TomTom GPS app is ready for the iPhone
The long-awaited TomTom application is finally available for download from the Apple App Store, letting you trade $99.99 for what is, in essence, a fully functional GPS device for your car.
The TomTom GPS app was announced with great fanfare at the Apple developers conference in June, but the wait for the app itself has been a long one. From all indications, it is worth that wait. The iPhone app does everything that a standard automotive GPS does, but saves you the price of the hardware. While $99.99 is a high price for an iPhone app, it is not every app that will save you several hundred dollars for a technology toy that you wanted anyway.
There is even some advantage to having the app on an iPhone, apparently. The app makes use of a new technology that TomTom calls IQ Routes. Instead of simply suggesting the quickest route based on travel time, IQ Routes taps into the actual experiences of other TomTom drivers to determine the fastest route to take from point A to point B. TomTom said this technology lets people reach their destinations quicker up to 35 percent of the time, a significant improvement.
For $99.95, the user gets complete street and highway maps for the United States and Canada, according to a CNET article. Maps for other parts of the world will be available at prices varying by location. The software for the iPhone is able to recalculate your trip if you go off route, or can even suggest alternate routes if the primary route is blocked for some reason. The app currently runs on all iPhone 3G and 3GS models using iPhone OS 3.0. The company said that versions for older iPhones and iPod touches would be available soon.
Corinne Vigreux, managing director of TomTom, which is based in The Netherlands, said, “With TomTom for iPhone, millions of iPhone users can now benefit from the same easy-to-use and intuitive interface, turn-by-turn spoken navigation and unique routing technology that our 30 million portable navigation device users rely on every day.”
The company will also soon be releasing a car kit for the iPhone, which will let you attach the unit to your windshield or dashboard, with additional connections for power, a speaker, and a microphone for hands-free operation. The iPhone may not be an ideal device for the application because of its lack of background processing capabilities, meaning that a phone call will interrupt navigation, but in spite of this and the app’s high price, TomTom is likely to sell a huge number of its first iPhone app.
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