Overall:

Ease of Use:

Features:

Accuracy:

POI (w/Google Local Search):

Audio Volume:

Price:

Pros

• Best interface we’ve seen
• Excellent iPod player
• Google Maps integration for POIs
• On-screen speed limit indicator
• Logo-based POIs for easy identification
• Superb traffic alerts and up-to-date information

Cons

• Worse routing we’ve seen
• POI and highway icons too small to easily view
• Limited internal POI database
• End-point address not display
• Does not support suite numbers in Contacts and mis-routes

The Bottom Line
Navigon MobileNavigator has everything going for it from a beautiful interface, to a well integrated iPod player, to top notch traffic information, down to Google Local Search. The irony is its failure, routing! Time after time, MobileNavigator failed to route us to our destination in the quickest manner. Until Navigon can correct this, for $90, we can’t even begin to recommend this for your iPhone.

Recommended
No

Full Review
SvenOnTech first came across Navigon about three years ago with its stylus — yes stylus! — based PND unit and gave it a try after seeing its pleasing interface with POI icons that were logo of the place of business. What we found after a week of use was some odd routing behavior. Most of the issues were in the country and we wrote it off to that fact. Improvement would surely come in the coming years. So when SvenOnTech receive MobileNavigator for the iPhone, I was curious to see how it would take me home, literally. Was Navigon able to fix its PND deficiency or would I roll my eyes and ask, “Why?”

Click image for larger view

From the parking lot of Raley’s, a popular grocery store in Northern California, I set my home address as my Home location and tapped to accept the location and take me home. Within five miles of traveling the State Road, my turn was coming up that I usually take but guess what? MobileNavigator was continuing east on the highway. Instead of taking the more direct route, it had desires to take me five more miles down the road and then turn onto my cross-street which sadly adds about five minutes to the trip. MobileNavigator chooses this route in the opposite direction as well and if you ignore it, it’ll try to move you north at every possible turn to get you back onto the State Road up to the last possible turn which alone will add over five minutes to your trip time. Take a look at the screen shot (right) where any human can clearly see going straight is much faster. Navigon, what are you thinking?

But that’s out in the country, right? Well, off to Sacramento then, the capitol of California. It will surely shine there, huh?

I needed to smog my wife’s Yukon as well as go to a mall in the suburb of Sacramento, Roseville. I inputed the smog shops address into Navigon and off I went. Outside of leaving my home with poor directions, all seemed well from their until we made it to Roseville. Instead of exiting from I-80 to SR-65, freeway to freeway, MobileNavigator thought I should take the scenic route and instructed me to exit at Atlantic Street. So while I sat at the very long off-ramp light, I could literally see the SR-65 exit with its clover leaf on-ramp and no delay. The time the light went green, I surmised I would have been nearly at my destination. Next was a left after traveling over I-80. Joy, another light. Once I was on Galleria Blvd., I suffered through four more stop lights before catching up to the point I would have been if I would have just taken SR-65 instead. When I finally arrived to Sunset Blvd. and Stanford Ranch Rd., I calculated that MobileNavigator had added about 20 minutes to my trip! I was not pleased at all.

For dinner, I tapped into my Contacts and brought up Texas Roadhouse located in a southern suburb of Sacramento called Elk Grove. Thinking it would be a slam dunk for MobileNavigator since the restaurant is right off the freeway, I didn’t give it a second thought as we hopped onto SR-65 ignoring MobileNavigator suggestion to go the long way back to I-80. Low and behold, as I neared my exit, Bond Rd, MobileNavigator thought it better to exit at Sheldon and take a side road to the freeway. You know, exit a mile early, travel through some surface streets at a lower speed limit and toss in a few lights for good measure. It was at that point I gave up on MobileNavigator.

A couple of other routing issues I found was the lack of support for suite numbers and your final destinations address not appearing on the screen but rather being spoken out. The latter seems like a nice feature; however, for address that are long, it would be nice to see it on the screen since many times the GPS and actual end point do not match up to your vehicles actual location. Address scanning on the street is still needed. As to the suite numbers, this is a problem I have found on all navigation units except one. If you have a contact with a suite number, which many business contacts have, MobileNavigator without warning will just route you to the cities center. Instead of notifying the user that, ‘Hey, I don’t understand suite numbers, so I’m just going to ignore the street name,’ it routes you. This tricked me once and boy was I upset when I realized that it was taking me away from where I needed to go. Unbelievable and completely unacceptable, Navigon.

What makes MobileNavigator so frustrating is that excels in every other area. The interface is gorgeous. Getting around the application is not difficult. The traffic is incredibly accurate. In fact, when I tested it against other traffic alert applications, MobileNavigator not only properly warned me of pending traffic but even had the current speeds down! Inrix , a traffic application for the iPhone, boasts of its accuracy and while I sat in traffic at about 20 MPH, well warned by MobileNavigator, Inrix stated my route was all clear!

MobileNavigator iPod player is the nicest and closest to the actual iPod applicaton on the iPhone that I have seen on a navigation app. When voice-overs occur, MobileNavigator fades the iPod about 50%, giving it a nice radio effect. This works nicely for music, however, it becomes very annoying with talk based material such as podcasts. It would be nice to see an option to enable pausing instead of fading. Speaking of podcasts, the ability to change from one to another would also be nice instead of being forced into to the iPod app to do so.

Point of Interest (POI) is a mixed bag. MobileNavigator wisely uses logos of the business for its POIs when available. With the onslaught of marketing, our brain quickly distinguishes a Burger King icon faster than just a fork and a knife for an up coming food stop. The only draw back is that the icon is dinky. You have to get up close to the screen to make it out and that’s not something you really want to do while driving. Highway badges share the same problem. Additionally, tapping the POI does nothing but bring up a 2-D map. There is no direct way to tap it for more information or to call the POI.

With the latest update, Navigon added lane assist for off-ramp exit clarification, which works well, as well as Google Local Search integration. Adding Google to mix helps MobileNavigator have the best POI database possible since you’ll be tapping into Google’s immense online database. Of course this come with a price as if you become reliant on this feature, as I did, you’ll quickly find that MobileNavigator has a limited internal POI. Limited POI database means if you do not have an Internet data signal, you don’t have Google Local. But, in most cases, you should, which makes this a slam-dunk POI.

Lastly, I noted MobileNavigator took a long time to start up. It takes nearly 30 seconds to start which is problematic returning to the GPS after or during a phone call. I found myself ignoring many calls due to the anxiety of missing an upcoming turn. While it is not Navigon’s fault that it exits when a phone call comes in, it needs to improve start-up times drastically.

Version Tested: 1.4.0

Price: $89.99

Platform: iPhone 3G and 3GS; iPod touch (All)

Website: Product Information