Sat Nav on a phone - or seperate? O2 Xda Orbit - Sat Nav

waspinagermanhelmet

O2 Xda Orbit - Sat Nav

Thinking about whether to get one or not. Currently have PAYG virgin mobile and no sat nav.

A friend has the above phone xda thingy which has a contract of £40 a month to get the thing "free" - but is it better to have a seperate sat nav? And if so which one?

ChemicalBrother_2

I've got a seperate, Bluetooth, GPS. I've used it on a Nokia 6630 and am currently using it on a N73. Mine is called Ben (of all things) - it amused my nephew of the same name though!

On the whole it works okay but sometimes the Bluetooth connection drops and using Bluetooth obviously drains the phone down quicker. It can also be a pain having two things to carry (I mostly use my GPS whilst walking). The upside is that you can place the unit in a better place to receive a signal - nearer to the windscreen in a car or attached to a strap around the shoulder (or in a coat's top pocket) whilst out and about.

banger9365

i us a t-mobile veria ll and aspos bluetooth gps reciver tomtom for a pda in a hgv and it works graat

waspinagermanhelmet

So basically that's using a seperate receiver and tom tom software for the GPS on a PDA?

4$£&*(£$&*(!

Use any 'smartphone' with a seperate GPS receiver and tomtom on a memory card. All the Nokia smartphones are compatible with this as far as I'm aware and it works a treat. I wouldn't buy a PDA - a smartphone is far cheaper usually and is actually useful. PDA's tend to have a habit of gathering dust at the back of a drawer I find!

dellboy102

CitySlicker wrote:

Use any 'smartphone' with a seperate GPS receiver and tomtom on a memory card. All the Nokia smartphones are compatible with this as far as I'm aware and it works a treat. I wouldn't buy a PDA - a smartphone is far cheaper usually and is actually useful. PDA's tend to have a habit of gathering dust at the back of a drawer I find!

Your totally right, thats whats happened to mine, only use it for GPS, spent a lot on this PDA too, I'm actually waiting for the N93 i think it is to come out, that seems to have everything, good camera, GPS built in etc.

Minimods

I have an XDA IIs and use it for TomTom and its great. The best thing about having it all in one is when you get to your destination you only have one thing to unplug and carry around. Also you get the advantage of the XDA as a phone and PDA which is great (there isn't anything it doesn't do).

The only downside is that the XDA Orbit isn't the smallest of phones, if this doesn't bother you then go for the XDA every time.

fox2319

I had a MDA Compact which I intended to use for a GPS. Gave up on it after 6 months or so as it was slightly useless to use - as a phone! Sold it on ebay and bought a RAZR.

Seriously though, no keypad so dialling numbers is tricky and as for SMS! Now I've got a N73 for the phone (pretty snazzy but not sure about the speed of the menus (mainly recovering to standby) but extremely useful, syncs with outlook over bluetooth etc. etc.. I also bought a TomTom 510 to use for the satnav and handsfree for the phone while driving. Much better solution.

Get stuff that is good for what it's been designed, otherwise you need to accept compromises.

Cheers

Jeff

M.A.

Is it possible to use any of these on PAYG?

4$£&*(£$&*(!

There's loads of smartphones, a reasonably comprehensive list is here -

http://www.symbian.com/phones/index.html

I'd say with that many smartphones it will be easy to get one on pay as you go. Double check with the tomtom website that the phone will run their software before you buy it (but in reality you shouldn't have any problems, particularly with the stuff tomtom made around 2004 - works on most phones, it's only their very latest software that needs a more powerful phone, but for what it's worth it does very little more than the older software).

Once you've got the phone and the tomtom software, you just need a bluetooth GPS device from ebay, for between £30 - £40. Far cheaper than the phones with built in GPS, far more future proof in case you decide in the future you want another phone as you can keep GPS to use rather than limiting yourself to phones just with GPS built in. And as I've mentioned before, far more useful, better than having a PDA that just never gets used!