In TomTom; go to Route Options -> Instructions
I still use the built-in maps app for looking things up, but anything Nav related goes to a dedicated app.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
TomTom vs. Navigon
- Thread starter S1njin
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I still use the built-in maps app for looking things up, but anything Nav related goes to a dedicated app.
Do you have a gps signal? Once the route starts, you can view turn by turn as stated above.
This route feature appears to give direction only from where I am to another destination(s).
Is there any way to get directions from Point B to Point C if I am currently at Point A?
I still cannot find a way, and I consider this a major deficiency of Navigon.
Lock screen?
When I used the google maps app this week if I didn't keep touching the screen the locked home screen would come up. Do either of these apps stay on the program without going back to the lock screen?
When I used the google maps app this week if I didn't keep touching the screen the locked home screen would come up. Do either of these apps stay on the program without going back to the lock screen?
I have my screen set to lock after 1 min of inactivity. when using navigon, the screen stays on since I'm assuming there is activity, but only during active navigation. if for example, you're just on the enter address portion or something else, the screen will still auto lock after pre-determined time.
I don't know how anyone likes TomTom. If only Garmin made an app, TomTom would be dead!
I tried the Navigon regional and it sucks! The maps detail is horrible! My Garmin Nuvi 350 has better detail for the maps than this app does.
I tried the CoPilot and fell in love with the level of detail of the street detail and you can actually see the street names of side streets. Navigon you couldn't see a damn thing on the iPhone 4!
I vote CoPilot at this point! iPhone 4 display is awesome, it is only $4.99 and to add text to speech is only $2.99 more. Can't beat that pricing no matter how you think about it!
I tried the Navigon regional and it sucks! The maps detail is horrible! My Garmin Nuvi 350 has better detail for the maps than this app does.
I tried the CoPilot and fell in love with the level of detail of the street detail and you can actually see the street names of side streets. Navigon you couldn't see a damn thing on the iPhone 4!
I vote CoPilot at this point! iPhone 4 display is awesome, it is only $4.99 and to add text to speech is only $2.99 more. Can't beat that pricing no matter how you think about it!
Navigation apps are very subjective. I cant explain why, but with Garmin I tend to miss more turns at complex intersections than I do with other apps. TomTom may not have the best looks to the map itself, but it does a better job of letting me know what is coming up.
I've used Navigon and TomTom pretty extensively since they came out, so I can throw my two cents in again now that the iOS 4 versions are available and I have an iPhone 4.
When these apps first started showing up, Navigon was head and shoulders above TomTom. It was beating TomTom to the punch on just about every single feature (text-to-speech, iPod controls, traffic, etc). The only killer for Navigon was that it was basically unusable on a 3G because of all the resources it used.
Now that the iPhone 4 is out, resources aren't really an issue any more. However, I have to say that even on the iPhone 4, Navigon is STILL sluggish. The menus aren't, but the map is just painful to watch, especially when using Panorama 3D (a cool idea but really kind of pointless). It updates very slowly and occasionally freezes your position and then jumps ahead (particularly when it is preparing a voice instruction).
On the other hand, TomTom's map is incredibly smooth. The map updates constantly as you drive and your indicator passes roads almost exactly in sync with the real world. This is honestly even better than I expected on the iPhone 4.
In terms of features, Navigon and TomTom are pretty close at this point. TomTom still lacks a simple way of planning a multi-destination route, and Navigon is still missing a simple "avoid road X" feature (the "Block" option doesn't cut it). Navigon's menu is still a bit of a jumbled mess with everything on a single page, but I think I prefer it to TomTom's where it's at least 3 taps to get to just about every option. In terms of overall tweaking, TomTom wins as you can adjust almost everything imaginable.
I've found the maps in both Navigon and TomTom to be very accurate in my area. I haven't really seen any obvious differences in the two, although if you look at the AppStore reviews, plenty of people have issues with both maps. Navigon definitely has WAY more speed limit data than TomTom. It's not even close. I'm not sure if this is just the NavTeq data, or research on Navigon's part, but it is impressive. On the other hand, TomTom wins hands down for POI searching. Navigon for whatever reason makes you put in the exact city or town of the POI you are searching for. TomTom lets you search nearby and will gradually move away from you to find the POI. Google search is available in both, but I have never received a result in Navigon. It has worked very well in TomTom so far.
