Finding Your Way: GPS App Overviews

The GPS on some smartphones is invariably shit. Slow, unresponsive, and temperamental are all words that an aspiring Thesaurian (which ironically, is not a word at all) would perhaps use to describe some of the 'for-the-hell-of-it' GPS apps that come factory installed. This of course opened a gap in the market, something smartphones are very good at doing. Did I need an expensive piece of GPS software before? No, I did not; I used a map. Do I need one now? Hell yeah, fuck maps.

CoPilot Live. I'm not sure where this
is, but if you're ever passing and get
into an accident, you have a choice
 of hospitals.

CoPilot Live is a premium form of GPS, offering 3D guidance, lane assist, speed limit warnings, and safety camera alerts. Plus, it looks like you can download more maps over WiFi after you purchase it. The sting in its tail is the price: it's £22.49 for the UK and Eire version, and £49.38 for the full European map. While these prices are considerably lower than what TomTom are asking for, the user reviews say that CoPilot isn't nearly as good. TomToms must be really good, because despite this, people are still showering all the CoPilot apps in praise. So, if you do a bit of traveling and don't mind paying fifty quid, you can have a rather good piece of self-updating GPS software without needing to purchase any of the hardware, or remove the SD card after every journey, or sacrifice the cigarette lighter. Do be warned however, a lot of people are reporting problems on less capable phones (basically anything which isn't an HTC), including forced close, asking for account numbers on startup, and generally failing to do anything useful whatsoever. As one user reports, it "constantly gives errors about your Google checkout number". Indeed, a lot of the problems seem to be concerned with the order process, with less to do with the software itself. Worth fifty quid? I'd advise against it, given what we've seen.

CamerAlert. It's a Trap!

MobileNavigator looks a bit less promising. It's a damn sight prettier, but that's where the positives end. It shares a lot of features with CoPilot, except MobNav does all of them far, far less efficiently. A few customers have reported a couple of features as entirely kaput (particularly the speed checker, which is a good feature of CoPilot), and the same aforementioned order problems seem to plague the purchase process. Though apparently the traffic feature is a treat; a far tastier treat than anything on CoPilot. Is it worth the money? Perhaps if all the features were as good as they are on other Navigon software, then yes, it absolutely would be. As it stands this is a money sink, and a rather risky one when you read the comment from the poor man who "bought it but couldn't download it".

CamerAlert is an app by PocketGPSWorld.com Ltd (gotta love Internet company names), which at first appears rather enticing. Their piece of software claims to tell you when the next speed camera's coming, how far away you are from it, and what your average speed is. They also claim it costs 59p (about $1.20), and while I'm sure the former is true, the latter most certainly isn't. This is less of a review and more of a warning, essentially; you pay the 59p, then (according to one user) a £19.99 subcharge, and then 40p a week for the pleasure. To give them credit, the quality of their software justifies its high price, and nearly all users report a positive usage experience. Their financial methods, however, are more than a little creepy. It's not a scam, but it's close.