Right, first off a rant about the truly terrible Nokia Map's 2.0; I had my first chance to properly test Nokia Maps 2.0 (3 months free navigation subscription with my new Nokia 6220 Classic) this weekend with a camping trip in the Snowdonian mountains. It's better than the previous version, but its still rubbish.
Firstly, the voices - could they make them sound any worse? It's like a 10kbps MP3 recording of a chain smoker with Tuberculosis. I thought phone's speaker was at fault, but have since ruled this out. And whats with stuff like "next possibility right turn"? whats wrong with good old English "take the next right"?
Secondly, searching - to search for a location (to navigate to) it needs access to the internet. Great when you have no signal in the mountains. Which went down really well with the other half while the baby screamed in the back.
Thirdly, it's very buggy - on three occasions, on one day, the screen froze and would not update. It was still working, and the terrible voice navigation was still kicking in at the right time and the menus all worked.
Fourthly(?) no custom POI's (i.e. Speed Cameras) - what's up when every other GPS product worth its salt allows you to set up your own POI's, Nokia still cant be bothered?
Finally, the UI - The most confusing, needlessly complicated and just weirdly illogical menu system and UI I have yet seen on a Sat Nav application (make that any Mobile software). Then you are not even completely sure its been set up properly to do what you want and you need complete confidence in a Sat Nav when you are driving your family through unknown area on dodgy (albeit A) roads.
I have tried a lot of GPS software over the years (admittedly mostly on the much better and mature Windows Mobile platform, IMO) and i can hand on heart say you should NOT hand over any of your hard earned cash for Nokia Maps 2.0 chaps. Its so bad i'm not even prepared to put up with the free 3 month navigation subscription. In fact, not even the the free version is worth using much when the excellent Google Maps is available for free too, which i found more useful this weekend (when i had a net connection). What i dont understand is why, when i search the net and read magazines, Maps 2.0 seems to have had such a warm reception? Are they Nokia fanboys that have never tried anything else? It's bizarre, i only had to use it for a few hours to find fault after fault.
So, with that said, and in context of what i said above, has any one tried Copilot AND Garmin XT who can tell me which is best and why? I have tried Copliot 7 a little and it's immeasurably better than Nokia effort. But what's this Garmin XT like?
Of course i would prefer TomTom over all. But they have abandoned Symbian and it won't work with the 6220c internal GPS (not even the N95 hack works, i tried). Although they cant wait to get a version out for the iPhone 3G (out yet?), and despite the success of the iPhone i'm sure there are more GPS capable Symbian handsets out there, but thats another story!
Anyway, it's Garmin Vs Copilot - who deservers my dwindling cash the most ? Cheers