One of the neat features of my Nokia N79 smartphone, and one that I vastly underestimated was the inbuilt GPS system that is included. In fact most smartphones these days seem to have quite sophisticated gps systems installed.
This summer I installed Google Maps on my phone, though I still kept the rather basic Maps System installed as well. Nokia’s map system really encourages you to buy a commercial system. But with Google Maps on my phone, I didn’t really need to.
Why? Google Maps are fairly uptodate, quick to download, and allow you to join Google’s own MobilePhone Network and keep up to date with your Google friends.
With the maps, we were more or less able to find our way around Hualien and Yi-lan while we were on vacation, only occasionally becoming disoriented. In fact, we were disoriented because we DIDN’T trust the maps!
We usually made it to our destinations and found that the maps were largely reliable OUTSIDE the cities. In the cities, though, it was a different problem: new roads, updated directions, one-way routes… all this kind of information tended to be OUT-of-DATE!
For that reason, alone, if you can be sure that the GPS system you are buying has RECENT information, it might be worth the money. I might install the local version of PapaGo if it’s affordable. Now for the car system, well… I will wait for one on my new car as part of its incentive package.