Back in January we saw a demonstration of Destinator 9 on the iPhone at CES. It has taken a few months but now it is available in the Apple AppStore for Western Europe. With a price tag of £30 ($50) it represents great value compared to Navigon at £70 and TomTom at £53, but is more comparable with ALK’s CoPilot at £36.

Destinator 9 is a fully featured Turn by Turn navigation system with voice guidance and featuring Navteq mapping. It also has iPod controls, easy to use POIs including creation of your own ‘StickyPOIs’ but seems to lack importing of custom POIs, and does not have support for Speed Cameras.

The full Destinator Press Release follows:

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We all know about the crazy sales called “Black Friday” in the USA the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, well ALK have hit the road early with a huge $15 discount on the CoPilot Live GPS Navigation App. Normally sold for $34.99 the price has been reduced to $19.99 from now until midnight on Monday 30th November.

This special offer pricing applies to both the iPhone app in the Apple AppStore and the Android app from Android Market. Happy Holidays!!!
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Yesterday the latest iPhone navigation app to hit the Apple App Store was Magellan RoadMate US and Canada. This is a full featured Turn by Turn application, including advanced features such as text to speech, lane assist, and roadsigns. With mapping provided by Navteq it also supports a Pedestrian Mode and 3D landmarks. It also has in-app iPod controls. At an introductory price of $79.99 it is cheaper than Navigon and TomTom’s apps.

A second item on the same Press Release mentions a Premium Car Kit. This is an Active cradle for the iPhone with its own GPS receiver, internal amplifier and bluetooth hands-free. This is an adjustable design to allow the iPhone to be used with skins and cases in place. It is also compatible with the iPhone classic and iPod Touch enabling these devices to be used for navigation. At $129.99 it is slightly more expensive than the TomTom cradle ($119) and is expected to be shipping in December.
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Navigon have updated their navigation application for the second time and once again the update is free to existing users.

This release adds Text-To-Speech and iPod controls as well as some other minor changes. The Text To Speech allows the road names to be included in the navigation instructions giving the driver more confidence in the manoeuvre they are making. The iPod controls are also a very welcome feature as previously although you could set the iPod playing in the background if the playlist or album ended then you had to exit the Navigation application to change the music.

Also included in this release are: Location sharing, and automatic day/night mode switching.

The full Navigon Press Release follows:
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The Navigon iPhone Navigation application has been in the iTunes App store for some time now. Although this is a good seller it is not so useful if you have no way to mount the iPhone in your car. There have been a number of very good third party mounts available for some time now, but nothing from any of the software manufacturers until now!

Whilst I was at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin I met with the guys from Navigon who told me about a new mount that is to be available in October. This mount is based on the award winning PND mount with an interchangeable holder for the iPhone. Whilst it is not an active mount (having an integral power connector) it does come with a cigar lighter power adapter and charging cable.
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RouteBuddy and Ordnance Survey have released 1:50k maps compatible with RouteBuddy’s iPhone Atlas Application.

The maps, priced from £9.99 each cover the Ordnance Survey Landranger map series with over 200 to choose from with complete coverage of the UK.

These 1:50k maps join the 1:25k Explorer map tiles already available in RouteBuddy’s Online Map Store.

The RouteBuddy Atlas iPhone App is available for download free from the iTunes App Store and allows the loading and display of OS maps with full support for the 3GS compass and GPS features. Atlas is also compatible with iPod Touch but no GPS features are available on these models.

Maps purchased from RouteBuddy can be loaded from either a Mac or a PC onto the iPhone using a superbly simple iPhone server feature.

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We all knew it was coming but ‘when?’ was the $64million question. Spotted in the New Zealand iTunes App Store yesterday it seemed pretty clear that the launch had begun and at some time early this morning TomTom for iPhone finally materialised in the UK AppStore.

There isn’t a lot to add really, the interface looks very similar to that which was used on the TomTom Mobile App that used to exist and it features multi-touch integration making full use of iPhone gestures for operation and map zoom etc.

Navigation to address book contacts is also included as well as IQ routing. But notable by its omission is any form of LIVE connected services. This is a phone, a phone with out of the box data bundles and connectivity so why the heck has the opportunity to bundle the LIVE service features been omitted?

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ALK’s CoPilot Live app for iPhone has hit the UK Appstore.

The feature list includes turn-by-turn voice directions, UK & Ireland maps data, full UK post codes and 2D/3D map data.

Additional features include ‘LiveLink’ location sharing and messaging, 5-day weather forecast and lane indicator and clearturn displays.

Best of all, ALK have matched the price of CoPilot in the Android Market store, at £25.99 it’s very reasonable.  So reasonable that as I’ve a long drive ahead of me later today I’ve gone and bought it.

Navigon have launched their MobileNavigator Europe Turn-by-Turn solution in the AppStore.

Based on their popular navigation solution for Personal Navigation Devices, MobileNavigator offers features such as 2D/3D maps, landscape and portrait support and reality view.

Navigon also mention the auto-resume navigation after call feature which will be essential for anyone who uses their iPhone hands-free in their car.

We hope to be reviewing this solution very soon but for now, full details are available in the AppStore.

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With the long awaited arrival of Satnav on the iPhone there is now more demand than ever for a good in-car cradle solution.

We’ve used a few and by far the biggest bug bear of all of them has been the need to remove any case or wrap you use to protect your iPhone before they can be accommodated in a cradle. Having to do so every time you get in and out of the car soon renders the cradle unused.

However, times are a changing. Thanks to the suppliers ProClipUSA and the wizards at Brodit, a Swedish company long regarded for their vast range of custom cradles and ProClip vehicle mounts we now have a solution that resolves this thorny issue.

Brodit have engineered a simple but effective solution with a cradle that is adjustable.  Using four small thumbscrews on the rear of the unit you can easily alter its width and thus adjust it to firmly grip your iPhone whilst it remains in its case. Perfect!
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