Tomtom UK and Ireland for iPhone

Like many modern smartphones, Apple’s iPhone 3G and

3GS

have built-in GPS

satellite

navigation systems and can show on a map where they are located.This Tomtom program, downloadable for £60 from

Apple’s

App Store, turns it into a full-blown satellite navigation system for

driving.The program includes everything you would expect to find in a mid-range

satellite navigation system. You can find locations by address or postcode – it

has a full seven-digit postcode search – or look for points of interest such as

a nearby petrol station.

Also, conveniently, you can navigate to any addresses stored in the phone’s

contact list. Once the destination is found the software shows a 3D map of your

location and provides spoken turn-by-turn warnings. As usual these can be given

in a selection of voices and languages, and there’s a night mode for the

display.We tried several journeys with and without the car kit, and found that the

Tomtom software worked well, guiding us to our destinations without trouble and

recalculating reasonably quickly when we were forced off-route.There are, however, a few extras required. For one you’ll need some kind of

cradle to prop the phone up in a suitable position near the windscreen. Equally

importantly you’ll need a car charger for the iPhone, as using the GPS sensor

drains its battery enormously.You can buy both together in the form of Tomtom’s own Car Kit. This includes

a windscreen mount, a louder speaker and a charger. It also has an extra GPS

sensor, which makes the application available to iPod Touch users, since the

device doesn’t have a GPS sensor built in. The kit costs £100, though, making

the complete app-plus-car-kit system fairly expensive at £160.If you already have a suitable cradle and power supply for long journeys, the

£60 price makes this software a bargain, against the price of buying a

standalone satellite-navigation device. Add in the cost of the car kit if

needed, though, and it begins to look a bit steep.

Taken from here