Should I buy a Garmin or wait till the iPhone catches up?

[Scaryclouds]

I TOTALLY agree... the GPS craze right now it just that.. more of a fad.. all of the GPS nav things you see in cars... great idea, but how often are you really lost or do you need to get directions some place? I would bet generally they just sit on the dashes of cars sucking power from your battery.

Now, having said that, I DO use google maps a great deal in my work: finding out where a client lives, getting directions from where I am to someplace else.. and probably most of all, NOT USING 411 anymore!!!! Gdamn that costs a lost of money, great to be able to search for a business and have the phone number right there.

I find this post humorous. You start off stating you don't use GPS much, and therefore you wouldn't find such a feature useful on the iPhone. Then you go onto say how you "use google maps a great deal in my work." Have you considered the reason you don't use GPS is because it isn't convenient and that if you had GPS on the iPhone you would end up using it a lot?

You are right, most people won't even use GPS weekly. However I'm going to new places often enough that I would find such a feature very useful, I'm doubt I'm alone when it comes to this.

 

[2A Batterie]

I'm going with the Garmin. I think it is suffice to say that GPS rules. I won't be buying a Nuvi Phone, even if one was available tomorrow. Garmin hasn't earned a track record like that of Apple's yet, and I love the iPhone. I'd love it more if it had GPS though! I hope that Apple does realize the validity of having GPS in the iPhone. I think it would turn on a whole new wave of users, new apps, and new ways of using GPS.

 

[toddngina]

I've had many Garmins and, while I love them, a Garmin convergence device scares me. I had the Garmin iQue, the Palm/GPS, and it was a very expensive piece of garbage. It was an orphan Palm device. Nobody ever developed anything for it and it had issues with quite a bit of existing Palm software. The GPS was poorly designed and the software ran on the Palm and frequently crashed. For this reason I will never, ever purchase any Garmin convergence device again. I learned a very expensive lesson the first time around. I do love my StreetPilot 680 though.

If Verizon can put an excellent Navigator into a crappy cell phone, I bet Apple could do wonders with their hardware and in-house or 3rd party software support. The iphone has the potential to easily add Nuvi-esque features that would integrate well and provide features above and beyond what Garmin provides in their stand alone boxes (google satellite map integration, for instance). The iPhone will eventually get GPS, and Garmin and the other dedicated GPS box makers should be concerned, and start figuring out how they are going to play in this converging market.

 

[2A Batterie]

If Verizon can put an excellent Navigator into a crappy cell phone, I bet Apple could do wonders with their hardware and in-house or 3rd party software support. The iphone has the potential to easily add Nuvi-esque features that would integrate well and provide features above and beyond what Garmin provides in their stand alone boxes (google satellite map integration, for instance). The iPhone will eventually get GPS, and Garmin and the other dedicated GPS box makers should be concerned, and start figuring out how they are going to play in this converging market.

I agree, although I never thought about battery life. I've noticed that VZNav can really drain battery life, and the iPhone doesn't get nearly enough battery life as I prefer. Let's hope that gets handled next time around too.

 

[ctakim]

Same situation as you, but I bought a Garmin Nuvi

I needed a GPS for my new car and I am an iPhone owner. I love the GPS lite features on my iPhone, but I doubt it will ever function as well as a dedicated GPS unit made for in car use. I bought the Garmin Nuvi 660 as I was quite happy with an earlier Garmin GPS. I think you will be waiting for a long time before you can get directions as you go in the car from an iPhone as efficiently as the dedicated GPS.

Now the ideal that Garmin is trying to make a PDA/Phone version of their unit is scary to me. Their software interface while functional is hardly elegant, and this will be a very crowded space. Don't look for Garmin to compete in the smartphone market unless they make some big changes.

 

[senorFunkyPants]

I think you will be waiting for a long time before you can get directions as you go in the car from an iPhone as efficiently as the dedicated GPS.

I don't see why, Tomtom for the PDA works just as well as the dedicated Tomtom 5 series GPS unit I borrowed.
I been using tomtom for nearly six years on my trusty old Ipaq 3630 (with little ram and a "slowish" processor) along with a wired Holux gps receiver I get fast accurate positioning great voice directioning as well as speed camera detection.
Why would the iPhone not be able to do as least as well as such old technology?

 

[toddngina]

I love the GPS lite features on my iPhone, but I doubt it will ever function as well as a dedicated GPS unit made for in car use.

Why not? What great hardware advantage does a Garmin Nuvi (which I think are great) have over the iPhone? Storage space for software? A nice easy to read screen? A speaker for audible directions? Bluetooth connectivity? Put a GPS chip in there, add the appropriate software, get a good mounting bracket with optional stereo system integration, and you have a device that can do whatever the Nuvi can do. And you don't have to worry about hiding it in the glove box, because you're just going to slip it into your pocket on the way out! I put my iPhone in a cup holder mounting bracket in my car, and use a dock connector charger to charge it and connect it to my stereo. With both in one device, it could turn down the stereo, give me an audible direction, then turn the tunes back up - just like a built-in system!

 

[RaceTripper]

...Tomtom for the PDA works just as well as the dedicated Tomtom 5 series GPS unit I borrowed...

For me that that's not saying much at all. I had a TomTom Go for 3 years and it was nothing but a source of frustration and grief. I got to the point that I had to have paper maps and directions as a backup because the TomTom kept getting things wrong for me on road trips, or it just didn't have the addresses at all in its maps, even though I kept upgrading the maps when they became available.

I finally got rid of the TomTom this year and got a Nuvi 760. Big, big, big improvement over TomTom. The Garmin maps have everything I put into it (and often just has it in the POI db) and it gets me to distinations without leading me in the wrong direction for miles (which is what the TomTom did constanly -- at least once every trip). I just got back from a week long business trip to Portland/Seattle and the Garmin was awesome. On the same trip last year the TomTom took me 30 miles in the wrong direction getting to my hotel in Mukilteo.

 

[senorFunkyPants]

For me that that's not saying much at all. I had a TomTom Go for 3 years and it was nothing but a source of frustration and grief.
{....}
I finally got rid of the TomTom this year and got a Nuvi 760. Big, big, big improvement over TomTom.

The point is...would an iphone be able to do the same job as a dedicated GPS unit and the simple answer is yes. A dedicated GPS unit is in essence just a PDA with crippled file access and it uses similar software and the same maps as that used for PDAs (current GPS software was initially developed to run on PDAs).
The number of PNDs (Portable Navigation Devices) sold in Europe and N America in 2007 was 24.5 million.
Would iPhone benefit from having the capability to run GPS software? I would very much think so.

 

[slapguts]

Have any of you seem the stand alone GPS units being developed for the iPhone? There are 2 seperate companies working on a device that reads GPS info, and rebroadcasts it in wifi to the iPhone. Seems like an elegant solution, just leave the seperate box in the car when you don't need it.

I'd post a link, but I'm way too lazy. There were multiple posts over at engadget.com about them, might be worth a search.

 

[jeffreyfort]

just had to drive to an unfamiliar area yesterday. I have TomTom Navigator on a Palm Treo. Put in the address, did itinerary planning to figure out the fastest way, when I got close, I "navigated to" the address with John Clease's voice giving me turn-by-turn directions. I use this all the time. I hope the next iPhone has something similar. Google maps is OK but can't do what I need. I don't want to have to carry more than one device.