Pimp My iPhone - English Version

The home menu is quite classical, and provides the basic functions of any self-respecting PND: entering a destination, access to POI, return to base, route map, favorite addresses, recent addresses and contacts addresses. The selection of any of the addresses directly starts the navigation to this address, if the GPS signal is strong enough.
But this menu also shows the first shortcomings of Navigon: impossible to create a route with stages, impossible to plan a route, no access to the options from the main menu... Entering addresses is done through a classic hierarchical progression : city (and eventually country), then street, and finally street number or intersection. If the entered street number is not found, the closest numbers are displayed.

POIs can be browsed by city, by country or near the current position. The POIs are divided into twenty categories (gas station, parking, restaurant, hotels, banks, shops, airports, train stations, etc...), and three of them are available directly from the POI menu.

When starting the navigation, it takes some time to find the GPS signal:

This seemed particularly long to me, contrasting sharply with the speed of positioning in Maps or xGPS. Once the signal is received and navigation is started, the options are finally available:

Again, Navigon is very classic on this point. First, you can choose the display mode, day or night mode, 2D or 3D:

This menu also allows to add stages to the route and to change the route's profile (means of transport, choice of shortest or fastest route, avoidance of motorways and tolls...). Interestingly, for motorways and tolls, the choice is not limited to yes/no, but offers three options: allow, prevent and prohibit. By choosing to avoid the route use highways only when they can save enough time or distance.

Finally, from the menu option, you can see the GPS position and save it:

While navigating, different information are displayed on the screen. Above, the estimated time of arrival, speed or distance:

Above the map, the next two instructions are displayed at the bottom left, while a diagram of the lanes is sometimes displayed at the bottom right (in 3D mode, a 3D visualization of the lanes is displayed in full screen) and top left, you have the speed limit (not always displayed):

Of course, Navigon supports landscape mode, both in menus and during the navigation:

Finally, despite some shortcomings, Navigon is rather good, although it has not the level of functionality of TomTom Navigator 6 for Windows Mobile. In particular it lacks the ability to enter new POI, to plan a route, to show traffic informations, to warn for radars and it does not allow to enter a destination from GPS coordinates, and it has a few ergonomic flaws, such as the options only available during navigation. On the other hand, the software appears to be rather efficient, the calculation of routes is fast, the display is smooth and more modern than that of TomTom Navigator 6, the voice guidance is clear and precise. The maps also seem good quality and cover a very large area (about forty countries in Europe, from Ireland to Greece and Portugal to Finland). Maybe even a little too much, because you will need 1.65 GB of space to host the software...

Tested revision: 1.0.0
Source : App Store / Navigation
Price: 74€99 (until the 30th of June).