By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Google has finally allowed their navigation function to work in Canada and 10 more countries. This makes your Android device (OS version 1.6 and higher only) a lot cooler and way more useful. After downloading some language packs, we briefly tested the Google Navigation on our Android 2.1 powered Motorola Milestone and it worked just as well and in some cases even better than our standalone GPS.
"We’re launching Google Maps Navigation version 4.2 in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland for GPS enabled Android devices 1.6 and higher. Google Maps Navigation is an Internet-connected GPS navigation or ‘satnav’ system that provides turn-by-turn voice guidance as a free feature of Google Maps," explains Google's Mobile Blog.
Aside from the convenience of turning expensive smartphones into useful navigation tools, Google Navigation offers a number of features over your typical standalone GPS unit. You can search by voice on voice enabled handsets (Android 2.1 and higher), if you have a data plan you get access to Traffic View and Satellite View information.
Access to Google's Street View feature is another big plus that allows actual 3D imagery of locations is standard on Google Navigation. The Points of Interest data (POI) is also updated regularly by Google which totally trumps the information stored in most GPS devices which require paid upgrades every year.
We tested the feature briefly on our Motorola Milestone running on Telus HSPA and were impressed by the speed of the app. It turned on quickly, acquired satellite signals within a minute (much faster than our standalone Magellan GPS) and managed to find and navigate us around downtown Toronto successfully. With this feature enabled, we would consider getting the Motorola Car Dock - a $29.00 add on that enables handsfree phone and GPS operation.
Does offering Google Navigation for free make Android smartphones more compelling? We think so. The next step should be for Google to update all available Android devices to the latest version of their software since fragmentation remains the biggest hurdle for the Android platform.