GPS not bad, but not that great eiher. See some tips

I just got it a few days ago and played w/ it a bit. The followings are my tips. Hopeful you might find them useful.

- You need to update its firmware/software first upon you receive it from Dell. That greatly improves the performance
- After S/W update, delete the installed map, and reinstall Ovi map. The pre-installed map doesn't allow free turn by turn GPS navigation, it's map mode only. That's why you need to re-install the free ones.
- I assume you are in US. When you reinstall the Ovi map,install UK w/ street name voice instead of US voice. Somehow, the US(English) w/ street name voice is not recognized by the phone so you don't have text to speech functionality. With UK(English) w/ street name voice, it will speak the street name during navigation.
- A bit warning. First I tried to install the entire US map, which is 1.39GB, It took more than 2 hours to install. It doesn't tell you the map version. So there's no way to tell what you installed on the phone is up to date or not. If you want to delete the ones already on the memory card, you have to delete all of them. Nokia doesn't offer a way to delete individually, though it lists like that in Nokia Ovi Map software.

Overall I'm satisfied due to its low price. But I also feel Nokia can do much better than what its now. GPS is ok to use, but not at same level of usability like Garmin GPS. IMHO, it's not replacement of standalone GPS. Here are the cons:
- slow start. It take a couple of minutes to find satellite. The not so new Garmain only takes - The screen is hard to read under sun
- The touch screen (soft key) is tiny so it's almost unusable in the car if you are also the driver.
- During a couple of road test, for some locations, it keeps asking me to use toll road, otherwise it refuses to continue when there is clearly non-toll road there for many years.
- no route pre-review option(at least I haven't found it) so you don't even know what route it'll guide until you reach the point when it provides voice guidance.
- You can't pre-enter destination address(called favorite by Nokia) using PC and sync w/ phone using USB cable. It can only be done via Ovi account through RF interface, which means you have to have data plan for that. Otherwise, you have to enter the "favorite" addresses one by one using phone's interface. BTW, "contacts" and "favorite" are managed separately on the phone, which I really think they should be integrated together like my 4-year old Garmin has.

So I'll use it occasional when I need to go to unfamiliar place in town on the fly, but not a planned trip. In that case, Garmin is much better alternative.

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回複:GPS not bad, but not that great eiher. See some tips -Phoenix22- 給 Phoenix22 發送悄悄話 (221 bytes) () 06/07/2010 postreply 11:26:33

非常感謝你的經驗和建議。到手後會試試。再次謝謝。 -冬心- 給 冬心 發送悄悄話 (0 bytes) () 06/07/2010 postreply 21:25:13

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