 I have the honor to review the iGo My Way Navigation Software 2006 All Region Beta version after publishing the TomTom Navigation 5 review couple weeks ago. The package arrived from GPS & More Ltd. in about a week. I have extensively used one in-car navigation system for 4 years, an older version of iGuidance on the second generation IPAQ for 2 years, and lately the TomTom Navigation 5 software on T-mobile MDA. This would be an interesting comparison, especially with the TomTom Navigation 5 software, since the other two are considered older generation hardware and software.
What's in the package:
- iGo My Way Navigation Software 2006 in a 1 GB miniSD card
- SD adapter
- CD-ROM with user manual
Installation
One of the selling point of this software is its ease of installation.
Plug & Go is the keyword here. There is no ActiveSync required, no need to
download maps and no need for product registration. All you need to do is
to plug in the miniSD or SD card with the provided adapter, install the software
and you are ready to go. I believe this is to directly address the
installation issues people have encountered when using TomTom and other
navigation software.
The even better news is that the installed program is about 9K, so it does not
take up precious program store memory on my MDA. This is indeed an
excellent install concept, except when I plugged in the iGo My Way miniSD card and
installed for the first time, it got stuck at install status screen.
Pressed the OK key and got no response. I ended up having to soft reset
the device, uninstall and re-install the software again. This time,
everything came up nicely. According to iGo, the PDA might have something
conflicting in its memory, holding large part of it with some other program.
The soft reset eventually cleared it up.
Because the iGo My Way program and map data took up almost
the entire 1 GB miniSD card capacity (below), I could not put my usual 500-600MB MP3
files there and use both iGo My Way and TCPMP concurrently. This is one downside
of having everything packed into one memory card and a typical case of trading
install convenience with flexibility. One alternative is to backup and
then eliminate unused maps on the card (for instance by using WM5torage
http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=2978 if you don't have a card reader
handy), leaving enough room to store mp3 files.
Since this software is restricted to the CID Register of the miniSD card, I
cannot copy the entire content to a larger capacity card and use the extra
memory for mp3 files. May be iGo My Way can, in the future, provide higher
capacity memory card version for those who need the extra room for other
programs/data.
Since I have already paired the GPS receiver with the MDA, all
it took is to run the auto Detect function in the iGo My Way software. Although
this is common among other navigation software like iGuidance, somehow TomTom
Navigation 5 is still using manual GPS receiver detection/setting.
Launching iGo My Way took about the same amount of
time with TomTom, about 30-40 seconds. iGo My Way does provide progress/status
update on screen (right), unlike TomTom where you get nothing until their legal warning
screen appears. After everything is initialized, you are at the main menu
(left).
 
Comments on the User Interface
Even though number of menu layers decreased in iGo My Way compared to TomTom, menu
structure is not as intuitive as TomTom. Took me a while to figure out how
to navigate for the first time, as the default starting point was in Europe. But once
I got familiar with the menu structure, it actually took me less time to get to most
tasks than in TomTom. UI transition in iGo My Way is also very smooth. I did not
find any UI glitches such as those I found in TomTom (additional tap, hidden POI
info).
Here are the Find (left), and Quick (right) tabs. Find covers
everything you need to start navigating to a destination. The Quick tab allows you to quickly
set a few commonly used options as well as managing POI and logs.
 
Route tab is used after a destination is chosen, where you can view/edit/delete
your route.
In general, iGo My Way software is harder to view while driving
in bright sunlight, in comparison to TomTom, because of couple factors:
- color
profile contrast is not sharp enough (left). Green, Bozi and YoB color profiles are better than the default setting, but
still not as good as the one in TomTom,
- text size too small, font not bold,
and no option to adjust it, and
- freeway exits and merges are not
apparent visually (right screen shot, notice the small exit indication from 280 to 380).
 
Even though we are not supposed to look at the display while driving, sometimes
visual indication is crucial. That being
said, iGo My Way does provide a top progress bar (the black top bar in the left screen
shot above) for making turn, freeway merges and
exits, and gives you ample voice prompts beforehand. It also provides pop up
info on the map and visual indication whether your destination is on the right or left side of
the road (left screen shot below, note the slight tilt at the destination). But you really need to stare hard at the display to be able to
see the info. To be useful, visual indication needs to be enhanced or the
same info needs to be incorporated into voice prompts. After looking at
the screen in IGo My Way, I definitely miss the big icons, fonts and sharp contrast
display in TomTom (right).
 
Another thing I miss is a simple Guided Tour as in TomTom. Even though
TomTom does not provide a comprehensive training on the product, and in fact,
you really should not need one if the UI is done right, having a simple tutorial will
guide any newbie without him/her digging into the user manual. iGo My Way,
however, provides help text for all settings, something TomTom does not
provide.
iGo My Way supports multi-language voice prompts. However, there is no Asian
language voice prompt in my beta version. According to iGo, they will be
included when they deploy the product in the Asian market. I couldn't find
a female US voice, so I picked the UK female voice. It's just a matter of
time and effort to provide both male and female voice prompts for all supported languages.
POI navigation turned out to be one of the strong points in IGo My Way. POI
are organized into logical groups. I tried to look up restaurants around
my areas. It started with the common franchised restaurants (right), choosing
Other will list out the rest (left). I could use Filter to find specific ones or
select All to browse through the list. I also could browse through each one
before deciding which one to navigate to. This is exactly what POI
navigation is supposed to work. The only minor thing iGo My Way did not have is
integrate the call function after finding a specific POI, something TomTom does provide, but through a separate path in menu navigation.
 
