Guest Paul (MVP) Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 Just as soon as ALK CoPilot 7 arrives at the MoDaCo offices, i'm going to be giving a run down of the latest players in the navigation space, but I thought that i'd take this opportunity to mention a bit about Garmin Mobile XT, a new navigation solution from one of the oldest names in GPS technology. I won't give away too much here, but I thought a quick post was in order to highlight the good (and bad) aspects of the application! The good! - Only £49.95 for UK / Ireland / Major roads of Western Europe from eXpansys - Supplied on microSD with miniSD / full SD adaptors - One purchase includes Pocket PC, Smartphone, Palm AND Symbian! - FREE traffic reports with automatic re-routing (via GPRS), weather reports and more via Garmin Online The bad! - The application is locked to the supplied 512MB microSD :( Seems like it might be a good entry point to navigation, or for those who switch between different platforms. The 512MB microSD has a couple of hundred MB free - how big a show stopper IS not being able to move it to another card? Share your thoughts ahead of my feature! ;) You can find the Mobile XT product page here on the Garmin website. P
Guest tsutton Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 That's a very good price. How is it locked to the specific memory card?
Guest chucky.egg Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 That IS a good price, and for me the memory card thing isn't much of an issue. At the moment I'm torn between one of those keyring Bluetooth GPS things and a smartphone SatNav, or a TomTom-like all-in-one-device. The two options are about the same price with this app.
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 It's locked to the card in that if you copy all the files off to, say, a larger card, it doesn't work ;) P
Guest jmaki Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 It's locked to the card in that if you copy all the files off to, say, a larger card, it doesn't work ;) P wow....that is SUCH a show stopped -- I install most, if not all, my programs on my card, some that are always running -- so I am supposed to remove my current card to use gps? that's awful! I was close to buying this too, as tomtom is $150, but now it looks like I have no choice! any word on if it's the same way for the US version? (locked to the card)
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 Although if you can fit everything you need in a couple of hundred MB, then maybe not. Basically, if you're not a music or video user, you may well be OK! US version - unknown! P
Guest deadphill Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 Sounds like this will soon have to change. If you work for a company that wants you to have sat nav or indeed like Paul has said don't want to use the card for much else then it might be ok. For me personally this is completely useless at the moment! All this and we don't even know what the program is like yet! Phill
Guest Monolithix Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 Er yeah, locked to the memory card is a show stopper here too i'm afraid. Basically aything that isn't a homescreen plugin goes on my memory card!
Guest NuShrike Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 (edited) Thanks for reviewing this! I've been researching this thing since June! So looks like the Mobile XT + 10x (external SiRFIII BT module) is still the only way to go if I want working GPS maps on the Kaiser while in Japan. You can find it by selecting "Windows Mobile PDA" instead. The Mobile 10x bundle has the software on CD which I presume you then install normally onto your own memory card, but you can only use the Garmin BT GPS. The GPS does last 22 hours and it is SiRFIII, and you can make your own free Garmin-compatible maps so it may balance the extra price. Garmin has been silent responding to my questions, and I enjoy their site constantly having Java errors. Edited October 24, 2007 by NuShrike
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 XT is not locked to one GPS receiver, so you can buy whichever one you want? I'm looking forward to checking out the new CoPilot too! P
Guest NuShrike Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 (edited) XT is not locked to one GPS receiver, so you can buy whichever one you want?From what I read, XT would only talk to internal GPS (with maps locked to the SD card) or a Garmin proprietary protocol GPS (with maps locked to Garmin hardware GPS). There used to be GPS Proxy workarounds for it, but that seems to have been recently shut down. Would be nice to use any GPS including internal AND not forced to use a SD card as a map-lock dongle. http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.a...mp;whichpage=19 Looks like I should pick up the $119 DVD version before they stop selling that for the SD-only version. Edited October 24, 2007 by NuShrike
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted October 24, 2007 Report Posted October 24, 2007 No, Mobile XT is now compatible with any GPS, i.e. it works with the Kaiser's internal GPS just fine... the price you pay is the card lock. P
Guest Metoo Posted October 25, 2007 Report Posted October 25, 2007 (edited) No, Mobile XT is now compatible with any GPS, i.e. it works with the Kaiser's internal GPS just fine... the price you pay is the card lock. P That's not what the it says on Garmin's spec page. It says it only works with smartphones with internal GPS, and the compatability list confirms this. So it looks like NuShrike's correct, and you cannot use XT with an external Bluetooth GPS receiver. Edited October 25, 2007 by Metoo
Guest jvanliew Posted October 25, 2007 Report Posted October 25, 2007 In viewing the web site for this software, it lists the htc s730 as compatible with their application. So it looks like an indicator that the s730 has workable gps.
