Windows Phone Thoughts: No Matter Where You Go, There You Are ... With The E-TEN G500

GPS: Taking it to the Streets
Anyone purchasing the G500 is certainly most interested in the built-in GPS. When I went to start reviewing this part, I was surprised to realize that E-TEN opted to not include any navigation software in the package. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this decision was. Perhaps it was a cost control decision, or perhaps the complication of providing software compatible with a world wide distribution was difficult. I really can’t say. For some people this may be a negative, especially if they don’t already have software on hand. It wasn’t a huge problem for me since I’ve been using Mapopolis for sometime and I’m quite happy with it. Even compared to some of the other software on the market, I always come back to it.

Software: Installing Mapopolis onto the device, of course, was no problem at all. I then went to the GPS applet under settings to configure the receiver. But after 20 minutes of trying to get Mapopolis to recognize and start the GPS receiver, I begrudgingly returned to RTFM mode (kiddies ask your parents for translation). To my surprise, there's nothing in the CD manual about it. So, back to trial and error. Finally after setting the GPS Program Port to COM4, Mapopolis was able to find it. Now we’re in business.

The Car Mount:

Figure 18: G500 in the car mount.

Installing the car mount was easy once I realized that the arm bends. :oops: It was only a matter of picking a spot, securing the suction cup and attaching the holder for the G500. The mount is stable and the holder maintains a tight grip on the device. In fact the grip for the Pocket PC became a point of concern for me. Moving the G500 in and out of the holder is a two-handed effort in and of itself due to it being a snap in type of holder. There were times when I was worried about scratching the G500’s finish trying to remove it. If I had my choice, I would probably opt for a holder with adjustable side grips, making it easy to put the device in and take it out. Running into the grocery store? No problem... grab the phone and go.

Navigation: But what you really want to know is, can it get you to where you want to go, right? For my test I decided to match the G500 up with my dynamic duo: the Toshiba e830 and the GlobalSat BT-338 GPS receiver. Both running Mapoplis with the Maryland and DC maps and all of the same settings.

Okay, off we go...

For this contest, I decided to take my combatants to work and back. The trip was a mixture of me following the GPS, and forcing them to re-route. To my surprise, it was like getting directions from identical twins. I mean it was freaky. Nearly 95% of the time, the voice prompts were in unison. Even the chimes signaling that a step was completed were usually together. When standing still I noticed that the distance count down to the next step may have varied by at most ten feet. Rerouting was in sync as well.

There was one strange situation when one device wanted to turn right at the next intersection and the other wanted to turn right at the one after. Both intersections were considered major roads so I wasn’t too worried. Later I found out that the G500 was running Mapopolis v4.7 and the e830 was running v4.6. Maybe there was some change in the navigation algorithm. Or maybe there was a ghost in the machine.

I should also mention that the external speaker was loud and clear. I didn't have any problems understanding the voice prompts.