So anyways, on to the stuff that actually matters. Navigon now has MyRoutes while TomTom has had IQ Routes for a while. I didn't really notice a difference at first, but it's pretty obvious now that TomTom is far and away superior in this department. It's not that the routes selected by the two are completely different where one is obviously better than the other, but on most routes there are a couple of small differences where Navigon clearly isn't taking into account all of the information TomTom is. When comparing routes to the same destinations, Navigon's ETA is always incredibly optimistic.
Just to test this, I used both during a trip that I've made dozens of times. It's only about a 15 minute drive, but there are a lot of lights along the way, so taking back roads to avoid them is always a good idea. Navigon and TomTom both took back roads to get to the destination, and really the routes were almost identical aside from one different turn. However, Navigon said the trip would take 6 minutes; TomTom said it would take 14. I have no clue how Navigon made that estimate. Maybe if I was going 50 in a 35 the whole way and got to every single traffic light when it was green, it might take 6 minutes. I made a note of the ETA for both, and pulled into the parking lot of my destination at exactly the time TomTom predicted when I got in the car. Pretty impressive. Navigon adjusted its ETA along the way, but that's not really very helpful when planning the trip.
I knew that TomTom took more information into account than Navigon, but for this particular route, it was pretty glaring. Navigon must only use the speed limit of roads to determine routes and ETA, not the average speed, presence of traffic lights, etc. The one turn that was different in Navigon's route would have taken me to a busy intersection with a very long light. With no traffic and no light, this route would definitely be faster, but because the intersection is so busy, it would add time on. TomTom used the same back road that I have found as the best option in my experience. It doesn't seem like a big deal in this example, where a few minutes here and there is negligible, but on long trips where I'm trying to minimize delays, I don't know that I would trust Navigon's routing.
I did a few other tests on some longer trips (I didn't actually drive them, just did a route preview) and some of Navigon's decisions were really questionable. Generally, I have found that TomTom chooses the same routes that make sense to me and, if it doesn't, it selects a much better route that I never would have thought of. I have actually picked up a few awesome shortcuts over the year thanks to TomTom.
This issue factors into the traffic feature as well. I have to say that I really like Navigon's traffic implementation. I like being able to see nearby traffic whenever I want and I like that it gives a description of the incident. I also like that I can manually decide whether I want to avoid a particular incident on my route or not. That is, I can have Navigon automatically take care of it, or I can manually go in and pick the incidents I want to avoid. TomTom is more of a need-to-know implementation - if it affects your route, it will let you know, but it doesn't really give many details and you can't search for incidents. It will tell you if it finds a faster route and let you decide if you want to take it, but you can't specify which incidents to avoid.
(Note: Right now, TomTom's traffic is "broken". It works functionally in that it will find traffic and re-route you if necessary, but it doesn't actually show you what the incidents are when you tap the traffic button on the map. I assume that this will be fixed in an update).
However, in practice, I don't think I would ever use the manual incident avoidance. If I'm driving, I'd rather the software automatically find a better route anyways. Navigon and TomTom both do this well. Of course, Navigon suffers in this department because of the above issue - the routes it calculates just aren't as good as TomTom's. So it's great that it can find and avoid traffic, but is it really that great if the route it finds around it is poor?
The weird quirk with TomTom's traffic is that it only reports a traffic incident if it is causing congestion that is significantly worse than normal for that road at that time for that day. For example, say there is an accident on an interstate into a major city. If the incident is at 2PM on a Saturday, TomTom is going to let you know and probably find away around if it is faster. The traffic on this road at this time on this day normally wouldn't be this bad. However, if the same incident was at 8:30AM on a Monday, it may or may not report the incident since the congestion on this road is probably pretty bad at this time anyways. If the congestion is much worse than normal for rush hour, it will let you know, but if it is just typical rush hour delays, it's already taking this into account for your route.
On the other hand, Navigon doesn't factor any of this in, so when there's a traffic incident, suddenly it is drastically altering the ETA. If it's an accident with 10 miles of traffic, this could add 45 minutes onto Navigon's ETA, wheras it might only be 7 minutes for TomTom. Navigon wasn't factoring ANYTHING in, while TomTom already knew you were on a road with frequent congestion.
