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I had bought both Sygic and Navigon. Their strengths and weaknesses are.
Navigon
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Stregnths
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- Nice UI as far as input is concerned. It used standard iPhone keyboard, and the map can be pinched, spreaded, and moved.
- Integrates with the iPhone contact database.
- Has the "reality view" although I have not seen it pop up during my use. It is only for very few intersection I guess.
Key weaknesses
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- Terribly outdated map, at least for Australia. Lots of new roads not incorporated.
- In Australia, there is almost no road speed limit in the database. Hence, it is not able to provide overspeeding warning. I guess less than 0.001% of the road may have speed information. I'm talking about Sydney Metropolitan area roads here, not some rural roads. This is one of the most disappointing failures from my perspective.
- There is no red light warning.
- There is no speed camera warning.
- There is no ability to warn when approaching a school zone.
- The road name are too small, with non-contrasting color, making them very difficult to read.
- The GPS signal is weak and unreliable as compared to Sygic. I tested this again and again and found this to be consistently the case.
- There is no full trip simulation capability. Only the last few meters are simulated.
- The information displayed on the main navigation screen are insufficient. In the first version, only two pieces of information can be displayed. One of the top bar and one at the bottom. To see more information, you need to touch these bars to rotate through the various key navigation information, making driving hazardous.
- Weak POI database.
- No text to speech.
Sygic
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Key weaknesses
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- Does not use standard iPhone keyboard, and can't zoom in and out by spreading and pinching. Sygic promised to implement these in the next version though.
- Does not integrated with the Contact databse. This is promised in the next version.
- No text to speech yet, but this again is promised in the next version.
- When a phone call terminates, users has to press "Yes" to the legal disclaimer screen again, but this screen will be removed in the next version.
Key Strengths
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- Very good GPS signal strenght. Promised to be even better in the next version.
- Map is faultless. Really really good. 99.999% of the road contains the legal speed limit. Able to provide visual/audio warning for overspeeding.
- Able to warn when approaching speed camera and red light camera. I wish they separate the two though.
- Able to warn when approaching any chosen POI, including schools.
- Great choice of map colors, text colors, text sizes.
- All key navigation information are there without having to fiddle with the device: Estimated arrival time, current speed, remaining time, etc.etc.
99% of the time when I use my GPS it is not because I don't know how to get there. It's because I wanted it to monitor my speed, warn me of speed camera, red light camera, and remind me to reduce my speed from the legal speed limt down to 40km/h when in school zone during school hours. I do not usually set a destination in these situation. So, Navigon simply does not meet my requirement 99% of the time.
I hate the non-iPhone keyboard and the way of map zooming in Sygic. However, once set, the information displayed is far better than that of Navigon. The voice instruction itself is also better and clearer.
I've since asked for refund for my Navigon, and am now using only Sygic.
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08-16-2009, 01:49 AM
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