Robin Bollen // Brussels // May 20 2011

In our continuous quest of finding new iPhone GPS applications to review, we have plugged Global Navigator in the car for you this time.

The iTunes title of the app mentions actually Global Navigator -  Navigation all over the World. And that is right when you have a data connection of course. It uses Google Maps for navigation, with voice-guided instructions. You can also use Google’s satellite view.

First experience

I have been taking this app with me on two routes and even I was skeptic in the beginning, it actually has brought me to my destination without many problems.

In the beginning I was driving with the display being ‘North Up’ which is not what you want in most cases. Make sure that you select ‘Direction Up’ in the navigation menu so it behaves the same as the conventional GPS apps.

To my surprise it has 20 voices, I selected Dutch, which was very good spoken. The app uses everything that is already in Google Maps, so you can find Points Of Interest, get directions for Car, Walking and Bus, with the options of Avoiding Highways and Tolls.

Track me

Another handy feature is the ‘Track Line’ feature, which can record your track in Google Earth KML format. You can use the app to record a long journey from minutes to months, again if you have a data connection, so for me this is limited to my own Country. Anyway this also works like advertised.

Menu

The menus are not so beautiful and are not obvious on the front screen. At least there could be a help file inside explaining them. Also because of the limited features of the application, you have seen them all quite fast.

Add ons

In the menu you find somewhere several add-ons that you have to buy separately.  I didn’t find one interesting, but you might want to check that out for yourself.

Conclusion

The developers of Global Navigation have been adding features to Google Maps that I did expect to receive from Google directly already many years ago but never came.  If you can live with basic navigation, this might be a good deal for you. It doesn’t give the same experience like the big SatNav applications for the iPhone but it brings you home as well.

Please remove the message in iTunes: Last day promotion! Price will raise to original 19.99USD.

This is misleading customers.