Hirdetés
On the occasion of this year's CeBIT Nav N Go Ltd. announced its new navigation software, iGO amigo. iGO amigo is a special software, it is the beginning of a new era. It is a premium-quality product, but it's still simpler than iGO 8, on which it is based, but this won't be the last software of the kind, it is in fact the first of a series.
amigo is different than iGO 8 because it won't be sold separately on a storage device. It won't be available on DVD or an SD card either, the only way to get it will be to acquire a PNA made by a manufacturer who is contacted with Nav N Go. The developers have increased the security level of the software, on some markets the application will require online registration after 60 days of use, and in case this does not happen, the software will cease to function.
In order to understand the new philosophy we first have to know how is an average navi structured. We have the hardware, usually assembled somewhere in the far East, then comes a WinCE kernel, the basic system, and finally the PNA's designer, manufacturer or reseller installs a graphical user interface (GUI) which features navigation. Depending on the manufacturer the GUI can get extra applications such as a music player, a calculator, a currency converter, or a couple of games. amigo, however, has all of these included, it just has to be installed on a bare WinCE core, so the PNA's manufacturer doesn't have to care about creating its own GUI.
This is one of the reasons why the product will be available only from selected partners of Nav N Go. The company requires its partners to have an outstanding product support, which means that theoretically we shouldn't see such devices with amigo on the market that are manufactured by a company that has been established a couple of weeks ago and plans to disappear after selling enough devices.
amigo has other new stuff besides navigation. The Chief Technology Officer at Nav N Go, Péter Balog, has told us that they wanted to create a software that doesn't have all the complex features of iGO 8, but the services used by average users are still present, while using a completely new interface makes using the system much simpler, everything is accessible with a couple of clicks, so such potential customers could be attracted by navigation from now on, who previously avoided such solutions due to their complexity.
Of course the user interface is not the only thing that has been redesigned: the animations have changed, now we don't only see an arrow on the map, but we can choose from a couple of 3D car models and we can update the platform with some downloadable features. The list of voices has been expanded as well, and new voices will be available for download. The route planning algorithm has been improved, just like the 3D display, in order to make streets behind buildings clearly visible.
We have been told other news as well, for example the software's Symbian edition is being developed, the Android version is nearly complete and they have developed an iPhone edition since a long time ago, but Apple's business policy won't let them launch it. This year Nav N Go would like to accentuate getting companies selling illegal copies of the software, they have already managed to close to stands at CeBIT, in cooperation with the German authorities - both companies were selling PNA devices with an illegal copy of iGO, one of them was insolent enough to do their business right behind the pavilon of Nav N Go.
Translated by Szaszati
