Review: TomTom for Android review

For several years you had a choice when it came to in-car navigation. Factory-fit or dedicated device.

But now there's a third option: Full-function, turn-by-turn sat nav apps for smartphones. TomTom's just added to the party with its somewhat belated app for Android.

In theory you get all the advantages of a dedicated nav device, but without the need to buy an extra device or pay for an additional data plan and all that jazz that comes with a high end sat nav device. It's got to be a win, surely?

The proposition only gets stronger when you consider that TomTom is one of the very best nav specialists and Android the most popular smartphone platform. And with the app you get free map updates... for life. What's not to like?

For one thing, there are plenty of alternative navigation apps for the Android platform. Oh, yeah, and lest you have forgotten, Google Maps for Android does the turn-by-turn thing for free. So TomTom for Android needs to be a bit special.

Indeed, this app could be important as the nav industry is in a critical transitional phase. Dedicated devices, otherwise known as personal navigation devices or PNDs look like an endangered species. So it's quality of mapping and associated services that really matter.

TomTom knows this and is very progressive. But partnership with Apple with iOS has hardly started how they hoped. Anyway, interesting times. let's have a look at what tomtom's new app for android actually delivers. First the theoreticals.

Available to buy now from Google Play (Android App Store on devices with older versions of Android), a wide range of map packs are available. We tested the pan-European map pack.

Yours for £30.99 it's a big old download, clocking in over 3GB, so you'll need plenty of available storage on your device. Note also we couldn't find any options for choosing the storage location, which could be a problem if you've maxed out your internal memory and we're hoping to stick TomTom onto a storage card.

That said, the download is a one-time hit and critically means you have those maps stored locally. You're not dependent on an internet connection for basic navigation, in other words, though you'll need one for some of the live services, including HD Traffic.

Also, for the record the UK-only map is under 400MB in size, so if you're not planning on a Euro tour, storage needs are far from excessive, and it's cheaper to buy that option compared to the full UK & Europe version.

As it happens, it's at this installation stage that the TomTom app's biggest problem appears. At launch it only works with 800 x 480 and 854 x 540 screen resolutions. So the latest generation of 720p HD handsets with 1,280 x 720 screens are totally incompatible.

That rules out pretty much all of the hot handsets out there at the moment. Hmmm.

Anyway, beyond simple mapping, the app delivers TomTom's funky connected features. For starters, this means HD Traffic that's miles better than the RDS-TMC data that most built-in navigation devices rely on.

Then there's TomTom IQ routes, which takes into account things like historical data for traffic flows to work out the best possible routes, rather than just relying of theoretical information like posted speed limits and simple distances.

Rounding the feature set out are usual TomTom suspects like Google-powered Local Search, an offline POI database and of course seven-digit postcode support. The latter is something you may be surprised to learn still isn't supported by some factory-fit navigation systems.

First up, the TomTom app benefits from smartphone installation straight away thanks to the capacitive touch screens and responsive interfaces on Android devices. It makes for a much slicker, less frustrating experience than the resistive screens users of TomTom's own devices know all too well.

As for the actual graphics and mapping quality, that's never been a TomTom strength if you're looking for Hollywood style 3D visuals. But what matters here is clarity and legibility and just like TomTom's dedicated devices, the app absolutely delivers.

It's not absolutely identical to TomTom's own devices. But where it differs, it's usually better, with a drop shadow here or a transparency there giving the app a slightly more contemporary feel.

Critically, however, the stuff you really need, things like time to destination, distance to destination, your speed and the local speed limit remain available to be overlaid on the map.

TomTom's familiar prompts and cues for upcoming exits and junctions, too. They're probably the best in the business. Certainly, you're much less likely to misinterpret and TomTom guidance cue than that of most built-in navigation solutions.

As with TomTom devices, the POI and Local Search setup is a bit confusing. It's not immediately obvious to new users why you'd use one over the other and can be tricky to use to find things that ought to be easy, like train stations and major airports.

We'd like to see all this unified in a much cleverer single context-aware search function. Elsewhere, extras like the speed camera database and HD Traffic work just like they do on TomTom devices, which is to say pretty well.

Problem is, you have to pay extra for both. HD Traffic is £3.99 a month or £26.99. The numbers for the camera database are £1.49 and £16.99 respectively.

That said, we're happy to report it runs pretty smoothly on a rather stately, two-year old Samsung Galaxy S. In fact, even on such an ancient handset it calculate routes pretty niftily.

Exactly how it runs on the latest HD uber phones, we'll have to wait and see. As we mentioned, that's because the app is not currently compatible with 720p HD screens. When it is, it'll be a much more popular option and we'll take another look at it.

