I’ve been testing the new Garmin Mobile XT application recently and honestly, it’s not too shabby. Garmin’s been in the GPS biz for, well, as long as I can remember, but this is their first attempt at a mobile app. Previously they’ve focused mainly on the dedicated in-car and handheld devices. Garmin Mobile XT will cost you $99 and comes with all necessary maps, as well as access to the Garmin Online features.

The app ships on a 2GB microSD card, with micro-to-mini and micro-to-SD adapters in the package as well. The app is tied directly to this memory card, which can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. Garmin informs me that there is also a version available on DVD that will allow you to put the app on any memory card (or internal memory, in the case of the N95 8GB or N81 8GB), though this version, for some reason, is $40 more. I’m told it has to do with how the map data is licensed from Navteq. Shipping it on the microSD, however, is good because it makes installation dead easy. Seriously you stick the card in your phone and go. Installation is automatic, and I think alot of folks will find that really appealing.

The main screen of Garmin Mobile XT is very user-friendly, with really few options. The first button, “Where To?” is really self-explanatory, and lets you either navigate Home (I really like having such quick access to navigate home) or enter an address or use the POIs and all that. Below that takes you to the map view, and then Tools, Settings, and Exit. Really simple. In this screen also, the top left corner shows the strength of your GPS signal, which I really like.

When entering addresses, you start with the State, and enter in each part of the address bit by bit. You can search for partial city and street names, which makes things really easy, though there’s no T9 support. For instance, if I’m navigating somewhere in North Richland Hills, well that’s a long city to type out with multitap. However, I can put in just ‘North R’ and Garmin Mobile XT will return a list of cities matching that, from which I can select. This really makes things easy. There is also support for navigating to a contact’s address, but I was unable to actually use this, despite having the address correctly formatted in my address book. The application kept wanting me to manually type in the details.

The POI library is quite comprehensive, though I seldom use this feature on GPS systems. It attempts to narrow down as much as possible before giving you a scrollable list, which is nice. For instance, picking food, you then determine what type of food you want (in the screenshots, I chose Barbecue, because, well, I’m in Texas). I’m presented with a list of the closest Barbecue restaurants, in order of proximity. I can scroll through this list, and select a restaurant to get a summary screen. This screen shows me the address and phone number (with an easy click-to-call button) and I can either navigate to the restaurant or simply view it on the map. Very convenient and easy to use.

Once I’ve chosen where to navigate to, Garmin Mobile XT takes a few moments to determine the route. Given that the maps are stored locally, this took a bit longer than I’d have liked. I am also informed that the traffic is brought to me by Comfort Inn. I’d like to see the price of GPS systems dropped significantly, with more advertising present, honestly. The ad, as you can see, was non-invasive, and is actually a locally-stored image. The default voice is a pleasant woman’s voice, though I’d still like to see the option for personality-voice packs on GPS systems, to make them more user-friendly and fun to use.

When navigating, the screen is very easy to read. The top left and right corners tell me that pressing the 1 and 3 keys will zoom out and in, respectively. The bottom left shows me my current speed, and the bottom right displays my estimated arrival time, military style. I’d like to see a few more options for what’s displayed down here, in addition to the option of a 3rd piece of information shown in the middle. Personally, I don’t care to see my speed, as I have a speedometer in my truck. I’d much prefer to know how much farther I have in my route, or something else appropriate. Displaying the time in the 12-hour format would also be a welcome option. One really handy feature is that the map colors automatically change to night-mode in the evening. I don’t recall the exact time of day that triggers this, but it’s a very nice little feature.

Pressing the left softkey will bring up the route summary screen, showing your average speed, max speed, total driving time, and other information relevant to the route. This really needs to be retooled to be user-customisable. Things such as distance travelled and remaining distance should be visible on this screen, as well as time-to-destination and other relevant information.

Pressing the right softkey takes you back to the main screen, where you can easily get to the Tools menu, which is where the real treasure of Garmin Mobile XT lies. The absolute hands-down best feature of Garmin Mobile XT is the Garmin Online service. In this menu, you can access the Traffic, Weather, Hotels and Gas menus, and these features are evidence to me that Garmin really knows what it’s doing in the GPS arena. Notice also that in every list screen, pressing the # key will move forward through the list, while pressing the * key will move backwards.

