Tech Blog

[#1]

Powering up
I received the evaluation TomTom GO630 in December, and have been using and evaluating it pretty much every day. In the following review, I'll describe the unit, some of the really neat things I like about it (and there are a few), as well as a couple of the problems I've had.

I've owned and used GPS units for the last 10 years or so - both in-vehicle navigation systems as well as handheld outdoor navigation units - and have seen both the pathfinding / directions systems improve, as well as the interfaces between the units and the users.

These days, modern GPS systems are drop-dead simple to use, and essential when exploring an unfamiliar city. As long as the units have current street maps

As well, truly cutting edge systems are now leveraging the power of the people - crowdsourcing if you will - and incorporating trip and navigation data from the device users to improve maps, navigation information, and driving instructions based on time-of-day traffic information; more on that in a bit.

In the box
The TomTom GO 630 that I looked at for this review was a refurbished model -- which means it's been re-certified by TomTom and comes with a complete warranty.

Initially, I had an issue with the included mapset, it was 15 months out of date, which meant that the turn-by-turn routing and directions given by the unit were less than optimal. Minor issue rectified quickly.

The unit ships with the usual assortment of items you need to get going quickly:

• Windshield mount (more on it later)
• USB Cable
• In-car charger (12-24V)
• CD - software and manual
• Documentation - quickstart guide

In the unit
The TomTom GO 630 has a fairly large feature which I'll not detail here, rather, I'll direct you to the Future Shop page for this GPS and just pull out a couple of my favourites:

• IQ Routes technology calculates your routes based on the real average speed measured on roads, rather than speed limits.
• Advanced Lane Guidance gives you the clarity you need when driving through complicated junctions in unfamiliar areas.

Setup
Booting the unit up was a simple process -- press the friendly 'ON' button on the upper right corner. You'll be treated to a logo / splash screen (user configurable through desktop computer software), and then the GPS will try and figure out where it is, and display a street map centered on your location.

If this is the first power up of the unit, it may take a couple of minutes to find all the satellites above the horizon, and calculate your location. If you're interested in more detail on how GPS works, check out the excellent Wikipedia article on the technology. The first thing I did after powering it up was to define 'HOME'.

There's no place like HOME
GPS navigation using these devices relies waypoints. For a simple route, you have a start point and an end point. In many cases, the start point of most journeys will be your home, and yep, TomTom provides a special waypoint just for 'HOME'.

Practically home can be anything, and can be redefined at any time, say your hotel when in an unfamiliar city. Which leads into a cool tip actually because at the end of a long day of driving around and sightseeing, two simple taps on the touch screen will get you your turn-by-turn directions back to your 'HOME', whatever you've defined it to be.

You can also use this same technique to define 'current location' waypoints for future reference -- things like the hidden turnoff into a favourite camping site.

Points of Interest
Points of interest is a term that is used to describe potential destinations stored in a database on your unit. Every (insert your franchised favourite fast food restaurant, gas station or coffee shop) in North America, for example. And yes, you can manually enter points of interest.

If you find yourself navigating to the same places often, you can even designate specific POI as Favourites. There's a special menu that allows you to easily select your Favourite destinations.

Stuck or not stuck?
In the car, the TomTom GO630 mounts to the windshield using a simple suction cup mounting system.

I mentioned above that I was using this unit in December right? In Edmonton, it's not uncommon for the weather to dip below freezing..well dip a lot actually. In my case when I started testing, the mercury ranged between -20(c) to -30(c) daily. And yes, those were the highs.

The reason I mention this is that initially the suction-cup device wouldn't stick to the windshield for very long. I'd mount after the heater got the car defrosted and toasty inside, then when driving, the mounted unit would plop onto my dashboard as the windshield cooled and the cup stiffened.

Now, I did manage to get the mount to stay put, even in the cold, by putting a drop of warm water on the suction cup before mounting it to the warm windshield. I'm not sure of the physics, but it stuck there as if it was glued. Problem solved.

Phoning Home
Another neat feature of the TomTom GPS unit is the ability to pair it with your BlueTooth enabled cell phone. In my case, this only partially worked as I don't have a dataplan on my mobile phone, so wasn't able to transfer my contact directory to the TomTom.