We can imagine the route calculation tearing along at quite a lick on the latest dual and quad-core CPUs. Still, it's a very odd oversight from TomTom to launch without HD handset support.

Oh, and don't forget you'll need some kind of cradle and charger to use the app properly, which will add to the cost. But assuming your handset is compatible, you can now have the full TomTom experience without a standalone device.

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Review: TomTom iOS Hands Free Car Kit

Echo-cancellationImproved speakerExtendable micNo additional GPS circuitrySpeaker not powerful enough for musicBluetooth reconnection issuePrice

The new TomTom Hands Free Car Kit replaces the original Car Kit - and that's ultimately a bit of a shame; it's bulkier and sticks more out more.

On its own, it's £20 cheaper than its predecessor, or you can opt for the Navigation Pack that includes the Western Europe version of TomTom's excellent sat-nav app; the £50 price tag of the app is just added to the £80 of the cradle, however.

We'll have to spend some time with the new TomTom-powered sat nav in iOS 6 to see whether it's a reasonable alternative to the full TomTom app, but regardless, there's no financial benefit to buying the bundle.

There's no dedicated GPS circuitry in the Hands Free Car Kit - TomTom says that the new generation of iPhones don't need this boosting. This might be a little premature though, the same iPhone 4S used in both models seemed to be less certain about positioning and slow to update when in this new model.

It has a boosted speaker, echo-cancellation and an extendable mic. But while yes, calls are more intelligible for both parties, the louder, slightly richer speaker is still too weedy to be used to listen to audiobooks or radio at motorway speeds.

Worse, the Bluetooth seemed to need to be manually reconnected if you leave your car and then come back. Ultimately, we'd consider buying a cheaper, simpler cradle.

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Review: TomTom Hands Free Car Kit for Android

Robust designBluetooth pairing worked wellSpeaker volumePrice too highDoesn't do enough

£20. That's the price difference between this Hands-free car kit for your Smartphone and the cheapest TomTom sat-nav, the Start 20 UK & Ireland.

£20 doesn't seem like an awful lot, especially when the difference between the two products is so vast, so its £20 we were eyeing up before we even opened up this kit that turns your smartphone into your in-car navigation.

The TomTom Start 20 is a stand-alone sat nav offering lane guidance, spoken street names and access to TomTom's maps. This hands-free kit meanwhile relies on your mobile phone to do the hard work and merely holds your phone at the right angle. Actually it does a little more, but we're not convinced it really does enough.

The kit itself is made up of several parts, but the main unit is a reassuringly robust holder for your phone, boasting an integrated 2W speaker, an extendable microphone and a charger.

This unit plugs into your cigarette lighter via standard USB cable and charger, while a pass-through cable can be used to charge your phone while you're out and about too. This last point is important because using your phone's GPS will rapidly run down your phones battery on even a modest journey.

The big selling point for the TomTom Hands-free car kit is that despite plugging in to your phone and holding it in place, the communication is actually handled over Bluetooth. This means you can enjoy hands-free calling, even when you're phone isn't docked. Simply pair the car kit and your phone up and you're good to go.

The mounting system is versatile, capable of holding your phone in portrait or landscape mode and as it support phones up to 127.5mm high and 80.5mm wide, it should hopefully outlive your current mobile phone. We did find it quite a bulky mounting system though, requiring locating higher up the screen that we'd want with a dedicated sat-nav, and thus obscuring more of the windscreen.

In operation we found the TomTom Hands-free car kit for Smartphone to be lacklustre. The speaker volume was a little louder than the phone itself, but still too quiet to have your radio on at the same time. The standard Google Navigation voice sounds fine coming from the phones speaker, but sounds clipped and hollow through this.

You could use the kit to transform your phone into your in-car music player, but the speaker quickly shows its weaknesses here, and well, basically you'll only try this once and then never murder your music collection like that ever again.

The pricing hangs heavy over this kit as a value proposition too, coming in as it does so close to TomTom's own budget sat nav, the TomTom Start 20. We'd pick that up over this every time.

If you do want to use your phone as a sat nav, car kits for the most popular phones can be picked up for less than £10, with more versatile units with charges bouncing in for £20.

Of course such bargain solutions don't have the Bluetooth cleverness that TomTom has used, but then having used it, we're not convinced that such features add enough to warrant the price hike anyway.

TomTom is capable of much more than this, but as it stands it just doesn't do enough to warrant the high price tag. Even spend more on a proper sat nav, or a little less on a cheaper mounting system. Just don't bother with this.

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