Google Navigation review
Today, I decided to test Google Navigation since it was finally released in France, this is not an in-depth review.
I turned it on and the interface was nice, also the talk to navigation looked interesting, unfortunately it couldn't connect even when I reached a HSDPA zone.
So I had to type in my request, I guess I was a bit over-confident to type my full address, that is number and street, it found it quickly.
As we will see later, there is no way to find if the destination it found is the one you really wanted or not.
The distance looked correct so I drove on. The TTS system works great and with the voice set on "slow" it is very clear and understandable, although saying the name of a street to go to in a round-about is not a way to navigate, I'd rather have it say "turn now" or "take second exit" or anything the like because you hardly have time if any to search for street plaque to make sure it is the correct one you are going to which is annoying when you can't keep an eye on the GPS.
I was surprised when it was not the usual road i took, I realised later that the GPS found a number 10 like mine in a similarly named street but in a town 10 km away from mine and Google decided it was where I wanted to go. Bad point, really bad point as, as I said earlier, there's no summary showing your destination. Well, there is a very limited one which shows the street and number but not the town. Is it a bug or a feature, I don't know but this better has to change.
I had to set my street without number which I did but here comes another twist. My town has two different streets named the same, although not numbered the same. And despite mine having a name on Google Maps, the name is not registered when saving the location, it is only saved as the road european number.
Other than that, it was a nice driving, a few lags happened now and them but nothing too bad.
I can't say Google Navigation is a must because well, because you need a data plan and you can't start from somewhere you can't get any mobile internet, maybe later when you can save the maps but it still need to contact google servers to calculate the path which took quite some time where I was.
Google Navigation on Android showed some really promising features and I'm sure if they keep developping it, it will become a must-have but right now, I'll stay with normal gps software.
I turned it on and the interface was nice, also the talk to navigation looked interesting, unfortunately it couldn't connect even when I reached a HSDPA zone.
So I had to type in my request, I guess I was a bit over-confident to type my full address, that is number and street, it found it quickly.
As we will see later, there is no way to find if the destination it found is the one you really wanted or not.
The distance looked correct so I drove on. The TTS system works great and with the voice set on "slow" it is very clear and understandable, although saying the name of a street to go to in a round-about is not a way to navigate, I'd rather have it say "turn now" or "take second exit" or anything the like because you hardly have time if any to search for street plaque to make sure it is the correct one you are going to which is annoying when you can't keep an eye on the GPS.
I was surprised when it was not the usual road i took, I realised later that the GPS found a number 10 like mine in a similarly named street but in a town 10 km away from mine and Google decided it was where I wanted to go. Bad point, really bad point as, as I said earlier, there's no summary showing your destination. Well, there is a very limited one which shows the street and number but not the town. Is it a bug or a feature, I don't know but this better has to change.
I had to set my street without number which I did but here comes another twist. My town has two different streets named the same, although not numbered the same. And despite mine having a name on Google Maps, the name is not registered when saving the location, it is only saved as the road european number.
Other than that, it was a nice driving, a few lags happened now and them but nothing too bad.
I can't say Google Navigation is a must because well, because you need a data plan and you can't start from somewhere you can't get any mobile internet, maybe later when you can save the maps but it still need to contact google servers to calculate the path which took quite some time where I was.
Google Navigation on Android showed some really promising features and I'm sure if they keep developping it, it will become a must-have but right now, I'll stay with normal gps software.