But for me, here's how it worked - Pairing with my old Samsung M300 partially worked. I needed to reboot the GPS and the phone after initial pairing. Then, I was able to manually dial numbers using the GPS or make the phone dial GPS Points of Interest (waypoints) if the number was in the database.

Navigation
Using the TomTom to navigate from my current location to a destination proved simple, provided:

• I had an address,
• or had previously set up the destination as a favourite,
• or navigated to it before,
• or it was in the Point of Interest database.

One of the drawbacks the unit was using the on-screen pan and zoom controls to find a destination and target that as a waypoint. The interface seemed clunky and laggy, and ultimately I gave up trying to zoom in to an exact point and set it as the destination. Rather, I entered an address nearby and used that as my destination.

The interface for selecting and entering Points of Interest from the database, on the other hand was rather simple and intuitive to use -- and I had no problem selecting destinations using it to search for the name, destination type (Gas, Food, Shopping, Park, etc), or simply hand enter the address.

The power of the crowd
One of the really neat features of TomTom's latest crop of navigation systems is the TomTom MapShare technology. In a nutshell, this cool tech lets each Tom Tom user (if they wish, it's opt in) contribute to improving maps, by letting them edit the following map features:

• Block or unblock a street in one or both directions
• Reverse direction of a one-way street
• Name or rename a street
• Add a point of interest
• Rename a point of interest
• Add or change the phone number of a point of interest
• Edit road speeds
• Edit turn restrictions

Of course, these changes are significant and are verified by TomTom before they're added to the 'official' update. I asked Elisabeth Branham, the US & Canada Trade Marketing Manager for TomTom about this. She says:

All MapShare™ changes are checked and verified through our internal quality control team using satellite images and more to validate.  When you log into TomTom Home, you will see Map Updates/Corrections that have been made through Mapshare – you’ll see there are some edits marked “verified” by TomTom, and others that are not verified.  This is our way of making the edits available to all TomTom users, but identifying those that our TomTom expert team has confirmed.

Updates
Of course, no GPS is good without current maps, and TomTom comes packaged with a Latest Map Guarantee - which basically ensures that when you buy a new unit, if TomTom updates the maps within 30 days of your first use, you can download the update for free. After that, regular map updates are available at a nominal charge...and by regular it seems that TomTom does update their maps every 2-3 months.


Understanding traffic patterns
One other neat feature that I allueded to earlier is called IQ Route, and it's TomTom's ability to know about traffic patterns at specific times of day in your community. Again, this is because of the 'call home' feature in the GPS, but it's really quite cool that, as I found, during rush hour, some routes that I'd normally consider quite speedy, were not the recommended route by the GPS; it suggested alternate routes that were 10kph slower, yet had me arrive at my destination a minute or two sooner.

The TomTom made these decisions based on time of day and on automated feedback by other users in my community.

Use your head
Ultimately, in my experience, using any navigation device is about using your head. Local knowledge is always the best, but it can easily be supplimented by these types of in-car navigation systems, especially when you're trying to find your way in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, or navigate around a collision or roadblock.

When you're driving in an unfamiliar city, in-car navigation systems really can help you by removing some of the guesswork from trip planning and enroute navigation. But not all.

There were times when the TomTom made bad recommendations. Not dangerous, but the device did put me on a route that was less efficient - costing me maybe a minute or two. This is normal of *any* GPS navigation system and is the nature of the process.

We humans generally know more about our driving environment than these devices do, and as such, they should be used as *navigational aids*, not as the only true path to your destination. Though the TomTom is a bit more advanced than most, paying attention to the time you're planning your route, and using the RouteIQ information to help calculate the best route at that time of day.

Folding the map
So, wrapping up, and knowing that I'm a fan of GPS navigation technology in general, here's what I think of the TomTom GO630 -- for the price, feature set, and convienience, it's a winner.

Your turn -- there was a lot there in this post; what do you think? Do you use an in-car GPS system? If so, what's your experience been like, your favourite feature, or your favourite 'it took me down the wrong road' story

[#2]

Nice review about the navigation.I am planning to buy a navigator and i have decided to go for this one after reading this article. keep posting.