clever stuff.

I think most of the alternatives are also pretty annoying. Ive got an iphone and it is really starting to get on my nerves. It might be based on a bsd/unix derivative but it crashes like the best of them and is far too locked down.

When somebody makes a decent open source linux based phone i'm having one!

Blargh, bloody windows on a phone.. Nokia N95 is quite good, N96 out now, Nokia Maps is free and has the whole of the UK on a free set of maps but the only catch is that it won't do turn-by-turn navigation unless you pay for it, but you can pay on a monthly basis if you want, about 6 quid or so, to see if you like it. Otherwise you can just load nokia maps for free and it'll tell you where you are and help you find stuff, and will even plot a route for you, it just won't give you real-time directions and won't plot your current location on a displayed route, only on the map without a route (to stop you following it like you can with google maps).

However, all the similar software I've tried is about 2-3 years behind Tomtom 6, and that's 2 versions behind the current tomtom gear, shame that they only sell stuff for proprietary crap nowadays just as phones get GPS all over.

Incidentally, I've yet to find anything that's even close to Google Maps for actually finding stuff, so if you can save locations to google maps and have them show up in route 66 then keep google maps around, it's the best by far for actually finding where stuff is, but does need a data connection (that's what 3G is for).

What about Android ?

Steve

"Austin Shackles" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I was seduced by the idea real piccys of where you are heading sounds handy but shhh

and 'you know where' will be selling em cheap no doubt, what I don't fancy is the bugger running up a mobile phone bill tho'Derek

Never met him/her ... what sort of phone have they got?

Lee D

is futile you will be upgraded!Derek

That Moto MING (A1200) I was on about a while back is Linux based, and the source is available on the Moto website. Somewhere.

Massive charges for data isn't really an issue any more unless you're on a crappy tariff, you can get plenty of deals these days that include a few gig of data, e.g. my 3 contract, £35 per month including expensive phone payments, I get about 2 gig a month of data on that.

Mind you 3's crappy indian call centres are probably going to push me elsewhere, it's hellish trying to get "Robert Ramsay" or "Justin James" as they claim to be called to understand something as simple as me having two contracts, one for business, one for personal, and I want VAT receipts for one but not the other. Still not got it right a year later.

What's the matter with a proper LD phone with a real dial?

"you have chosen to open 'mainpage' which is a .bin file. Where would you like to save it?"

erk?

He sounded far too much like Kermit the frog!

Someone on here recommended the Motorola A1200 Ming, and I am sore tempted but it won't jbex in some of the countries I visit.

So now you know where your desk is, impressive! ;-)

Austin Shackles wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You can use a tool to download the maps from google so you have an offline cache. I've been looking at doing it for my iPhone but haven't got round to it. Have a look here -

know it's for the PSP, but it does work for the iPhone and perhaps it can be fiddled for the Omnia.

Calls aren't SFP?

On or around Mon, 13 Oct 2008 23:07:07 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

yeah, I'd go with that. if it was possible to save the Gmaps and use them in other stuff it'd be great. Gmaps have much more detail including things like non-official roads, and of course the aerial view.

3G is cool, but unless you add the unlimited browsing option to the contract (extra 7.5 quid a month, I believe) you end up paying for a lot of data transfer at punitive rates. There are stories of people getting bills for thousands of quid. It also won't work in places with no network.

Meanwhile route66 is pretty good. The maps are quite detailed, it does turn-by-turn and voice directions, and remapped instantly when I didn't go the way it thought I ought to. Pretty good. Also I could pinpoint a spot on the map and say "navigate to here".

all in all, Route66 looks well worth the 34-odd quid it cost. That's not much browsing on google maps via 3G and it's available irrespective of network.

IIRC it was an extra £5 on my contract, still not too bad, considering how useful it is. Network coverage is pretty good, I don't know what other networks are like but with 3, if there's no 3G coverage then you get 2G coverage instead, including data, and no extra charges.

I've been in situations when I can't get a decent data connection but others can on e.g. vodafone 3G, but then the same has happened in reverse too, me with plenty of data speed and them with nothing. I'm told 3 are the best for 3G data coverage, not sure if that's still true.

I've got Garmin's effort for Symbian on my phone, it's about 5 years behind tomtom in user interface, very poor design, looks pretty for the box cover shots but dreadful to use. It does only take about 140 meg of phone space though for the whole of the UK and has two useful abilities, it can save a track off so you know where you went, and can navigate to OSGB co-ordinates. Other than that it's woeful, hard-to-use, unreliable s**te.

I'd use tomtom 6 but it won't recognise the internal GPS on the phone directly, you can do some dreadful bodges (sharing the GPS out as a bluetooth device then using the phone's multi-bluetooth capability to connect to itself via bluetooth!) but despite its excellent user interface and capabilities, it doesn't integrate with the phone at all, and it's not been updated in a long time.

Nokia Maps is OK, and doesn't need a data connection contrary to what a lot of people think.

AIUI Three and T-Mobile share their 3G networks, if you're out of 3G coverage T-Mobile drop back to their own GSM/GPRS coverage, Three don't have any GSM/GPRS coverage of their own, so they drop back to Orange's network for GSM but they can't/won't drop back to Orange for GPRS.