All in all, I have to say that TomTom is not only the best option on the iPhone, but is just a great option in general. I would feel comfortable pitting this against even the best stand-alone units. I really, really wanted Navigon to be the best. It was the first one I bought, and there are a lot of things about it that I like better than TomTom - the voice guidance, the map display, the speed limits, etc. But no matter how many times I compare, I keep going right back to TomTom. At the end of the day, the map might be pretty generic looking, the voice might be a little robotic, and the menu might be a little clunky, but the routing is unmatched and, let's face it, that's the whole point of a GPS navigator.
When these apps first started showing up, Navigon was head and shoulders above TomTom. It was beating TomTom to the punch on just about every single feature (text-to-speech, iPod controls, traffic, etc). The only killer for Navigon was that it was basically unusable on a 3G because of all the resources it used.
Now that the iPhone 4 is out, resources aren't really an issue any more. However, I have to say that even on the iPhone 4, Navigon is STILL sluggish. The menus aren't, but the map is just painful to watch, especially when using Panorama 3D (a cool idea but really kind of pointless). It updates very slowly and occasionally freezes your position and then jumps ahead (particularly when it is preparing a voice instruction).
On the other hand, TomTom's map is incredibly smooth. The map updates constantly as you drive and your indicator passes roads almost exactly in sync with the real world. This is honestly even better than I expected on the iPhone 4.
In terms of features, Navigon and TomTom are pretty close at this point. TomTom still lacks a simple way of planning a multi-destination route, and Navigon is still missing a simple "avoid road X" feature (the "Block" option doesn't cut it). Navigon's menu is still a bit of a jumbled mess with everything on a single page, but I think I prefer it to TomTom's where it's at least 3 taps to get to just about every option. In terms of overall tweaking, TomTom wins as you can adjust almost everything imaginable.
I've found the maps in both Navigon and TomTom to be very accurate in my area. I haven't really seen any obvious differences in the two, although if you look at the AppStore reviews, plenty of people have issues with both maps. Navigon definitely has WAY more speed limit data than TomTom. It's not even close. I'm not sure if this is just the NavTeq data, or research on Navigon's part, but it is impressive. On the other hand, TomTom wins hands down for POI searching. Navigon for whatever reason makes you put in the exact city or town of the POI you are searching for. TomTom lets you search nearby and will gradually move away from you to find the POI. Google search is available in both, but I have never received a result in Navigon. It has worked very well in TomTom so far.
So anyways, on to the stuff that actually matters. Navigon now has MyRoutes while TomTom has had IQ Routes for a while. I didn't really notice a difference at first, but it's pretty obvious now that TomTom is far and away superior in this department. It's not that the routes selected by the two are completely different where one is obviously better than the other, but on most routes there are a couple of small differences where Navigon clearly isn't taking into account all of the information TomTom is. When comparing routes to the same destinations, Navigon's ETA is always incredibly optimistic.
Just to test this, I used both during a trip that I've made dozens of times. It's only about a 15 minute drive, but there are a lot of lights along the way, so taking back roads to avoid them is always a good idea. Navigon and TomTom both took back roads to get to the destination, and really the routes were almost identical aside from one different turn. However, Navigon said the trip would take 6 minutes; TomTom said it would take 14. I have no clue how Navigon made that estimate. Maybe if I was going 50 in a 35 the whole way and got to every single traffic light when it was green, it might take 6 minutes. I made a note of the ETA for both, and pulled into the parking lot of my destination at exactly the time TomTom predicted when I got in the car. Pretty impressive. Navigon adjusted its ETA along the way, but that's not really very helpful when planning the trip.
I knew that TomTom took more information into account than Navigon, but for this particular route, it was pretty glaring. Navigon must only use the speed limit of roads to determine routes and ETA, not the average speed, presence of traffic lights, etc. The one turn that was different in Navigon's route would have taken me to a busy intersection with a very long light. With no traffic and no light, this route would definitely be faster, but because the intersection is so busy, it would add time on. TomTom used the same back road that I have found as the best option in my experience. It doesn't seem like a big deal in this example, where a few minutes here and there is negligible, but on long trips where I'm trying to minimize delays, I don't know that I would trust Navigon's routing.
I did a few other tests on some longer trips (I didn't actually drive them, just did a route preview) and some of Navigon's decisions were really questionable. Generally, I have found that TomTom chooses the same routes that make sense to me and, if it doesn't, it selects a much better route that I never would have thought of. I have actually picked up a few awesome shortcuts over the year thanks to TomTom.
