With smartphones and an increasing number of tablets becoming GPS-capable, it is easy to write off dedicated GPS players. So many seem stuck in the past — days when devices needed a wired connection for updates and didn’t seem to be aware of Web services they might be ideal for, like Yelp. With a recent California ruling making it illegal to use a cellphone for navigation in a car, not to mention the decidedly horrid native GPS capability in the latest iPhone, I think it is time to revisit the dedicated GPS player. I’ll use the Magellan SmartGPS as an example of the current best of class.
From what I can tell, the California law is not against using your phone for GPS, it is against hand-held use of the phone for GPS (or conceivably any other purpose). Looks like hands-free is still OK.
That said, I agree that the native iOS app is not great, but Waze, Google, and even Mapquest all do a good job of turn-by-turn voice for free (and they all work fine on my old iPhone 4).
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Magellan SmartGPS Does the Cloud Right
Posted by: Rob Enderle April 22, 2013 05:00 AMWith smartphones and an increasing number of tablets becoming GPS-capable, it is easy to write off dedicated GPS players. So many seem stuck in the past — days when devices needed a wired connection for updates and didn’t seem to be aware of Web services they might be ideal for, like Yelp. With a recent California ruling making it illegal to use a cellphone for navigation in a car, not to mention the decidedly horrid native GPS capability in the latest iPhone, I think it is time to revisit the dedicated GPS player. I’ll use the Magellan SmartGPS as an example of the current best of class.
http://handsfreeinfo.com/california-cell-phone-laws-legislation
That said, I agree that the native iOS app is not great, but Waze, Google, and even Mapquest all do a good job of turn-by-turn voice for free (and they all work fine on my old iPhone 4).