Mobile phone reviews – Rated Mobiles

How Mobile Sat Nav on Mobile is Changing the GPS Industry

With Nokia Ovi Maps, Google Maps and the Apple iPhone GPS App Skobbler offering free voice guided sat navigation services to users, is there really room on the industry for today’s dedicated GPS devices?

Onboard navigational tools from Tom Tom and Garmin are taking second priority to smart phones that offer users free sat nav services. And with the offers being delivered the various mobile phone makers, dedicated GPS companies are having trouble keeping up with all the location based services and features that the average smart phone can offer.

But this does not completely rule out the need for GPS tools.

While the average person can completely rely on accessing Google’s Maps and street view on their XPERIA X10 Mini to get around town, a professional firefighter cannot afford to avail of such free services. The same is to be said for government and volunteers that rely on digital navigation. Law enforcement, medical teams and even delivery personnel still rely on devices made by TomTom –despite the fact that smart phones offer a similar feature.

The big difference is in the maps. While there is nothing that will tell you that Google’s maps are in any way less accurate than TomTom’s data, Google is not going to be held accountable for their content either. And that is the assurance that TomTom and Garmin gives to their users.

For a regular user, it is acceptable to do away with having a dedicated car GPS device –if you do not have one yet and simply to rely on your smart phone. The only real concern here is to be careful with the monthly data allowance and to always have a car charger around as having the service running will be a drain on the battery.

Also, it would be a wise decision to invest in a reliable car dock for the handset in order to have the device located at an easy to view location for accessing data and for referencing the map.