This issue factors into the traffic feature as well. I have to say that I really like Navigon's traffic implementation. I like being able to see nearby traffic whenever I want and I like that it gives a description of the incident. I also like that I can manually decide whether I want to avoid a particular incident on my route or not. That is, I can have Navigon automatically take care of it, or I can manually go in and pick the incidents I want to avoid. TomTom is more of a need-to-know implementation - if it affects your route, it will let you know, but it doesn't really give many details and you can't search for incidents. It will tell you if it finds a faster route and let you decide if you want to take it, but you can't specify which incidents to avoid.
(Note: Right now, TomTom's traffic is "broken". It works functionally in that it will find traffic and re-route you if necessary, but it doesn't actually show you what the incidents are when you tap the traffic button on the map. I assume that this will be fixed in an update).
However, in practice, I don't think I would ever use the manual incident avoidance. If I'm driving, I'd rather the software automatically find a better route anyways. Navigon and TomTom both do this well. Of course, Navigon suffers in this department because of the above issue - the routes it calculates just aren't as good as TomTom's. So it's great that it can find and avoid traffic, but is it really that great if the route it finds around it is poor?
The weird quirk with TomTom's traffic is that it only reports a traffic incident if it is causing congestion that is significantly worse than normal for that road at that time for that day. For example, say there is an accident on an interstate into a major city. If the incident is at 2PM on a Saturday, TomTom is going to let you know and probably find away around if it is faster. The traffic on this road at this time on this day normally wouldn't be this bad. However, if the same incident was at 8:30AM on a Monday, it may or may not report the incident since the congestion on this road is probably pretty bad at this time anyways. If the congestion is much worse than normal for rush hour, it will let you know, but if it is just typical rush hour delays, it's already taking this into account for your route.
On the other hand, Navigon doesn't factor any of this in, so when there's a traffic incident, suddenly it is drastically altering the ETA. If it's an accident with 10 miles of traffic, this could add 45 minutes onto Navigon's ETA, wheras it might only be 7 minutes for TomTom. Navigon wasn't factoring ANYTHING in, while TomTom already knew you were on a road with frequent congestion.
All in all, I have to say that TomTom is not only the best option on the iPhone, but is just a great option in general. I would feel comfortable pitting this against even the best stand-alone units. I really, really wanted Navigon to be the best. It was the first one I bought, and there are a lot of things about it that I like better than TomTom - the voice guidance, the map display, the speed limits, etc. But no matter how many times I compare, I keep going right back to TomTom. At the end of the day, the map might be pretty generic looking, the voice might be a little robotic, and the menu might be a little clunky, but the routing is unmatched and, let's face it, that's the whole point of a GPS navigator.
Not really from point b to point c, but just go from where you are to point c, then add point b as an interim destination.
In Navigon, you can tap "Route" from the main screen (you may need to tap "More" and then "Route"). Then you can start adding route points (the first one is where you are departing from). So you can get directions from point A to point B, directions from point B to point C, and so on. When you start navigating, you can tap "Options" -> Turn by Turn List and it will display all of the directions for the entire route.
Works pretty well, I wish TomTom had this kind of option.
You can do this in Tom Tom, use advance planning, then route options, find alternative, then travel via.
Wow, that was an awesome review. Thanks for taking the time to type that out, your review definitely helped me decide on which one to go with. I'm thoroughly satisfied with choosing TomTom. It works just as well as a few stand alone systems that I've used. Navigon seems like a great app as well, I have a few friends who use it. Hearing them give it a lot of praise had me undecided on which way to go. So far I'm very pleased with TomTom, it's spot on, easy to use and the price is great. I have a two week long road trip coming up, so it will be nice to test it out of town.
Sort of... but what about points D, E, and F? There is no easy way to add all of the points and then sort them into whatever order you like before planning the route. Plus you can save/load these routes. Navigon's implementation of multi-destination routes is really cool. Hopefully TomTom follows suit.
No problem. I went through the same thing when I was deciding which one to buy... if they weren't ~$50 it wouldn't be such a big deal.
I originally bought Navigon and then asked for a refund because it was so painfully slow on the 3G. Not really a big issue any more, but it still never feels to me like it runs very well performance-wise. I don't know, maybe I'm being too picky.
