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Navigating roadways
with cell phone GPS
June 04, 2007
LAS VEGAS - Driving around a rapidly growing city on unfamiliar
streets is not fun.
A wrong turn can land you in a maze of construction detours and bumpy roads. Some residents
in Las Vegas' newer communities say stop signs and street names seem to change by the month.
I tried navigating
around town using cell phones loaded with Global Positioning System software. The programs - VZ Navigator, TeleNav, Garmin
Mobile and MapQuest Navigator - can be downloaded onto phones with GPS chips and cost $9.99 a month.
With up-to-date
maps and a comforting, computerized female voice telling me exactly where to go, what could possibly go wrong?
A
few things.
First, I expected because I was using the systems over the air in real time, I would get the most updated
maps. I was mistaken.
One day, I tried to locate a new bar that was opening at 1205 South Ft. Apache Road, on the
west side of town. "Martinis" was giving away free martinis, as long as I could find the place.
While
the invitation included a rough map, I could not find the address on any of the systems.
Oddly, MapQuest Navigator
could not pinpoint the address, even though it came up on the MapQuest.com Web site.
So what's the point of
paying $9.99 a month for a navigation system that can't find addresses?
It's a fair question, especially
when you can pay $1.79 a call for 411 service at Sprint PCS for a real person to give you turn-by-turn directions.
But Las Vegas is a new, growing city. I suppose these navigation devices are good for places that have been around for a
while, right?
Not so fast.
Recently, I used TeleNav to browse by name for the Primm Valley Golf Club
in Primm, Nev., (opened in 1997) and the Mountain Falls Golf Club in Pahrump, Nev., (opened in April 2005).
Neither
appeared, so I found them the old-fashioned way - by asking for directions. (Later, when trying out the Garmin Mobile program,
I was able to locate both.)
All of the companies said they used map data from Navteq, which updated its database
quarterly, said Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Jenny Weaver.
Among other hit-and-miss features were the cheap-gas
finders (either the prices were different or the location was wrong), WiFi hot spot locaters and TeleNav's traffic detection
service.
In one instance, I was disappointed by two things at once.
I drove across town to find cheap
gas - and was directed by TeleNav to drive north on the Las Vegas Strip in the evening. As a somewhat experienced local, I
knew such a route was insanity - the Strip would be clogged with taxis, limo-length Hummers and motorists. Overriding the
chosen path, when I got to the location, there was a dark, apparently abandoned building where a gas station was supposed
to be.
For all the complaining, when an address was actually found, the systems mostly worked fine.
VZ
Navigator performed the best on a $149.99 enV phone on the Verizon Wireless network. The directions were clear and the sideways
flip phone with full keyboard was the easiest to use.
The next three services I tested out on a Sanyo Katana flip
phone, on the Sprint network, which retails online for $29.99 after rebates.
The TeleNav program was the best of
these, as its 3-D view and toggle between turn-by-turn directions and the viewer was fairly easy.
As for Garmin
and MapQuest, I could not recommend them as tested. The main problem was the power-saving mode that made the screen darker
after about 10 seconds.
Then there's the question of whether your phone will work with any of these programs.
I found out my Motorola V3 RAZR on the AT&T network lacks the necessary GPS chip, which means I would have to
buy a $100 Bluetooth-enabled GPS accessory that would connect to my phone.
For that price, I'd rather just
Google or MapQuest before leaving home.
Source: mercurynews.com
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