tesco were it looks like theres a good offer on it and they said that you have to be connected to the Internet for it to work,, which on pasg would be very expensive.. is this correct?

davetrousers

Yes most phones with GPS/Sat Nav will need to connect to the internet to download the maps. Make yourself aware of the costs or look at a Internet bundle for your PAYG tarif.

wr1ght

not if you use o2 text and web tariff, £15 month you get unlimited texts and internet and still have your £15 for calls. i use a nokia e71 and use the gps regularly on this tariff.

Guys_Dad

Tesco's Internet connection is probably the most expensive going at £4 per Mb. You won't need a Sat Nav as you will have to sell your car to afford it!;)

plumber_carl

would this be if i wanted to find tower of London it would connect to the internet load the map then go of line? then if i wanted the palace it would reconnect???to load a new map

ice_tee

The nokia 5230 has ovimaps navigation, so the maps are all pre loaded on to the phone, no need to download maps from the internet so no cost involved.

Hope that helps.

plumber_carl

thank ice tee thats what i read it to say that it is free,, but in tesco he looked on the web and said i had to pay when i used the sat nav is this model the only model which as free sat nav????

ice_tee

Most if not all of the new nokia phones have access to ovimaps, it's a fairly new scheme released to be more competitive with the popular google maps, which does use data to download maps. You can update ovimaps by plugging the phone in your computer and updating it using the software suite.

mrnorm

I find phone sat navs are good for local directions or vague directions. I have a HTC Hero and have used the dedicated GPS software applications as well as Google Maps for navigation and I found that the signal was very poor. A bit of research suggested that many, if not all phones have 'Assisted GPS' as apposed to the fully fledged, accurate GPS.

My advice? If you're going to rely on it for accurate directions, get a proper nav.