Windows Phone Thoughts: Lost In Space (or the UK)? Get the Navman GPS 4400!

Putting It To The Test
In order to see how well or badly the system performed, I decided to try it out on three routes: a very simple one (the way home from work), a slightly harder one (from home to a nearby shopping centre) and a journey that I've never done before. I was particularly interested in finding out:

• How the re-routing performed;
  
• How the software coped with UK road layouts, specifically junctions and roundabouts;
  
• How the software announced the directions.

My journey home from work is fairly straightforward and the software quickly picked the fastest route. I didn't want to go that way, though, because it gets snarled up with everyone else going home, so I tend to take a different route out of the city to join the main road home. The software spotted fairly quickly that I wasn't going the way it had suggested but did not tell me to turn around but, instead, calculated a new route based on my current heading and came up with one that matched what I was doing.

The way the software handles roundabouts is excellent. It starts off by telling you in advance of the roundabout which exit you are going to take. Then, when it sees you have reached the roundabout, it tells you again which exit you are taking. Finally, as you go around the roundabout, it tells you to exit the roundabout. Figure 28 shows an example of what a roundabout looks like in the software. The white arrows show the one-way sections of road. The other key point about this screenshot is that your current location is shown in red, instead of blue, to show that you've lost GPS information.


Figure 28: Navigating a roundabout

The accuracy of the last turn announcement on a roundabout depends highly on how big a roundabout it is and how much distance there is between you getting onto the roundabout and getting off again. This is partly down to the accuracy of GPS itself and the maps that Navman are using, but also down to the way the software times its announcements. This behaviour was also noticed on slip roads off a major road. The software would tell you to come off the main road but often wouldn't tell you quickly enough where you were going from the slip road. If you didn't know the area, this could result in some last minute lane changing.

The second journey really pushed the re-routing hard because although I asked the software to plan a route from home to the shopping centre, we were making a private detour on the way. The software tried to cope but did, at one point, end up recalculating a route that ended up taking us away from our destination. Luckily we knew the area well enough to ignore it and go the right way. The system did then sort itself out again and get the route right.

One thing that was worrying, and the system did this twice on the above route, was that it missed out a step in the route. For example, we would be driving along a road and the next instruction would be to take an exit off a roundabout. What the software forgot to tell us was that we needed to turn right first to get onto the road that led up to the roundabout. This wasn't an issue of the maps being incorrect. In fact, the map display was accurate and correct - it was the steps in the route that were wrong.

The final journey ended up being two journeys. The first was to go from our home to visit my step-son. The second was a little excursion from my step-son's home to a nearby park.

The first journey went very smoothly and I was very pleased with how it got us almost to the front door. I say almost because of the inaccuracy of specifying the road & house number, as mentioned above.

The second journey was not so smooth. This was partly because I was driving solely on the audio instructions. There were a couple of occasions where they left a lot to be desired:[list=1]

The software told me to bear left as I approached a set of traffic lights. Once I reached the traffic lights, the software told me to turn right! Looking at the map, I cannot see why it wanted me to bear left.

The road signs suggested that I was approaching a roundabout, but the software didn't see it this way. Instead, it told me to bear left all of the time. Looking at the map, it does look as if the one-way pattern would prevent it from being used as a roundabout.[/list]In both cases, if I had been able to look at the display, I would have been more certain of where I was going. However, it is dangerous to take your eyes off the road, so Navman might want to look further into the audio announcements.

Miscellaneous
There are a number of pages to the setup part of the GPS software - they are pretty self explanatory, which is good.


Figure 29: Display options


Figure 30: Guidance options


Figure 31: Routing options

The recording option causes the software to create a file that records all or part of the route. This is for use by Navman when diagnosing problems, which is a shame really as I could envisage possible uses for such a file. An example would be for an office to verify that a driver took the route they were supposed to take.


Figure 32: Choosing which categories of POIs are displayed on the map


Figure 33: Which maps are stored on your Pocket PC

Since the GPS unit conforms to the NMEA standard, I was also able to successfully use the unit with Microsoft's MapPoint on my laptop and Pocket Streets on my Pocket PC. It was just necessary to connect to the Bluetooth serial port and then tell the product which port number to use.

Navman plan to make updates to the maps available on a regular basis. It will also be possible for European owners to purchase the USA maps. They are expected to be available early in 2004 and retail for £149 or €219.

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