iGo My Way also
provides Fly Over function, similar to TomTom's Demo route, executing a virtual navigation to
your selected destination. One thing I could not find is the way to
speed up iGo My Way Fly Over function. Since the default speed is slow, it might take
a while to finish a long route. Thanks to the tips from iGo, holding down button 1 when pressing the Fly Over button will switch
to high speed. Keep in mind there will be no voice prompt, street label or
pop up info while running in high speed mode.
Test Route
I used the same test route as I did in the TomTom review, from my home in San
Francisco
to my work place in Milpitas, California. iGo My Way did provide the shortest route to my
work place as well as on the return route. It did not point me to any toll
road nor to any non-existing road as TomTom did. So my conclusion is that iGo
My Way uses maps
that are either more up to date or more accurate than TomTom. This is a very
critical factor in any navigation system, as map accuracy is the bread and butter of
any navigation software. According to iGo, one of their strength is their
map conversion tool, which can convert and compress the entire Europe or
North America map overnight, giving them the ability to release the most up
to date maps from their map provider.
As mentioned earlier, I could not use media player concurrently and
extensively as the miniSD card could not house enough mp3 files. When switching between iGo
My Way and the media player, I used the same strategy as in
TomTom, making use of the phone hang up button and the small icons in the bottom
task bar.
In terms of stability of the product, I believe iGo My Way is in par with
TomTom. Only once over the past few weeks' usage, my MDA was soft rebooted
when invoking iGo My Way software. I could not reproduce the issue since.
As
mentioned earlier, iGo My Way software's voice prompts are accurate and give ample
warning before each turn, freeway merge or exit. In addition, the highly
visible top progress bar also gave accurate account on when I should be making the turn/exit/merge.
That being said, I do notice iGo My Way provides more voice prompts than TomTom when
cruising on freeways. Depending on whether you are more or less familiar
with the route, this could be viewed as either useful or annoying. I tend
to like TomTom's minimal voice prompts on freeways, giving me more time to
listen to uninterrupted music, as long as both voice and visual navigation will
eventually lead me to my destination.
Both iGo My Way and TomTom have the same issue
of requiring city name to start navigation. Navigating to a city in a
different state did take me a while to figure everything out in iGo My Way. I had
to click change country (left) and select the appropriate state map (right) before entering
the city name. My guess is that the current UI is inherited from Europe
and may need further tuning for North America. In TomTom, as long as the
city is within the map region, which spans multiple states, finding it is quite
straight forward.
 
Another critical difference, I tried navigating from San Francisco to New York,
virtually of course. TomTom does not support this since the route spans
two different regions. iGo My Way does allow me to do so, because they compile
the entire North America map data as one huge map, instead of the simple cross
region based on MR layer, according to iGo. I only have 3000 miles to
cover in 48 hours, perfect for my weekend trip. ;-)
Advanced Services:
According to iGo, real time traffic is done through Traffic Message Channel
(TMC) in Europe, where radio stations now transmit a specially encoded TMC
signal containing real-time traffic information. However, this only
applies to devices such as Mio C710, but not for Pocket PC or Smartphone without
built-in TMC attenna, or users in North America, unless the same is encoded here as in
Europe. I supposed future releases of iGo My Way will figure out a way for
Pocket PC or Smartphone users to integrate real time traffic with its navigation
software. Safety/speed camera info is also available in Europe, but will
not be applicable for North America. Therefore, neither TMC nor Safety
Camera info was available and tested in this review.
Final Conclusion
In summary, iGo My Way definitely gives TomTom a good run for its money. There are
things that iGo My Way does better than TomTom and there are certainly things that
TomTom does better. I am enclosing the pros and cons for your reference.
Since the race is quite close, I supposed the final purchasing decision will have to depend
on what/where your priorities are as well as at what price point iGo My Way will be
offered in North America. According to iGo, suggested retail price will be
around 120-130 USD, including the 1GB miniSD card. That would be a very
reasonably priced navigation software.
Pros
- simple installation
- more up to date and accurate maps
- support navigation to different states in different regions
- excellent POI database look up and navigation
- good voice prompts, giving ample warning before each turn, freeway
exit and merge
- provide visual indication, namely progress bar for when to turn, exit and merge
- nice UI transitions, less menu layers and no UI glitch
- nice Pop Up Info on map
- provide visual indication whether your destination is on your right or
left (though quite hard to see)
- auto defect GPS receiver
- multi-language voice prompts
- provide application start up as well as routing/rerouting progress indication
- free map update
Cons
- display color contrast not visible in bright sunlight
- text too small and font too light to be visible while driving
- visual indication of freeway exits and merges difficult to see while
driving
- cannot use media player concurrently as miniSD card is full and
cannot accommodate additional mp3 files unless you manually take out
maps
- menu navigation not as intuitive as TomTom
- no integrated real time traffic info available in North America
- no Asian language support for voice prompts (coming soon)
- no guided tour or simple tutorial (but do have Settings help text)
- need city name to navigate (same as TomTom)
- no integrated phone call to POI
Happy navigating!
|
