tomtom or garmin

prowla

wba31 wrote: »

Plus one for the smartphone option. I did buy Tomtom for iPhone but Apple maps and google maps nav are perfectly fine for free...

If you don't have a smartphone, my father in law has a garmin with free traffic, quite useful.

I used to have a tom-tom xl - and i would put the traffic alerts thing on my car stereo... i preferred the ui of tom-tom, it's far simpler. my tom-tom didn't last as long as the father in laws garmin though...

I did use NavFree, but it once took me down a dirt road to a dead end, so I decided to ditch it.

I quite like the TomTom user interface. However, it does use up the battery. The licence allows you to install it on multiple devices (is it 5?).

xyz123

i am tempted to get the app based navigation software. however i am unsure as it obviously depends on mobile phone coverage. i am in london and when i tried it once couple of weeks back, it lost GPS signal few times on a short 3 mile journey!

prowla

I don't think the smartphone based sat-navs need the phone network. Of course, they do need GPS, just like a dedicated sat-nav would.

According to this http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/iphone-gps-definition-assisted-gps-how-gps-works-real-time-navigation.html, phones can supplement the GPS information for more accuracy.