Living the Android Life
One of the coolest aspects of my Hero is the GPS. I love the way it interacts with many apps seamlessly to increase their accuracy and even their functionality; of course, having it on does decrease battery life, sometimes significantly. I’m going to delve into a couple of my favorite apps that use GPS.
The first app is one that gets a lot of flack. Frankly I think most of it is a bleed over from hatred of all things Sprint! (That is understandable as I have a distinct love/hate relationship with Sprint.) I’m talking about Sprint Navigation. Love this app. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. Get me from point A to point B. It does it smoothly and with a little bit of pizazz. And it came free with the phone, what more could you ask?
After the initialization (which can be slow depending on your relative location to GPS satellites), Sprint Nav is very simple and straightforward to use. All you have to do is enter your destination, choose “navigation”, and you’re on your way. It directs you in real time, vocally. The voice, by the way, is a pleasant female version that is easy to understand, even with the music playing. Another cool feature is that the display actually shows your position on a realtime map so you can actually see upcoming exits, turns, etc. It performs very similar to popular GPS devices such as the Tomtom.
The second app is the new Google Navigator. It is basically the same type of app as the Sprint Navigation, but it takes advantage of the power boost and features of the Android v2.1 upgrade. This means that it’s not available for phones using v1.6 or lower. Navigator also has more options:
- Footprints – a neat way to record a road trip or a vacation. You can store pics, places of interest, and such.
- Navigation – the actual GPS portion
- Voice search – self-explanatory right? Lol
- Search – no voice? Search the manual way…
- View Map – like having an old school fold out map in your phone.
- Make Call – just what it says. Just convenient, so you don’t have to drop out of the app to make a call.
Navigator is pretty slick, but it’s got too much going on for my use. It’s also not as easy to use as Sprint Navigation. But it is a great app that I am sure I will utilize at some point; especially the Footprints option. Use it like travel journal.
Nutshell…. If you want an easy to use, simple GPS app, go with Sprint Navigation. If you want a slick, option rich app, check out Google Navigator. Either one will get you there. It’s up to you how!
Ciao!
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