Google Navigator for Android Review: Good For Free But Far From Perfect
Gizmodo has a review of the Google Navigator for the Motorola Android phones. Here are some of their points:
On Android 2.0, on the Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid I’ve been testing, Google navigation is part of the Car Home suite, an easy-to-read, easy-to-reach set of apps including map, turn-by-turn navigation, voice search, text search and contacts. However, as you can probably guess from reading that lineup, the lines are so blurry it can get confusing fast. The sane place to start is voice search.
Still, if this was built in to the iPhone’s Google Maps, or offered as a free download at the App Store, damn would it steal customers like a mofo. You might still see the occasional sale of a Navigon or a CoPilot, because of particular necessary features and because of the onboard map databases (which people who go off-grid prefer), but really, this thing would—and probably will—swallow the GPS app market alive.
Because of that, I am hoping Google’s developers pay close attention to this review, too. The app is still in beta, but there’s a lot of user-interface work yet to be done. Google: If you’re going to knock everyone else off the mountain, at least give us an app worthy of a king.
Amazing voice recognition engine
Live traffic and alternate route planner
Text-to-speech
Good routing and fast re-routing
Satellite view and other views not always useful
Text search features are overlapping, confusing
Interface overall needs better flow
No POI category browsing or “go home” feature
No multi-stop trip planner
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