Need driving directions but don’t have an internet connection? No problem. According to recent press releases from Garmin (NASDAQ: GRMN) Navigon, Navigon has just launched a new GPS navigation system for mobile phones operating Windows software.
The new GPS will system can provide an excellent navigation experience, with offline mapping support. According to ZDNet, “There are times when you need to use GPS navigation without a connection and Navigon will be launching their latest software on Windows Phone soon.”
New map management and update capabilities will enable users to pre-load only portion of the maps they’ll actually use, freeing-up the space for other things. In addition, NAVIGON FreshMaps offers quarterly map updates.
The new and improved user interface promises to make access to all NAVIGON features easier. For instance, users will be able to switch between different pages with animated menus and new multi-touch user gestures. Moreover, map rotation and zooming will be possible in any direction when in 3D mode, as well as the ability to tap points of interest on a map to instantly add them to the route.
According to CNet: If you own a full-feature turn-by-turn mobile navigation app, you must know by now what a pain it is each time there’s an update. This is because the updates, made up of both maps and the app itself, tend to be in gigabytes and therefore take hours to download via a normal broadband connection.
That’s now going to change with the major update Navigon is releasing for its navigation apps for iOS and Android this fall. In Navigon 2.0, the company is changing the way updating works by separating the app and the maps. This means you can update the app, which is just about a few megabytes, or the maps independently. Furthermore, maps are divided into different portions and you can just download those of areas you travel in, via a feature called MyMaps.
For example, if you live in California, you’ll just need to use MyMaps within the app to download and keep maps of this state on your mobile device, instead of having to download maps of all 50 states and Canada the way you currently would. This way, the download will be just a few hundred megabytes at most, instead of a few gigabytes.