Guest jim.mason Posted October 25, 2007 Report Posted October 25, 2007 Same thing with I-Go software. Speaking of which any news on when version 8 is being released???
Guest ror100 Posted October 25, 2007 Report Posted October 25, 2007 Hurrah! It seems I am the only person to like this. Card locking isn't a problem for me as I'm only an occasional sat-nav user, and this solution would be ideal once I get my tytn2. And I can highly recommend the standalone Garmin units, so I don't see any reason for this to be any different in terms of functionality and accuracy.
Guest sliver Posted October 27, 2007 Report Posted October 27, 2007 Unfortunately I keep a lot of applications on my 6GB microSD card. Having to swap this out for another MicroSD with the Garmin app on it is out of the question!
Guest Metoo Posted November 2, 2007 Report Posted November 2, 2007 (edited) That's not what the it says on Garmin's spec page. It says it only works with smartphones with internal GPS, and the compatability list confirms this. So it looks like NuShrike's correct, and you cannot use XT with an external Bluetooth GPS receiver. Update: Although the only phones on Garmin's "compatible" page are those with internal GPS, I've just tried this with an XDA Exec and a cheapo generic Bluetooth SiRFIII receiver and it works fine. So it does look like a reasonable option for those who constantly change their devices and want to avoid exhorbitant licensing costs, especially as it includes free traffic & weather etc. updates. Usability wise though, it's no TomTom... Edited November 5, 2007 by Metoo
Guest NuShrike Posted November 13, 2007 Report Posted November 13, 2007 No, Mobile XT is now compatible with any GPS, i.e. it works with the Kaiser's internal GPS just fine... the price you pay is the card lock.This is cool. Although there's a way around the card lock now, but that's not for this forum. However, anybody running it on their Kaiser get this problem?: ================================================================== Kaiser PocketPC 240 x 320 5.2 1620 [11/13/07 10:49:47 51948KB 4.10.40wp] Data type misalignment at program address 0x03F966C8 in background thread NULL (Main InitInstance) [11/13/07 10:49:47 51948KB 4.10.40wp] CALL STACK: 0x03F74A34 0x2E0C34E0 0x2E2DA31C 0x2E0D87DC 0x2E29598C 0x2E296560 0x2E298B9C 0x2E295DB8 0x2E2E2540 0x03F6B278 etc etc. This is obviously somebody at Garmin not being aware of data boundaries close enough, but it shouldn't show up in a shipping release version. Windows Mobile 6 emulator isn't complaining so I'm wondering what's wrong with my Kaiser. Nothing much on Google either! I'm hoping Mobile XT is more than a point-to-point navigator as TomTom and more like a map+GPS like my Eclipse-based navigator in my auto, or Google Maps. I rather enjoy being allowed to scroll around my "location" to see other possible streets, POIs, and geographical features.
Guest NuShrike Posted November 28, 2007 Report Posted November 28, 2007 (edited) This is cool. Although there's a way around the card lock now, but that's not for this forum. However, anybody running it on their Kaiser get this problem?: ================================================================== Kaiser PocketPC 240 x 320 5.2 1620 [...]So, apparently I needed to do a hard-reset as there was something in my Personal Databases (as Sprite Backup 5 labels them) that was freaking out Mobile XT. So now that I have it working on my 4GB microSD in my Kaiser, I have to say Mobile XT is leaps and bounds above TomTom. Not only can I combine publicly available maps of my choice (Japan) with the USA/Canada map through MapSource (the PC map, but I can pick sections of my choice to download to the card. I end up only really using ~71MB of space on the Kaiser for maps instead of GBs as TomTom does. Even nicer is the syncing of map data, personal POIs, custom routes, etc between the Kaiser and PC, and I can even take it jogging and log that too. Just playing around with the options gives you a sense of how much depth Garmin has with navigation compared to TomTom such as: o the ability to turn off "road-snapping" o automatic map-color changes to match the time of day o automatic zooming so that 3D view always gives you enough view ahead o adding "areas-to-avoid" in MapSource for more intelligent routing o free traffic avoidance routing and no ghost traffic like TomTom o closest cheap gas station find and route to o browsing the map as if it were a Thomas Guide o sending your location by SMS to another fellow with a Garmin to hook up o map detail tunables galore, and so on. It is not as snappy as TomTom in the GUI department, so either it's not as optimized or it's chewing through a lot more data. [edit] o backlight and sound volume override Edited November 30, 2007 by NuShrike
Guest Paul (MVP) Posted December 11, 2007 Report Posted December 11, 2007 Agreed, Garmin's roots in this stuff really shine through, they just need to sex it up a bit (a-la-copilot) and they'll do well! P
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