MobileNavigator 1.2 review

There’s a lot going on under the bonnet with Navigon’s MobileNavigator. Unlike the other iPhone applications we've seen it offers a text-to-speech facility, reading out road names as it directs you along its chosen route, so helping you avoid taking wrong turns.

It also shows the names of points of interest onscreen, where other apps just show an icon. There’s even an iPod control, allowing you to control your music while navigating. There are no traffic alerts, so you can easily run into traffic jams, but MobileNavigator does feature lane guidance, a useful aid that helps you find your way through scary motorway junctions.

Parts of MobileNavigator’s user interface can seem a little sluggish compared to the competition, although scrolling and zooming around the map was quick. The routes offered were generally excellent, too, with a good combination of main and local roads.

But there are more problems: when testing, we found MobileNavigator a bit slow at getting an initial GPS lock, and it would often lose sight of satellites while driving. This is slightly odd, since other apps using the same physical hardware have been fine.

Despite its excellent spoken instructions and clear onscreen mapping and guidance, MobileNavigator isn’t yet an application we’d entirely recommend.

Author: Paul Ockenden