Land of the Lost

location based services

Audio snob. Video snob. And now -- get ready, world -- navigation snob. I have spent the past month or so testing Verizon's (VZ - commentary - Cramer's Take) latest VZ Navigator personal navigator tool. My verdict? Yes, it works. Even nicely, at times. It's not expensive -- you can't beat $9.95 a month. And it's handy, built right into your cell phone. But -- sorry, Verizon -- the Navigator is poorly designed, it's hard to use, and sometimes it's flat-out wrong.
I was ready to love the VZ Navigator. My friends call me (lovingly, of course) the navigeek. I have four different global-positioning units, depending on need, including two wristwatch GPSs from Suunto, as well as access to the best in-car systems from Pioneer and others. I enjoy using a sextant, watch, planetary log and the stars to find my position on this lovely Earth.
So I have been thrilled to witness the birth of personal navigation as a bona fide trend.
Not only are traditional nav makers making great portable positioning units, such as Garmin International's (GRMN - commentary - Cramer's Take) Nuvi ($645), but portable computer makers such as Dell (DELL - commentary - Cramer's Take) now can use excellent navigation add-ons, such as the BT-20 ($169) from DeLorme, due out later this year.
I love the tidal wave of new in-car navigation tools from Alpine Electronics, TomTom, Delphi and others. And let's not forget the cell-phone products from other wireless carriers such as Cingular, Sprint and Disney Mobile. Plus, with Apple set to release the iPhone, how long can it be before it, too, offers directions?
But like digital cameras before it, there is a new problem facing the red-hot nav market: shoe-horning navigation tools into everything from cell phones to cars is pushing the engineering limits of portable navigation.
Global-positioning systems require separate electronics and chips that eat up space and power. They require a big screen for maps, digital storage to hold those maps and points of interest, and an easy-to-use interface -- all of which are dear on smaller gadgets such as cell phones.
Take the VZ Navigator.
Cell-phone navigation is so tricky that Verizon wisely teamed up with another company, Networks in Motion, to create VZ Navigator. And the two deserve some major kudos for making their nav system work as well as it does.
The global-positioning electronics fit nicely in the Razr phone I tested; there was no difference between a VZ Navigator-enabled Razr phone and a plain one.
And at first blush -- and under optimum conditions -- the little naviphone worked just fine.
VZ Navigator has a very clever cell-phone-network-assisted system that uses the position of the cell towers to guide the nav phone to the proper tracking satellite.
The system wakes up and figures out its location faster, probably, than any unit I have ever used.
VZ Navigator calculated a course to my radio studio on 45th Street in Manhattan in a reasonable period. It also comes very nicely finished with solid turn-by-turn voice instructions and some limited mapping. I got a kick out of the "get ready to turn right in .4 miles" instructions I got as I drove south on FDR Drive. I never missed an exit, and when I knew my way, the unit performed well.
But in some real-world testing, it was not so pretty.