Garmin Mobile XT - Is it any good?

[Guest mstephenson]

Hi all, just wondered if anyone has any experience of Garmin Mobile XT on their smartphone? How does it compare to other mobile gps software? I'm torn between XT and Route 66 Mobile 7 so any advice would be very gratefuly received!

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Garmin XT is so-so, Route 66 is OK... have you considered CoPilot 7 too?

P

[Guest mstephenson]

Garmin XT is so-so, Route 66 is OK... have you considered CoPilot 7 too?

P

Hi Paul, yeah i've had a look at Copilot 7 but it's about £80 (nearly twice the price) and to be honest I don't imagine i'll actually be using sat-nav that much to warrant spending this much, just after a cheap-ish solution that I can use a few times a year. If I was after something for everyday use then i'd probably go down the Copilot route. So if you were spending your own cash, which would you buy out of Route 66 and Garmin XT? And is Route 66 fully functional with WM6 & a S710, I read a post where someone couldn't get it to install at all, and others who have had the problem where they had to delete most/all of their texts. I don't really mind doing that as long as it actually installs! Thanks in advance... ;)

Edited November 13, 2007 by mstephenson

[Guest Metoo]

I would say Mobile XT is really only worth it as a "better than nothing" option if you change phones a lot, as it is supposed to work on WM Pro and Standard, Symbian S60 and UIQ, and Palm OS. So in theory all you have to do is pair up your BT GPS (if external), stick in the card, and go. That's providing you don't lose, or corrupt, the tiny MicroSD card in the meantime.

BUT - the UI is very poor compared to TomTom etc., even after getting used to to the layout. In fact, having used it for a few weeks, I would go as far as saying this program is bl**dy dangerous.

Firstly, it's the only SatNav program I have ever used where there are no continuous symbols on the screen showing what's coming up at a glance (e.g. left/right arrow, circle with arrow for roundabout etc). All navigation instructions are displayed as plain text which you have to READ.

For the most part, all you'll see is a constantl;y changing dialogue on the distance and location of the next turn - e.g. "1.1 mi - Main Street to High Street", or just "Driving on Sesame Street". There's no forewarning of what's coming up, or what you're expected to do when you get there, until you get close to the junction.

When you do approach the junction, again there are no standard symbols to interpret at a glance. You have to READ the instruction e.g. "300ft ~ Turn Left to London Road". This is a nightmare if you don't already know where you're going.

Roundabouts are even worse. Take the example on screen instruction - "0.1m ~ take roundabout to 3rd exit". You missed the voice prompt because the radio was too loud or the wife/kids were talking. To work out which lane you need to be in, you have to read that whole sentence, look at the road signs (which invariably you've just passed) to see whether the 3rd exit is to the left, right, or straight on, and then work out which lane you need to be in. By which time you're aready on the roundabout, have lost the opportunity to change lanes without carving someone up, or have crashed into the back on someone else while you're reading Garmin's prose.

Compare that to TomTom etc. where for several miles you've had a prominent circle with an arrow at 3 o'clock, showing that there's a roundabout coming up at which you'll be turning right.

The only graphics you get on Garmin are those on the moving map - and these are only visible once you're almost upon the junction. You can see these slightly further in advance in 3D mode - but to work out what they mean you have to take your eyes off the road and squint at the moving image. If there's a second move after the first, it'll be an even smaller arrow on the horizon of the moving map. Chances are, by the time you've worked out which turning the arrows are actually pointing at, how they correlate to the layout of the road, the road signs, the written instructions, and allowed for the considerable screen lag, you'll have gone past it. That's on a resonably sized PocketPC screen. I'd hate to try it on a 2" "smartphone".

So driving with Garmin means you cannot plan lane changes well in advance, visualise you next move, until it's too late - especially in congested traffic or where there are several consecutive turns to make.

To frustrate this, the screen redraw is also abysmally slow. It's the first program I've seen since the days of 8 bit computers where you actually regularly get a "Drawing Map" message on the screen instead of a picture. In addition, if you enable the "turn previews" option to try and get extra help at complicated junctions, this slows down the program to a crawl and it can lock up for 30 seconds or more - not good when on a busy intersection!

Because the graphics are so unintuitive and slow, you rely heavily on the spoken instructions. But if you miss one you have to leave the navigation screen (more screen redrawing) to repeat it and then tap a back button to return to the main screen. Not good when you're supposed to be concentrating on the road. To try and make sure you don't miss the voice instructions, you can enable a "chime" to alert you to listen. Except that the chime only works half of the time, and rarely when travelling at reasonable speed. I've never been able to get the Safety Cam chimes to work.

When you do take the wrong turning, recalculating is much slower than TomTom - as is route planning in general.

On my SPV M700, sometimes the program will just refuse to run until you reset the device - even with plenty of RAM (>20MB) available. When it does run, if I get an incoming call or message, the display will often refuse to come back to the foreground until I reset.

Even the mapping is suspect - it can't even find the way home (it asks me to drive 500 yards past my house, do a U turn, then come back). Never had that in any other product.

On my last journey though an strange city centre, the only way I felt safe was to ask my passenger to watch the unit for me and pass the instructions on. Kind of defeats the point of having the device doesn't it?

On the plus side, because of Garmin's roots, it has better features than some car-only products for pedestrian use, and the POIs and Waypoint handling are comprehensive (if you discount the alerts). But as far as in car navigation goes, this product does everything to give SatNav (and drivers using it) a bad name.

