Can you get a sat nav that does this...

JustAnotherSaver

Suppose this fits in both this forum & the techie so wasn't sure where to put it really. Onwards...

I have the TomTom app on my phone & one problem i have with it is getting you to places you don't know, or at least some of them (so bit of a problem then!)
I recently had to go to a hospital a good drive away & had no clue where it was. Set up the sat nav. This hospital is on a very long road & by the time i met this road i was told i'd reached my destination. So i had to guess either a left or right turn. Thankfully got it right.

I know you can select by points of interest, but the hospital wasn't listed. I tried for infirmary & that wasn't listed either.

What i think would be good (if it exists) is a touch screen sat nav, where you can scroll a map & zoom in. Sort of like google maps on the iPhone. You can then drop a pin on the road & tell the sat nav - take me to this pin. Rather than entering city names, road names, crossings or door numbers etc.

Does such a sat nav exist?

Iceweasel

Yes of course!

I often do exactly what you describe.

Browse the map, select a point, and then navigate to that point.

Mine is a Garmin, but I thought they all could do that.

I'm surprised that there are any hospitals that are not listed in the Points of Interest files.

I'd like to check on that if I could - which hospital in which town was it?

JustAnotherSaver

Iceweasel wrote: »

Yes of course!

I often do exactly what you describe.

Browse the map, select a point, and then navigate to that point.

Mine is a Garmin, but I thought they all could do that.

I'm surprised that there are any hospitals that are not listed in the Points of Interest files.

I'd like to check on that if I could - which hospital in which town was it?

I quite like TomTom's. You don't know of one that does this do you? I've got an old Sat Nav from probably about 8-10 years ago which obviously wont do that. I have the TomTom iPhone app. CoPilot for iPhone. Waze or whatever it's called (which i actually find to be quite poor). TomTom is the best one i've found out of them but it wont let me do what i've asked about.

The hospital was Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan. Maybe i wasn't putting in the right searches. I was in a rush. It found the nearby Wrightington Hospital no problem & took me direct to the car park.

Iceweasel

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

I quite like TomTom's. You don't know of one that does this do you? I've got an old Sat Nav from probably about 8-10 years ago which obviously wont do that. I have the TomTom iPhone app. CoPilot for iPhone. Waze or whatever it's called (which i actually find to be quite poor). TomTom is the best one i've found out of them but it wont let me do what i've asked about.

The hospital was Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan. Maybe i wasn't putting in the right searches. I was in a rush. It found the nearby Wrightington Hospital no problem & took me direct to the car park.

Can you save a map selection to the memory?

I can either go direct to any point or I can save it and then fetch it back from the memory and then navigate to it.

A friend of mine has a TomTom and i just can't use it at all - I feel a fool when he has to tell me which selections i need to make next.

He doesn't like my Garmin so I suppose it's just what you're used to.

I found your hospital straight away, by the way, so it's in the Navteq data base.

goonarmy

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

I quite like TomTom's. You don't know of one that does this do you? I've got an old Sat Nav from probably about 8-10 years ago which obviously wont do that. I have the TomTom iPhone app. CoPilot for iPhone. Waze or whatever it's called (which i actually find to be quite poor). TomTom is the best one i've found out of them but it wont let me do what i've asked about.

The hospital was Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan. Maybe i wasn't putting in the right searches. I was in a rush. It found the nearby Wrightington Hospital no problem & took me direct to the car park.

My very old tomtom does it so i expect the new ones still do. Does the app come with instructions?

Ultrasonic

My entry level TomTom Start allows me to navigate to a point on the map, so it would seem a surprising ommission if the phone app didn't let you do the same.

Regarding the hospital, I'm slightly surprised it isn't large enough to have a unique postcode, so that merely navigating to this would have been sufficient.

Altarf

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

What i think would be good (if it exists) is a touch screen sat nav, where you can scroll a map & zoom in. Sort of like google maps on the iPhone. You can then drop a pin on the road & tell the sat nav - take me to this pin. Rather than entering city names, road names, crossings or door numbers etc.

Does such a sat nav exist?

Um yes.

Google Maps on any Android phone does exactly that, works excellently as a sat nav, and is free.

And with Google Now, your phone probably knows where you want to go without you needing to tell it.

Stooby2

Or just use Google to search for the hospital's details and get the postcode to enter into TomTom

JustAnotherSaver

Iceweasel wrote: »

Can you save a map selection to the memory?

It saves old journeys to memory if that's what you mean?

goonarmy wrote: »

My very old tomtom does it so i expect the new ones still do. Does the app come with instructions?

I don't think so.

Ultrasonic wrote: »

My entry level TomTom Start allows me to navigate to a point on the map, so it would seem a surprising ommission if the phone app didn't let you do the same.

It does let me navigate to a point on a map. All destinations are points on a map.
What it doesn't let me do is scroll around the UK, do a long press to 'drop a pin' & then select a pop up option that says something on the lines of 'route to here'.

Regarding the hospital, I'm slightly surprised it isn't large enough to have a unique postcode, so that merely navigating to this would have been sufficient.

I never said it didn't have a post code, it does.
Although i'm not sure why a post code would help?

A post code wont get you direct there will it. With Wrightington Hospital, i went> POI> City> Wigan> Wrightington Hospital & it took me straight to the car park. Something to that effect anyway.
With the Infirmary at Wigan, i could only go via the post code - that's how i got there. The post code just gets you in an area though, it doesn't take you to a specific point, such as turn left into this car park here like it did with Wrightington.

So the post code is no good.

Altarf wrote: »

Um yes.

Google Maps on any Android phone does exactly that, works excellently as a sat nav, and is free.

I'm not wanting an Android phone. Plus doesn't that use data? Im sure it did with the wifes SGS3. Either way, i still don't want an Android phone.

And with Google Now, your phone probably knows where you want to go without you needing to tell it.

Sounds interesting (& worrying!). How does this work?

Stooby2 wrote: »

Or just use Google to search for the hospital's details and get the postcode to enter into TomTom

I didn't need to search google. For anyone who's had an appointment through for a hospital i'm sure they'll be aware you get a letter with the hospitals details on the top (including post code).

But see my earlier comment about the post code problem.

I want to select a point on a map manually, not to be taken to roughly in the region of.

nearlyrich

My Tom Tom Go Live 1005 has the feature you want touch the map and log it as a favourite...

Iceweasel

nearlyrich wrote: »

My Tom Tom Go Live 1005 has the feature you want touch the map and log it as a favourite...

That's exactly as my Garmin does, which I described in post#2.

You don't even need to save/log it as a favourite.

Any Sat Nav without that possibility seems pretty useless to me.