As I tweeted the other day, the iPhone is slowly addressing some of my earlier major concerns. As they say, better late than never. In this case, it’s the GPS functionality. Papago, a Taiwanese company not as renowned as Garmin, TomTom and iGo, has released a version of its GPS navigation software for the iPhone. What’s great about this software is that it uses malfreemaps’ free map of Singapore and Malaysia. Malfreemaps, along with malsingmaps are the two premier, and free mapping communities in Malaysia, with extremely frequent map updates. I personally prefer malfreemaps because you can get their maps free (updated weekly for the Garmin version, and twice a month for the Papago versions, if I am not mistaken) without making you jump through hoops like malsingmaps just to enjoy the latest maps.
Here’s a quick look at the iPhone interface - the videos were recorded on the iPhone with very poor frame rates, so it appears to advance very quickly – since these are short videos and fast to load, just pause the YouTube videos when you need more time to see what’s on the screen! To update the map, you have to rely on Papago releasing them, or if you have a jailbroken iPhone, you can do it yourself (very very easy!) whenever malfreemaps releases a map update (I use DiskAid to transfer the files over, a more complicated solution would be to use SSH into the iPhone).
Here’s the software version and map version:
Here’s PoI (point of interest) searching:
Here’s road name search:
Here’s a quick look at the 3D buildings feature – notice that a tap at the bottom of a building will bring up the building’s name at the bottom left corner. There’s also a feature to pan the map automatically by tapping an onscreen button. Finally, the 3D representation of a building is realistic so you won’t mistake a building for another!
Here’s a route simulation of a route that I created. Note the “junction view” feature, which gives you a “real world” representation of the picture of a junction where you are supposed to turn.
Hope you enjoy these, @derekw!
