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| Page Two of smart2go Mobile Navigator GPS Software with Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver |
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Once you have located an address or POI, The location will be shown on a map. If it is a POI, you can view detailed information about it.   When using the Navigation function, you will select a starting and end location to create a route. When the route is created, you can view a text list of the travel directions or view a simulation of the trip on the map. Once you start the route navigation, the map will display and smart2go will give you visual and voice directions as you travel. If you lose the GPS signal while driving, smart2go will pause until it reacquires the signal. If you have got off-course during that time, it will automatically recalculate a new route. smart2go’s fast performance makes this quick and easy. An occasional problem with the way smart2go calculates routes, if you go the wrong direction on a street, it will keep telling you to make a U-turn instead of looking for another route in your current direction. This can be especially annoying when you are on a street where you cannot perform a U-turn, but smart2go does not know it.   While you are driving, you can select all the POI category icons that you would like displayed on the map while you drive. This is a nice feature especially if you are sightseeing or exploring a new area. Once the navigation screen is displayed, it will provide the following information as you drive: Next turn direction Street name for the next turn A scale showing your proximity to the next turn Map with line showing travel direction Arrow representing your vehicle Map Scale Distance traveled of total distance Estimated time of arrival (ETA) at your destination   smart2go constantly monitors the travel speed and adjust the timing of the voice prompts so that they are not given too early. This is especially useful since the voice prompts do not include the name of the street. The voice prompt would simply say “Turn left” or “Turn left in 75 yards”. Many GPS software systems have a problem with telling you to turn left while there are still 2 or 3 left turn possibilities before the correct street. This forces you to always check the display for the correct street. smart2go does not have this problem because of its speed based prompting. The voice prompting would still be more useful if it announced street or road names, but this would only be possible with systems using speech-synthesis. To my knowledge, there is no PDA or Smartphone based system that has this feature.   Additional icons that are available during the route navigation mode are: Pin on cross 3D Map mode Gear Navigate to selected location List on page Display a list of destinations Radio Signal GPS Signal status Letter I Select POI Category Icons to display on map Slider Bar Zoom In/Out smart2go has a great “auto” zoom feature that zooms into your location when you are driving slow and zooms out when you are driving fast. This is useful for showing more details when you are going slow such as when you are driving in a city and a greater distance when you are driving fast such as on a freeway or highway. The greater distance displayed allows you more time to react to direction changes when you are traveling at a higher speed.   Clicking on the map during navigational guidance will display the options screen where you can select an alternate route, repeat the voice instruction, toggle the 2D/3D mode, toggle the Day mode / Night mode which changes the screen colors for easier viewing, mute the sound, saving your position, and sending your position. Sending your position is a neat feature. If you are using a Smartphone or a phone enabled PDA, you can send your position or the information about a POI via an SMS message to a friend so that they will know your location. If you send your position, smart2go will send an SMS message containing the address of your location. Sending a turn-by-turn routing or a POI review, smart2go will send the information as multiple SMS messages. This is a great feature when someone wants to meet you at your location or a POI and does not have smart2go. One problem I had was interrupting the route navigation by turning off the PocketPC. An example is when I stop for food during a trip. If I turn the PocketPC off and then back on, smart2go has lost connection to the GPS receiver and does not attempt to reconnect. So it stays at the last map position waiting for GPS data. The preferred reaction to a power down and no Bluetooth would be an automatic reboot of the Bluetooth and continuation of the route guidance once the GPS signal is restored. Overall, smart2go has impressive performance. The map scrolling and zoom is quick. Recalculating a route is equally quick compared to many other software packages. The address search in smart2go is the fastest of any package I have tried. Entering only the number and one word of the street address will return a complete list of every address that matches in the selected map database. Most searches only take 2 or 3 seconds, even when there are over 20 matches. While there are a few things I would like to see fixed or improved, smart2go has a lot of new, innovative features. Combined with fast performance and the Socket Bluetooth GPS receiver, this is a full-featured package for navigation, both at home and when you travel. I will be making smart2go a permanent addition to my PocketPC and I cannot wait to try the Smartphone version. Pros Fast performance Speed Adjusted Directions Auto Zoom Walk Mode US and Canada Maps in one package Cons No auto reboot of Bluetooth No GPS Satellite Tracking Info Rating: 9.0 out of 10 Stars. {UPDATED} -Harvey Lee Technology Editor Buy Bluetooth GPS Solutions Product: smart2go Mobile Navigator GPS Software with Socket Bluetooth GPS Receiver Manufacturer: Gate5 NA / Socket Communications Web Site: www.smart2go.com www.gate5usa.com www.socketcom.com Category: PocketPC / Software Price: $299 Release Date: April 30, 2005 |
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