Has anyone purchased the TomTom app for the iPhone? I understand a kit is still forthcoming, but I’m interested in whether or not any of our members have purchased the apps and whether or not they find it useful for navigation.

I believe we have a staff review in the works, but I’d also like to hear what our readers and forum members thing.

My big question is how well these things work in (a) areas with little or no cell coverage and (b) cities with tall buildings.  With the iPhone’s assisted GPS, rural areas with no cell signal mean you’re relying solely on your single GPS chip to successfully guide you home.  In cities, I’m wondering if the iPhone is *better* than some of the other devices for the same reason: instead of relying solely on GPS chips (which can be blocked by tall buildings) the iPhone is assisted by cell-tower triangulation, which may actually result in *better* operation.

Anyone got any answers for us and the rest of the group here?

I bought the Navigon APP and have used on a couple trips now.  I normally mount the Iphone on a Griffin tuneflex aux.  The GPS reception in this mount does not work consistently.  I regularly lose signal.  The navigon software does not support any degraded navigation via the AGPS.  If you lose GPS signal you lose navigation.  If I put the Iphone near my cupholder or on my lap it gets good GPS signal.  The navigation App itself works fine.  The voice navigation works thru the car stereo when connected via the aux plug and it works while playing tunes on the ipod as long as the Ipod is selected first then the Navigon App.  I will probably invest in a window mount but am waiting until the tom tom unit and the navigon mount unit come to market in October.  The POI database was pretty good.  We took a trip to the UP of Michigan and the locations we were looking for, restaurants, tourist attractions were in the database.  I like the reality view on the Navigon vs the TomTom and the $30 discount sold me.

I bought the Tom Tom app. I’ve got a 3GS and my wife has my old 3G. I didn’t really have a great desire for this, but my wife wanted the voice navigation and considering $99 got us two portable voice navigation systems, I thought it would be fun to try.  I’ve never used a standalone GPS so I can’t really compare it. So far, I’ve been impressed and the voice (aux in over speakers) feature has been very useful.

It won us over one stormy night heading into Toronto for a concert. We were late and the highway was a mess. Since we had the GPS had the guts to venture onto the back roads and ended up saving a least 45 minutes. Other than the tail end of that trip I haven’t had a chance to measure performance amongst tall buildings. It appeared to have no issue even with the device sitting in a less that optimal location since I don’t have the mounting kit. Given that it seems to be working fine (and the fact I’m cheap), I don’t think I plan on buying that mounting kit unless if the price comes down.

My only complaint is that it never recognizes addresses pulled from my contacts, it always says they “can’t be understood - would you like to enter the address yourself?”.