TomTom Western Europe at Mac App Store analyse

Graphics, style and design is very bad!!!

I am US based and got this for a trip to Europe. I have AT&T phone service and dont have international service. So I left the phone in airplane mode. Well the iPhone GPS needs phone service to get a fix in a reasonable amount of time. I got a fix once while sitting in a park for about 15-20 min. So basically GPS is useless in areas where you dont have phone service. This is the iPhones fault not TomTom. Otherwise the software worked well. I used the advanced planning feature a lot. The app found most of the POIs that I was looking for. TomTom provided good maps of the route. So dont buy this for another country unless you have phone service there. Its amazing how my six year old palm phone with a keychain Bluetooth external GPS unit and old TomTom software worked great last year. Too bad the iPhone cut some corners and its GPS is a step backwards.

Aside from the interface and battery life problems rightly highlighted by other happy users, GPS reception is so choppy (as pointed out by others, as well) that I am regularly given driving instructions for a position situated a few hundred yards away from my position, which can be slightly distracting when you are trying to figure out your way - and this does not happen in mountainous or dense urban areas, where interference and poor signal could be blamed. I have also been sent a few times towards one-way streets, and driven on concrete/real roads which, according to Tomtom do not exist, making me an instant explorer of sorts, in the Belgian countryside. My current grudge with this nice piece of software is an update for iOS4 compatibility: the whole product apparently has a 1.8GB footprint, and WITH THE APPLICATION INSTALLED, I still have 2.6GB available on my iPhone 3G 16GB. However, bizarrely, when I try to download the upgrade, I am told that I do not have sufficient memory and am advised to delete videos and photos on my phone. If not fixed, I will be unable to travel with it for the holidays, which is the reason I bought it in the first place. TomTom declines to provide any help on this matter.

This product is an absolute waste of money. I recently abandoned repeated attempts to use this product during a driving trip throughout England and ended up using the FREE Google maps app that was preloaded on my phone.

Ive been using the application in France and it has really helped me get around, including staying off the toll roads. The biggest problem Ive encountered is that in areas with a lot of roads in close proximity (as happens a lot in Paris), the location marker jumps to a different road and the app then tries to reroute me back to the road it just thought I was on. It seems like a bit of hysteresis could help here.

This $89 apps is awful for pedestrian navigation in a city (and yes it has a pedestrian option). the map (2D, 3D or map browsing) requires forward movement to know the direction you are facing instead of referencing the built-in iphone 3GS/4 compass (unlike google maps). So, if you have intermittent GPS signal, you have no idea what direction you are headed. I bought this app so i have my map of spain pre-loaded as not to require roaming data charges of $19USD/MB (you read correctly MB not GB). the map scrolling and zoom are also terrible. it is not smooth and requires the image to re-build each time you move or zoom. this does not make sense since all the map data is in resident memory (no Edge or 3G required). even google maps is smoother. Im using this app with latest 1.4.1 update and the battery provided me about half day before completely drained (and this is in airplane mode) and the iPhone 4 feels like a portable heater. I even tried re-booting several times thinking it was a Software hang. you would think that this much energy draw would at least provide seamless compass + GPS navigation. If Tom Toms explanation is "this app is meant for car kit Nav", then why is it sold AND has a menu option for pedestrian Nav? do not buy!

I bought this app to use it on the motorcycle. The turn by turn voice guidance works well and the balance between enough information and unnecessary comments is well done. However, after only 2 hours my fully charged iphone 3GS is out of battery when using this app. I did all the tricks (turning off push, no wifi, screen off...) but 2 hours is it. Even worse, there is no notification by the app that it is shutting down due to low battery. Can lead to bad surprises when driving longer distances. Probably a nice app if you stick to using it in the car with a car adapter.