Tried Wayfinder

For various reasons I realised that Wayfinder runs on the A1000. Because I happen to have a Bluetooth GPS receiver I decided to give Wayfinder a try. This post as not a full blown review, but might help you to decide if Wayfinder is for you.

In sum, Wayfinder is an easy install and works surprisingly well. But it is so dependent on mobile access that I decided to not buy it after the 5 day trial expired.

After skimming through the information at their website I signed up be sending myself an SMS that contained an installation link. To my great surprise the installation (over the 3G network) worked flawlessly. Took a couple of minutes and reqired a couple of separate downloads and installs. It was equally easy to hook up and apply my BT GPS receiver (the built in A1000 GPS worked too, but with less good precision). I installed the Swedish language pack and the instructions came out load and clear.

My decision was to just use Wayfinder, without exploring all of its capabilities. It took me some experimentation to figure out how Route planning/navigation worked. I have used Tom Tom (V3) before and Wafínder has a somewhat different terminology and ways of doing things. In any case it was pretty ease to find a target and drive from where I was to where I wanted to go.

As with Tom Tom I quickly found at that too often the destinations I really needed to find my way to (on the country side of Sweden) was unknown to Wayfinder. On the other hand I got great help to find places like Systembolag and gas stations. On feature that I never tried, but seems great, is to select a destination through the Web interface and have it SMS:ed to the phone.

Maps where swiftly downloaded as needed, that is, when the phone had mobile access. Unfortunately, especially on the countryside, the 3 coverage is lousy and I got no maps. This is the main reason I decided not to pay for continued use of Wayfinder. One is supposed to be able to pre-download maps, but that is an hassle (and, I believe, is only possible for city maps).

If Wayfinder offered an option to preload the phone with maps of, say the whole Scandinavia, then I would probably have paid. Especially as the license is valid for other platforms. As I previosly have said, I will move to another phone/pda any month now.