Vodafone SatNav app

[Digsy]

Has anyone got experience with using the Vodafone branded Telmap SatNav that Voda are supplying some of their PDA/phones with these days?

 

I've got my eye on an HTC Touch Diamond, and I really want a SatNav solution soon as I have started doing a lot of driving for work both in the UK and Europe. I'm split between buying a separate system and getting one integrated into my next PDA.

 

I know you have to pay a £5 per month subscription fee to use the Voda SatNav - which annoys me from the get-go, even though I guess a separate SatNav would take a couplle of years to pay for itself by comparison.

 

Any idea if the Vodafone handsets let you install a third party Nav application instead of their one? Certainly my TyTn came with a load of Voadfone customisation which inexplicably removed a load of useful functionality from it (if I ever have to do a hard reset I have to dick around with the registry to make it work like other TyTns). I wouldn't put it past them to tie you to using their product regardless of how expensive of good it was.

 

I found some stuff on a Vodafone forum about their app not being very stable and suddely refusing to work - not what I want to happen if I'm halfway to going where I want to go.

Also, even the Vodafone people posting on the forum seemed very unsure about what the charges were, or how to get map upgrades and how to make speed camera alrets work, etc.

[JustGav]

I've got an HTC Touch Diamond arriving tomorrow for Mel, so I'll be looking into SatNav apps on it. Will let you know on progress.

[Digsy]

Cheers dude.

 

I'm getting my hands on one for a demo tonight (my girlfriend's boss has just got one but gone away on a trip before he's had chance to set it up, so he's leant it to her for me to have a look). I won't be playing with any of the actual apps, though. Its just for touchy-feely.

[Digsy]

Well I don't know if you've got your yet but I had a play with one last night. Its very slick and obviously trying to look like an i-Phone. Oddly it’s a lot slimmer in real life than the HTC website makes it look.

 

First impresions:

Negative:

The touch screen isn't very sensitive, which makes using the touch-flo interface with your fingers a bit hit-and-miss. Even the response to the stylus was troublesome. This is actually just a Today screen add-in, so you can simply turn it off and go back to stock Windows Mobile 6 if you want. Not sure if the screen had a protector on it. The screen seemed a lot more rigid that the ones on my previous HTC PDAs. It was also very prone to smudging from my swarthy, greasy fingers

 

Less hard buttons than the TyTn. No "OK" button that I could see. No scroll wheel. No dedicated camera button! Although you can map the existing buttons and two soft keys to installed apps if you want.

 

The wired headphone socket is still in the bottom of the phone, meaning you cant put it in handy cubby hole in your car while the headphones are plugged in. Not an issue for wireless, but still a daft mistake.

 

WM6's alarm feature still doesn't have the nice user interface that the old, old Pocket PC edition had for snoozing alarms.

 

No camera flash or fill-in light.

 

Seems a lot slower to respond than my TyTn.

 

Positive:

Its soooo purdy!

 

Very slim and light.

 

Bright screen (no idea what it was set at though and I tend to keep my PDA dim to prolong the battery life).

 

Camera mechanical auto-focus works very well (in good light, anyawy).

 

LOTS of bundled software on the phone I looked at. Hopefully this is standard for units from Vodafone. Opera Browser installed as well as IE. Esmetec Jbed MIDlet manager instead of the poxy Tao one on my TyTn that flatly refused to run the one and only Java app that I actually need.

 

4Gb of solid-state storage on board instead of a card slot. I prefer this because I never got around to buying a card for my TyTn because it was a different slot to my previous PDA - hence I never used it as an MP3 player.

 

Other stuff:

Could not run SatNav app as it requires a data connection and the phone did not have a SIM card in it.

 

No direct experience, but I have read that the battery life on these things is poor. My TyTn is 18 months old and can still go almost a full week between charges at the rate I use it with its 1350mAh battery. The Touch Diamond battery is only 900mAh by comparison. It will definitely need a car power adaptor for serious use as a Sat Nav.

[ShamelessTT]

Ive got one, i love it, google registry tweaks for it .........for instance.......

 

16. Adjust screen sensitivity: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\TouchPanel Value = PressureThreshold Change from the default dword:00000027 or 34 to dword:000000f0 or 240 in decimal __________________

[JustGav]

Ours hasn't arrived yet, but good post up, will add my bits later

[JustGav]

How the hell do you get touchflo 3d to work, for some reason I can't seem to find it ANYWHERE on this bleeding phone.

[Digsy]

How the hell do you get touchflo 3d to work, for some reason I can't seem to find it ANYWHERE on this bleeding phone.

 

I'm not sure if TouchFLO 3D is something different to the interface I was using, but on the phone I borrowed it was an option under the Today screen items.

 

Go to Start>Settings>Personal tab>Today>Items tab and tick TouchFLO on and all the other items off. I was using the phone straight out of the box, so it was pre-loaded with the add-on.

 

As I don't have the phone anymore I can't try the registry tweak for the screen sensitivity but its hand to know there is one. Apparently HTC have released a ROM upgrade already which fixes several known bugs and also extendes the battery life, which many users on the Vodafone forum are reporting is very poor. As far as I know Vodafone don't, won't or can't supply ROM upgrades for their phones and the serial numbers aren't recognised if you try to register with HTC to get an upgrade.

 

There are also registry tweaks "out there" for the issue with the screen turning off too soon while making a phonecall (thereby meaning you can't use phone menus).

 

I went around the highstreet shops yesterday trying to find out more about SatNav options on this phone and just got a load of blank faces and "ummm, I think it only covers the UK" and "ummm…I think it needs a data connection all the time to work" and "ummmm…I think it costs £5 per month". Hopeless. It would appear that after the app was created, everyone who knew anything about it was neuralised by the Men In Black.

 

Anyway, I found an idiots guide to VodaFone Satnav here: http://online.vodafone.co.uk/dispatch/Portal/SimpleGetFileServlet?dDocName=VF011566&revisionSelectionMethod=latest&inline=1

Loosk like that rather than doing what O2 has done with their XDA Orbit2 and provide a pukka sat nav bundle with the phone, they've decided to overcomplicate things by using a system that downloads only the data you want to your phone, thereby meaning you have to pay data charges for every single journey. OK, it might only be a few pence per mile, but what do they expect to happen if you are in an area with no coverage? I just came back from Wales and did a lot of travelling through Snowdonia, using my girlfriend's Garmin Zumo to get around. I’d say that about 50% of the time I had no mobile phone coverage at all. Where would that have left me with Vodafone? I also want to be able to use this abroad. Telmap's website (Voda's sat nav supplier) say that the system covers Europe, but presumably I'm going to wind up paying huge fees for data usage while roaming?

 

Looks like this is a system best suited to city boys who just want to stagger their way to the next wine bar, and not for people who actually want to use it to go somewhere. I am willing stand corrected if I can actually find anyone who can answer questions about it.

[JustGav]

Turns out there was an issue with the firmware, so I blew away to the old orange firmware and went with the Elite 3.0 cooked firmware. The phone seems a lot more responsive, some of the useless apps have been removed.

 

All in all, the phone isn not a bad unit, bit fiddly with the old touchscreen but then I like my blackberry.

 

I have noticed TomTom 7 is available for them (In some form or other )