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Provides: gps guidance
Developer: Magellan
Price: $79.99
Availability: Now
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Requirements: iPhone OS 3.0+, iPhone 3G(S) or iPod touch with Magellan Car Kit

iPhone GPS guidance apps aren’t quite a dime a dozen, but there are more than enough choices to make you wonder which fits your needs the best.  Let’s take a look at Magellan’s RoadMate 2010 North America.

Magellan’s RoadMate is a little different than other GPS apps on the App Store.  It’s essentially a direct port of the software that runs on their hardware units.  This is either a huge plus (for Magellan fans) or a huge disappointment (for iPhone interface fans).  I happen to be the latter.  That said, I still think Magellan’s app is a good choice for some, though likely not all.

So let’s start with settings.  Magellan has all that you’d expect.  You can enter in your Home address, which is the one you’ll use the most.  You can select your routing profile (fastest, shortest, most/least highways) and you can avoid things like U-turns and tolls.  RoadMate’s routing is very similar to other GPS apps, but it can’t access any sort of traffic data, so it doesn’t take that into account, which may result in inefficient routing.  Roadmate currently has three text-to-speech voices that will speak all of your directions including street names.  I don’t think they are up to par with other GPS apps’ voices, but they certainly get the job done.

On to the screen that you’ll see the most, the navigation screen.  You can easily see time, the text for the next direction, and of course the map.  The bottom right corner houses the “One Touch” button which makes routing to common destinations easy.  Your default choices include home, previous, emergency, gas, coffee and POI.  And while you can tap the “Home” icon, it really grinds my gears.  Why?  Because three or more taps are necessary to get you home.  Other apps can do this in 1.  It seems trivial, but this will likely account for nearly half of the navigation that you do.

Perhaps you don’t want to go home, yet.  Then just enter in the specific address.  I both love and hate how this is done.  Since this app is largely a port, it doesn’t use the iPhone’s standard keyboard.  You may appreciate this, but I do not.  I do know why they chose this though, it’s completely logical and does add value.  Their software auto-completes addresses for you based on the only possible letter/number combinations for cities, streets, addresses etc.  But it also disables letters and numbers on the keyboard that are not possible inside of the map data present in the app.  For instance, if you type Z, the letter Z on the keyboard will likely be unavailable since I don’t know of any street names that start with two Zs.  This is great because entering addresses is quicker, and you make less typos.  But I still feel like they could have had an auto-complete feature that worked with the iPhone’s keyboard; something similar to how Apple handles typos perhaps.  I just don’t think that every app needs a different keyboard.

Once you get started driving, the map updates at a fairly good frame rate, though the map display is a little ugly.  Icons are displayed representing POI, but they often aren’t that identifiable.  For instance, many restaurants are just displayed as a plate with a knife and fork.  Other icons are still a mystery to me.  I also don’t like the way that the app displays directions.  The text portion is easy enough to see and read, but the direction (left, right etc) is a bit difficult to see.  Adding to this issue is the app’s lack of lane guidance.  Good luck if you’re coming up on a complicated set of off ramps, you’ll need it.  Most other GPS apps have lane guidance, so it’s one of the first things I look for, and represents a full point reduction in my rating.

Overall, I think Magellan has a decent app here, but it just doesn’t measure up to the features and usability present in other GPS apps on the App Store.  Both Navigon and TomTom have more features, are easier to use than Magellan’s RoadMate, and surprisingly enough, are both cheaper (in the USA).  So I’m thinking it’s a tough sell at this point.  While Magellan is a fully functional GPS app that will get you from point A to point B, it really needs more features like lane guidance and real time traffic support to compete on the App Store.