Every time Navigon updates, I always try it again thinking this will be the time that it sways me to go back. The map looks so cool, it's hard not to be tempted. But then I use it on a few trips and realize why I got rid of it in the first place.
Ah, I thought it was going to be good for free, but I ended up paying for a GPS app.
Why? Because the one time the GPS lost track of where I was, for one second, Mapquest refused to believe I was on the highway (Basically, the GPS in the iphone lost track of me for a second right before I got on the highway. Mapquest got confused, and then I was on the highway and the GPS had found me and showed me on the highway on Mapquest's map even, but the routing program kept trying to get me to the highway from nearby side roads. It eventually gave up and said too many route changes and it wouldn't try anymore (seriously). But for some reason it refused to believe I was on the highway. It's like don't start mapquest when you are on the highway, apparently they didn't think anyone would ever start off on the highway).
I can't find a GPS app useful that can't handle a snafu or two of the iphone randomly losing track of you for a second (and that's with my iphone 4 that is way more improved than the previous iphones. i can't imagine how annoying mapquest is on the previous iphones that constantly lost track of where you were).
comatose81 (or others who know), couple of TomTom questions:
1. Can you manually pick a spot on the map to navigate to, without specifying an address or intersection?
2. Did you notice any difference in GPS reception/performance between the two apps (without a car kit)? I've heard some people complain that TomTom doesn't work as well as Navigon unless you get the car kit. Also, did the iPhone 4 with its special antenna improve GPS reception compared to the 3G/3GS?
1. Can you manually pick a spot on the map to navigate to, without specifying an address or intersection?
2. Did you notice any difference in GPS reception/performance between the two apps (without a car kit)? I've heard some people complain that TomTom doesn't work as well as Navigon unless you get the car kit. Also, did the iPhone 4 with its special antenna improve GPS reception compared to the 3G/3GS?
Yep - from the main menu, tap "Navigate To..." and then tap "Point on Map". It will show you the whole map and you can move the little magnifying glass to wherever you want to go.
The iPhone 4 GPS reception is just awesome. I never lose signal unless I go into a tunnel or under a bridge or something for an extended period of time. I was really impressed since the 3G would lose GPS reception from a stiff breeze. I don't think the car kit is necessary other than for increasing the speech volume.
I didn't really notice any difference in GPS reception between the two apps. Navigon definitely "corrects" the signal more than TomTom. This can be good or bad depending on your preference. When the signal deteriorates, Navigon will tend to keep you on the "correct" road for longer. This way, if the signal comes back in a few seconds, it doesn't go through re-routing you only to re-re-route you back to the original. However, this means that if you miss a turn, Navigon is slower to re-route you. Not a big deal on a highway, but sucks in urban areas where the next turn is not far after the one you just missed.
TomTom has improved its signal correction since it first came out (it used to have you flying all over the map every time you lost a bit of signal). It will try to keep you on the road, but not for very long - your position is pretty accurate, so TomTom re-routes faster. This is better in the latter scenario above, but worse on highways where it may re-route you a few times in bad signal areas.
They will only use data if you search Google POIs or use the traffic feature. I don't think the assisted GPS uses any data, but I"m not 100% sure. I highly doubt that it does.
aGPS can use data to retrieve the location of local cell towers. It is not required, but will allow for a much faster satellite lock (seconds vs minutes).
Think of "assisted" as a cheat to obtain a very fast "warm lock" based on local cell towers.
BTW - I'm not sure if the tower locations are cached after the first query.
Thanks for the very detailed answers comatose81.
I find myself in quite a difficult spot. Navigon is so inexpensive right now, with the big sale going on. But TomTom sounds far more robust when it comes to routing and traffic. I really like that. But it'll cost me $70 for that with a year of traffic. Though I suppose it will pay for itself after a few long road trips. I will probably have to go that route.
Unfortunately I've never heard of TomTom having a sale. They don't seem to care what Navigon does.
I find myself in quite a difficult spot. Navigon is so inexpensive right now, with the big sale going on. But TomTom sounds far more robust when it comes to routing and traffic. I really like that. But it'll cost me $70 for that with a year of traffic. Though I suppose it will pay for itself after a few long road trips. I will probably have to go that route.
Unfortunately I've never heard of TomTom having a sale. They don't seem to care what Navigon does.
My house was built in 96, TomTom has our street, Navigon doesn't. It was just the opposite for another user who's house was built about the same time.