geraner's blog

Navigon MobileNavigator 6 @ Budapest

Hi people out there,
now I'm back in Sweden and made some nice screenshots of Navigon MN6 while navigating trough Budapest.

So as you maybe where reading in one of my previous posts, I was on vacation in Romania and now traveling back to Budapest in Hungary. Here I have a screen shot of the Navigon before I was crossing the border to Hungary.

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As you see on the next picture, the detail of the map was increasing a lot, when crossing the border to Hungary.

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Navigon is writing on there homepage that they homepage, Mobile Navigator 6 has a map coverage of 10% in Romania and 30% in Hungary. I could see this directly when I drove with the car trough towns in Hungary, compared to Romania. The maps for the towns where much more detailed in Hungary. Not only the main roads trough the towns where shown as in Romania.
So my journey took me further to Budapest. As I wrote in my previouse post, I had already saved the addresses where I want to drive to in advance into Navigon MN6. Searching the location with knowing the road-name in Budapest was no problem.
Here a picture while driving on the motorway in Hungary.

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Actually I switched the Navigon MN6 off while driving on the motorway because the external cigarret charger was now working on the rental car we had. So to save battery on my N95 I just switched Navigon MN6 on again when we where near Budapest.

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Also shown on the screenshot is, that Navigon again shows the allowed maximum speed on the road you are driving on. This nice function was not available on the map in Romania.
In Budapest itself we Navigon look like this, while driving on main roads.

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Navigon was showing where patrol stations are, car dealers, hispital and other points of interest. A very nice feature.
The navigation in Budapest was no big problem. Only one problem we have seen several times. Quit often, Navigon said that we should turn left on main roads, where it was not possible to turn left. Ok, it was possible, but according to the signs on the crossroad it was not allowed. So we had to contiue strait ahead or turn right somehow to get to this road. All the time, the way to our planed tagret was re-calculated and somehow we finally got to the place we want.
But it was a bit frustrating. Aways when Navigon MN6 told us "in 700 meters, turn left" we where asking ourself: Will it really be possible to turn left there!?. Everytime when it was possible we where happy! :-)
The most of the screenshots from Navigon MN6 are taking while using the 3D View. I like this most.
But here is one screenshot taking in 2D view.

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As you see on the picture, Navigon shows whether it is only possible to drive in one direction on this road or not.
Also it was very usefull to see the real name of the exit sign, when leaving the motorway, as shown on the picture bellow. The green sign with the name. - It's rather impossible to get the wrong exit with this nice function!

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There is one more nice feature I want to show you on Navigon MN6.
As you have seen on the screenshots done on my trip trough Hungary, the  maximum allowed speed limit.
In the preferences you can adjust at which speeding the program should warn you. I adjusted Navigon to alert me when I'm driving more then 20km/h to much.
Here the picture when driving within the speed limit.

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And here the picture with the sign next the the speed limit sign, when you are driving to fast. Together with the voice alert "Attention!"

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One evening, we took the car into the town and parked it in one road near a hospital. To be sure to find the car back, I just saved the actuall GPS position at Navigons software and named it "Car Parking". The we took the subway into the center of town. After a nice evening we decided to have a evening walk back to the car instad of using the subway.
I just took out my Nokia N95, started Navigon MN6 and changed in the preferences the way of navigating to "Pedestrian route" instead of "Car". And  we had a nice walk back to our car by just taking out the N95 of my pocket from time to time. - Great feature!

Finally I can say, I had really good help with the Navigon MobileNavigator 6 on my trip trough Budapest. The capital of Hungary with about 1.69 Million inhapitants. All the 4 adresse I was searching for, where found and also the nice feature of saveing the actual possition was helpful.
Even if we sometimes couldn't turn left, where we Navigon suggested to turn left, we finally reached our tagret and did not need to handle with paper maps in the car.

Preparing for a trip to Budapest with Navigon MN6

Now, my vacation in Romania is nearly over. Tomorrow I'm going to Budapest in Hungary where I will stay at friends for two more days before the flight goes back to Sweden from there.
Today, still in Romania, I'm preparing my N95 with Navigon MobileNavigator 6 for the journey to Budapest. The map detail for Hungary is much better then for Romania.
So I was searching for the adresses in Navigon MN6. See the screenshot from the program while selecting the adress.

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I saved the position as a favorit and where then watching the place on the map. Looks like map for Budapest is very detailed. All three entered roads where found and I'm looking forward to see how the navigation in the Hungarian capital will work.

As soon as I have an internet connection again, I will post some results and maybe some more screenshots.

Romania & N95 as GPS

Finally access to the internet again. I use this to post some pictures and news about my trip through Romania.
As I wrote before, the Navigon MN6 is a good program for GPS navigation. Unfortunately it has only about 10% of the roads in Romania on it's Romanian-Map. But anyway, I was quite impressed to see how many roads it knows.

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We went by car trough the mountains. Found a nice way (on our paper-map) which we want to try. Ok, when leaving the mainroad, Navigon MN6 didn't know the road we where driving on. (left picture)
Compared to Nokia Maps, which knew the road. (right picture)
But as written in one earlier post, Nokia Maps shows us always driving next to the road. (off-road) Looks like Nokia Maps really has some problems with the Romanian maps because this only is happening here. (at least for me).

