GPS system for iPhone

fatimahislam · Post by **fatimahislam** » Tue Jul 01, 2025 7:10 am

The iPhone is probably the biggest misnomer for what is undoubtedly a lot more than a mere mobile phone. I'd even go so far as to say that the "phone" bit is the least of this device's functionality.

A couple of weeks ago I discovered that as well as being a phone, instant messenger, time manager, customer database, camera etc. etc. it is also a GPS Navigation System. And not the dinky little app-trying-to-be-grownup type system, I mean a full Navigation System with turn by turn voice instructions, points of interest, lane indicators, speed, the whole shebang.

When I decided I was going to take the plunge 2 main apps caught my eye. The Tom Tom and Sygic apps. So, which did I choose and why?

The Tom Tom has the mind-share as a GPS device so that sounded like a plus but when I dug into the comments on the Apple iPhone App Store there seemed to be a lot of less satisfied customers, the price image manipulation service was also an issue at $99.99 (possibly only because $100.00 wouldn't fit in the "Buy App" button). It didn't have Text to speech where the voice reads out street names nor did it have automatic night mode or a lane selector (very handy on those multi-flyovers).

The Sygic app on the other hand was $59.99 (it's since gone up to $79.99). It comes with maps for Australia and New Zealand (I really should plot a route from my place to Auckland - just to see what happens).

So I got the Sygic app based on recommendations and features that I thought would be useful to me. Once I loaded it up I gave it a run and it performed exactly as the documentation and some of the recommendations said it would. It takes about 100 meters to orient itself but after that away it goes.

I put the phone in a cradle in the car and hooked it up with my Motorola bluetooth car kit which is in turn connected to the car stereo via FM. One thing I found annoying was that although answering a call paused the system and the music if it was in the "landscape" position when the app came back it was in the "portrait" position.