The Traffic service shows current traffic issues ahead in a list format, and you can easily click on each one to get more information. I found this information to be somewhat up-to-date according to the local radio traffic conditions, and helpful. I would much prefer for this to be able to be shown on the map, however, so that I can use it to make decisions on my driving path. Also, in the list screen, a full 1/3 of the screen is taken up by the Comfort Inn ad, which was annoying to me.

The Weather service uses the current GPS position to tell you weather conditions and forecast for your current location. You can also manually add a city if you wish. The first screen is a 5-day forecast, and you can click on any day to get more information such as sunrise and sunset times. This is a handy feature when you’re travelling, or if you’re in a new city. I really like that it uses the GPS location, so that there’s no input needed from the user.

The Hotels service is powered by Hotels.com, and is a simply fantastic idea. I wrote previously about how I used Nokia Maps to shop for hotels in Galveston, TX. However, that required ME to manually scroll around the map and call each hotel to find their rates. Garmin Mobile XT has done that for me, through Hotels.com. Picking the Hotels service returns a list of the hotels nearby, as well as current rates. The results are initially returned in order of proximity, but with one touch I can sort them by rate, as well. Clicking on a hotel gives me a summary page with a click-to-call button, as well as an information button, and I can easily view the location on the map or navigate straight to it. This feature would be indispensable for a travelling businessperson, though I would like for it to be more personizable. For instance, I’d like to be able to sort/filter the list by star rating, or exclude specific hotel chains.

The Gas Prices service is easily as useful as the Hotels tab, and offers a similar experience. I can choose the type of gas I need (regular, mid-grade, premium, or diesel) and then I get a list of gas stations nearby, and their rate within 24 hours. As with Hotels, the list is first sorted by proximity, but can be re-sorted by rate with one click. Clicking on a station again gives you more information, though there is no phone number given (not really needed, either, honestly). This feature alone would be awesome on a road trip, allowing me to know if it’s worth driving another 10-15 miles to try to save a few pennies on the gallon, or if gas is more expensive down the road.

Given that this is Garmin’s first attempt at a mobile app, I’m really impressed with Garmin Mobile XT. It has earned a permanent spot on my N95-3, that’s for sure. However, it’s most certainly not perfect. There are a number of UI enhancements that should be made for the next version, as well as countless opportunities for Garmin to personlize the software even more.

The softkey usage is backwards for S60 handsets. Typically, the left softkey brings up the menu, while the right softkey is used for other features. Reversing these is confusing to users intially. Quite a bit of work also needs to go into pulling addresses from the handset’s contact list. This is something that none of the S60 GPS applications really have right, so the first person to get it right, wins in my book. Another feature that I’d like to see is the ability to pull address information from an SMS. Often I tell someone to just text me an address, so I don’t have to write it down, and not having to switch back and forth to enter this address would be awesome.

The map re-routing is really good, as well, and quick. I really like that, unlike other GPS software, Garmin Mobile XT did not constantly want me to make a U-turn to get back on track. The re-routing is intelligent and keeps me moving forward if at all possible.

Overall, I’d say that if you’re in the market for a phone-based GPS system, you should seriously consider Garmin Mobile XT. The pricing is on par with the rest of the bunch, and there are several features that really make it stand out. If you travel often, Garmin Mobile XT will easily save you time and money with the Garmin Online services, and I can only see these services improving as Garmin updates their software. If you’re using it locally, the quick intuitive re-routing are a definite plus, as well. Hopefully Garmin will continue to update the software and add more user-customisable features, but other than that, I would highly recommend it.

If there’s anything you’d like to know that I missed, please leave a comment below and I’ll try to get to it as quick as possible.

Related Posts

• S60 Sponsoring Canalys Navigation Forum In California
• Garmin Mobile XT Hits V5.0 With Improvements
• Garmin Mobile XT Updated, Offers New Vehicles
• S60v3 Feature Pack 2 on the Nokia 6220 Classic
• Paris, 2 Weeks Later: Nokia Maps Is A Miracle!

Categories: Applications
Tags: garmin, garmin mobile xt, gps, location-based services, s60v3