Edit: there's an in depth review here of Mobile 10 which illustrates these points perfectly - apart from the ability to use other GPS receivers, it would appear nothing has improved in XT.

http://discussion.buygpsnow.com/forums/thread/4060.aspx

Edited November 13, 2007 by Metoo

[Guest mstephenson]

Wow thanks for that Metoo, a very in-depth review, much more than I was expecting! ;) Think i'll be avoiding Garmin XT like the plague then based on your experiences with it, it sounds pretty terrible! There seems to be a few issues with Route 66 Mobile 7 but nothing anywhere near that level, and it's £15 cheaper so I think i'll go down that route. It certainly sounds like it couldn't be any worse than XT! Many thanks again for that mate, looks like you've just saved me from wasting £50 :(

Paul, I note you said that XT was 'so-so', would you agree with Metoos review or did you have a vastly different experience? Is Route 66 actually any better? Your previous post kind of hinted at them being similar in terms of quality, and if XT is that bad and Route 66 is similar then I may just give the whole thing a miss considering how much I intend to use sat-nav. Many thanks in advance

[Guest Metoo]

I did harp on about the negative sides a bit - I suppose I should mention that it did get me to my destination OK, although I missed several turnings which I wouldn't have with TomTom. Plus the ability to search for loacl info and POIs was better than TomTom. My main point is that even after a couple of weeks' use, I just didn't feel SAFE with it because I was conscious I was still spending far too much time looking at the damn thing trying to work out was coming up instead of concentrating on the road. That's when it was working, of course. My opinion with SatNav is that you should know what's coming up well in advance (e.g. when joining a tail-back), and you should be able to check and confirm directions in an instant, i.e. less than the time it takes to check your speedo. The verbose written instructions on Garmin's screen (and the Nuvi etc.), and the other shortcomings pointed out, totally get in the way of that, and in my opinion make it dangerous to use.

Edited November 13, 2007 by Metoo

[Guest mstephenson]

Thanks again Metoo. I don't think you did harp on about the bad side of XT too much, to be fair the points you raised see to be fairly major issues, specifically the potential safety problem you mention. I was already slightly preferring Route 66 to XT, and now my minds made up. Even on the off chance Route 66 happens to be as bad (although from what i've read it shouldn't be), at least I will have saved £15 on the price of XT. Cheers ;)

[Guest llanero]

I wouldn't recommend it for handheld or otherwise car devices. Mobile XT and its car devices counterpart is simply not good enough as navigation software.

Moreover, Mobile XT can only use Garmin hardware (somewhat expensive) for GPS, so you've got another negative point there.

However, there might be cases that the only available option will only be Garmin for you, since certain parts of the World may have only been mapped using Garmin-compatible mapping creation software, which is specially true in South America and South Africa.

[Guest kaenderr]

I'm going nuts!

I received my B-Speech GPS20c keychain receiver a few days ago.

Had already Garmin XT on the spv c600 installed and waiting. First try, it worked like a charm. Good signal, good indication without complicated GPS pairing. Just added the new device and enabled COM port. After the first operation it would not work any more. I tried everything. Ougoing port COM6/7 (only two available). GPSCOMM to make it work on GPSID, stii the same problem: waiting for better signal accuracy or searching sattelites.

At the very same time another GPS application on some other device (a laptop) is receiving very good signal. So the device is OK.

Hard reset - no luck.

Flashed to WM6.1 hoping for improvement. Still the same issue.

I cannot use GPSProxy or GPSGate on the smartphone, those apps are for PPC.

In the Garmin XT I have: 4.2 I cannot choose the COM6/7 ports for GPS operation. I can choose COM0, 1, 3, 4, 9 - which I cannot set in the BT manager as outgoing ports.

My settings: BT manager: GPS ON, Serial port enabled on BT Device, Ougoing port COM6 hooked to GPS device. Must it be "discoverable" or COM7?

I have downloaded a modaco gps COM4 patch, but I do not have the GPS receiver with me (to test). I installed it. If I look in the Garmin XT configuration I see COM4 - infrared port. Can I have a hope it will work?

Does anybody have another suggestion?

[Guest NuShrike]

I would say Mobile XT is really only worth it as a "better than nothing" option if you change phones a lot, as it is supposed to work on WM Pro and Standard, Symbian S60 and UIQ, and Palm OS. So in theory all you have to do is pair up your BT GPS (if external), stick in the card, and go. That's providing you don't lose, or corrupt, the tiny MicroSD card in the meantime.

I'll have to agree on many points about how slow and dangerously unreliable GMXT is when I've been a faithful user since 4.2. It's now 5.00.20w and the core routing engine is still pants.

It is most useful for GPRS/HSDPA-based traffic routing because it's really good at that, once you can wait the ~3 minutes it actually takes in a 80km range to actually complete route derivation with traffic re-routing. TomTom and iGo usually complete this in 20 seconds max, albeit they're TMC-based traffic and therefore no traffic routing available on the Kaiser nor Raphael (Touch Pro), nor maybe most HTC hardware.

GMXT may be able to route just as fast, but you'll have to turn off the traffic-rerouting and then why use it at all instead of another product?

GMXT is also really useful for finding local petro stations and their relative price or distance, although I hear TomTom finally has this feature now. Sorting by price has become a priority as of late.

Google-based POIs searches beats the native Garmin search for accuracy, but can still be unable to find POIs that have been around a few years. The POI database may be more complete with more POIs than other navigation systems.

Those are the last 3 unbeatable pluses for GMXT now, versus say iGo8 (Nav'n'Go).

The fact GMXT is GDI graphics based probably hamstrings it especially on the graphically-crippled Kaiser, but it's not much faster on the Touch Pro either, and amazingly slow compared to TomTom/iGo.

The fact that Garmin is so old may explain why the GMXT engine feels like it was ported over and rather badly instead of optimized for ARM/PPCs (even if it's portable between PalmOS and Symbian), but then even Google Maps and Google Earth destroys MapSource's slow x86 arse too.