So I switched both Navigon and Nokia Maps off and started to use Nokias Sports Tracker instead.
A nice little program which registers a lot of data while driving. You also can use it while walking and cykling. This time we used it in our car. Posting some screen shots here:

And the road got really bad. Up the hill as you see in the screenshots. Also the average speed was not high. At some places we only could drive about 10 km/h. See some pictures of the road here:

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But the bad road where forgotten when we arrived at this place with a beautyfull view. :-)

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With Sports Tracker you also can export your route at the end so that it can be imported to Google Earth. But it is not possible for me to upload this file here. If anyone would like to see it, just send me an e-mail and I can send the this .kml file.

Finally I just want to add some pictures which I was taking during traveling trough Romania. Mostly I used Navigon MN6 which is visiable on the pictures.
One problem I had in planing routes was that there are not many towns known or places where I want to drive to. While driving on the country roads trough villages, Navigon NM6 often showed nothing then the road. But ok, keep in mind, that it coveres only about 10% of the roads and details on the Romanian Map!! So I'm anyway really pleased with the program.
See here some more pictures.

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At the end some print screens from Navigon Mobile Navigator 6 while driving trough same smaller and larger towns.

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Nokia Maps vs Navigon MN6 in Romania

Just a small post to compare Nokia Maps for Romania with Navigon MN6.
In general the Nokia Maps are more detailed for Romania then Navigon MN6. As seen on the picture bellow, the railroad is shown on the map when using Nokia Maps.
But what I very often see here in Romania is that the roads are not correct. Of course I'm driving on the roads and not offroad, but Nokia Maps very often shows that I'm driving next to the road, somewhere on the field and not on the road.
See the screenshot of Nokia Maps while driving on a country road in the north east of Romania.

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The same position as shown with Navigon MN6 on the picture bellow. The railroad is not shown, but I'm clearly driving on the road according to the map even if the maps is not as detailed as at Nokia Maps.

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Last one picture which can be displayed with Navigon MN6 while navigating.
The "real" speed you are driving is not shown on the screen while navigating. You have to switch to this window shown bellow by pressing "9" during navigating.

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Using Navigon MobileNavigator6 1st post

Since some days, I'm using Navigon MobileNavigator6 on my Nokia N95 while being on vacaton in Hungary.
The map for Hungary is quite ok. Mainroads are included and and especially in towns the GPS is just great! You can search by POI (Points Of Interests) and easiely find Hotels, interesting things to see and so on.
Also the Navigation on the road works very good in general. I like the feature to see the allowed speed on the maps and then the voice "Attention!" if you driver xx km/h faster then allowed. (alert @ speed can be adjusted)

But yesterday the Navigon MobileNavigator 6 took us on very new roads. Ok, I wouldn't call them for roads. More like field-ways!? I don't know. Just see the pictures enclosed.

At least my girlfriend could pick some berries out of the car, while driving on those roads, as you can see on the picture. :-)

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I will continue make some pictures and document who the navigation with MobileNavigator6 works. Soon I will be in Romania. Will see how good the maps are there. Will be back soon with more information.

Navigon MobileNavigator6 for Nokia N95

Hi,
Today I bought Navigon MobileNavigator6 for my Nokia N95. Nice to know, MobileNavigator6 supports the internal GPS of the Nokia N95.
For compatibility information read on Navigon's homepage.

After downloading the 2715 MB (2,7 GB) large file, I unpacked the .zip file and started the install process.
First, you have to remove your memory card from your N95 and to connect it with an card-reader to your Computer.
Starting the program installation is asking you which language you want to use during the installation. I used Swedish.

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Now the installation process can start.

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And you are being asked to connect the memory card to your computer.

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Once the memory card is entered, the program shows whether Mobile Navigator 6 is already installed or not together with the size of the memory card and remaining free space on it.

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As a next step you can select the maps which you want to install. While selecting one map, the program shows you on the Europe-Map and in written letters which countries are included in the selected map-category.

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Now, you select the languages which you want to be supported by the program. (Interface and voice guide)
For some languages, only voice in local language is supported. The interface will then be in English.

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Finally you will get a short summary of what you have selected for the installation (Maps & Languages)

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And so the copy process starts. It took for me about 5-10 minutes.

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Now you have to insert the memory card in your Nokia N95 again. By during this, the N95 automatically detects the program and the install process is starting. In my case, it took about 3 - 4 minutes. After this, the Navigon MobileNavigator6 can be found in the program menu on your N95.

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When starting the program, the following nice picture with animation will follow together with the request to enter the registration code.

Now I just want to show some screenshots of the program itself. I haven't had the possibility yet to test it but I will do this during the next days. Also shown that it finds the internal GPS of the N95 and use it. - Great!

When you want to navigate to another place, you will get this menu where you in the top right side can select the country. In my case S for Sweden is selected. In the fields bellow you can enter the place you want to drive to.

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In the menu for the guide you can select different things. For example change the map view from 2D to 3D as shown in the pictures bellow.

Also a to switch from day-view to night-view is possible. The picture in the middle is the day-view on the right picture the night-view.

This should be everything to start with. I just want to give you a short impression about the program which could be a real competitor for NokiaMaps which already is installed on the N95. But with Nokia Maps, using a full 1-year voice navigation for Western Europe costs 89,99 Euro. Buying a 1-year voice navigation for Eastern Europe costs about 59,99 Euro. If you want both together you pay 149,98 Euro which you have to pay again if you want to renew it after one year with Nokia Maps.

Navigon MobileNavigation6 with the maps for whole Europe (West & East) you can get for 99 Euro at this place.
And it also supports the internal GPS on your Nokia N95.

Will be back later with review about the usage during my vacation.