Review: TomTom app for iPhone

TomTom is the latest big name navigation player to try and exploit the potential of the iPhone market. Similar to other iPhone satnav apps TomTom have done a respectable of job of trying to capture the same look and feel of its software and hardware range, with a series of large colourful menu icons that provided instant swiping appeal the moment we laid our eyes on them.

In fact the interface on the whole was pretty straight forward to master and we were pleased to see that the majority of iPhones own unique control system has been utilised so we could quickly rotate the screen to landscape, pinch the screen whilst browsing to destinations using the map browser and it even has a method of controlling iPod music when your voice directions kick in, though this does happen rather abruptly and it would have benefited from a more subtle fading approach.

Unfortunately whilst it does have IQ Routes technology onboard (which we did see a marked improvement in route efficiency) and the aforementioned interface, the actually Live services such as HD Traffic or Google search are not present and some of the core PND features have been stripped back to, such as itinerary planning, map share, custom POI (with audible warnings), road speed warning alarms, lane guidance, motorway junction views and we couldn’t get the software to work with TomTom Home either.

On a positive note the app does at least provide more functionality out the box compared to a lot of its competitors early releases, for example unlike the iGO software we used this month you do have a safety camera database (mind you not all cameras were detected on route), the ability to call POI from the interface and navigate to destination using your phones contacts, which seemed to work fine.

In some ways we can also forgive the lack of an itinerary planner because the supplied A-to-B planner and route simulation options did prove useful, sadly the latter does not have the PND’s handy feature of being able to speed up the demos, so trawling though longer routes can be a pain.

Still we were impressed with the different ways we could enhance our routes once they had been calculated, so for example at a touch of a button we could drive to interim destinations, get the software to calculate an alternative route or manually go into the itinerary lists to remove parts of a journey we did not want – great stuff!

During our road tests (using the iPhone3Gs) we found initial calculations – even for 100mile trips – were quick and coupled with respectable location acquisition we had high hopes for the receivers performance out on the road, unfortunately as we got going we found that tracking accuracy was not 100%. With the – minimalistic – map view always being slightly behind the roads that we passed.

This in some ways meant we had to rely more on the basic voice directions and visual directional aides dotted about on the screen to get us around, so thankfully the clear placement of both the current road and the road we were heading to, did elevate some of the above problems.

Another upcoming feature that could also help counteract the performance woes is the TomTom car kit (not available at the time of writing) which has its own secure doc windscreen mount, GPS antenna, car stereo support and hands-free capabilities built in, rumours also suggest that it may work for iPod Touch users which could be an exciting prospect, but TomTom were being tight lipped when we asked them about this.

To summarise out the box the app does offer the standard suite of features to get you going, but was let down by poor GPS performance – although this is possibly more related to the iPhone hardware than the software. Also the app would benefit from bringing back some core PND features which veteran users would have expected to be included in the first place.

Price: £59.99
Map coverage: UK & Ireland

Essential verdict
Performance: 6
Design: 8
Features: 7
Value for Money: 6
Overall Score: 6

Words by Brett James.

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