Never Get Lost Again
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A lot of people want a single device to be everything and as such PDAs are getting smaller however they have a long way to go to get down to the size of a Smart Phone. The Nokia 6630 weights only around 150 grams and includes a rather good 1.3 mega pixel camera. The dimensions are 10.5x5.5x2cm.
From the point of view of Navicore perhaps the most important item is the screen and this is 4.3x3.6cm. There are two main bits to the Navicore offering a small Bluetooth receiver and an 256MB XD card. The latter fits in the side of the phone and the former can be anywhere in reasonably close locality to the phone. In fact the Navicore box includes a belt holder for the Bluetooth device.
The Navicore unit can be charged from the Nokia phone adapter (on the model I used anyway) there is a car adapter that runs from the cigar lighter but no charger from the mains provided.
Having charged both the phone and the Bluetooth adapter I tried things from various places in my home. I was surprised that I got a good signal almost anywhere and could link without problems. I planned several journeys and admit I was disappointed to find that there was no Pedestrian Mode something surely very important with any mobile unit.
When in the car I tended to use two pieces of Blu Tac to fix the Bluetooth adapter and the phone and both stayed securely in place. There are two voices one male (vaguely British) and the female one. The difference in the way they say the instructions will have some preferring one to the other. I preferred the female voice and soon got used to her turning circle for roundabouts. After one journey I remember her saying Were here, what do you want to do next
I found if you switched on and tried to find a signal with a lot of tall buildings around it took a while, however if you go into an area with a lot of high buildings your signal seemed to remain okay.
Out of interest I took the unit on a train journey and not surprisingly it had to recalculate the route a lot, messages such as please drive closer to the road had me in stitches. As my destination was only a hundred yards from the train station we arrived successfully. It is also aware of the congestion charge in London and knows about other chargeable roads.
I have my doubts about the exact date of the maps as there is a road nearby that became a dual carriageway a year ago and this is not shown as such also at the same time a roundabout was replaced by traffic lights again not noted. However where it is helpful is that it tells you in good time what lane to be in and not only shows the next turn clearly but also shows the second one as well. The map display (that only the passenger will look at of course) also shows very accurately the cars speed when there is no turn in the next half mile or so. Likely price for Navicore Personal is around £200 but you still would need a Symbian phone such as the Nokia 6630 I used.
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