Hirdetés
GPS
Oh-oh, the navigation. The main extra of the i550. Let’s see the facts: no matter that the GPS-receiver is a SiRF Star III, it gets the signal so weakly that I’ve never seen before. For the first time I put it in the passive holder on a way home, but it couldn’t catch a satellite during the 20-minutes long trip. Next time I tried something else: I put it on the top of the dashboard of the car, and then it could find signals in 5-6 (!) minutes, but in the middle of the downtown of Budapest it is definitely not enough. And when I drove into one of the side streets the mobile started to change the position rapidly – and this is only the beginning.
The i550 got the Samsung’s standard navigation software which was made by the Navigon. For testing we got the map of Eastern-Europe on a 2 GB memory card, which was very detailed on Hungary – while we are talking about the cities, villages and their streets. But the map itself is at least three years old, it’s not recognizing streets in the capital which are existing for years now, I drove a lot of time in the big nothing. But okay, it will surely get its update, go on.
The next shock gets you when you want to browse the map without any real destination: you can’t use any functions like this while the phone is not getting the signal of a satellite. It must be a joke, even the POI database is inaccessible, first you have to type in the destination, then the mobile finds the satellite (we know how much time it takes), then it plans, and finally we can see the outcome.
Okay then, let’s say some words about the visualization, maybe it’s the strength of the device. Well, absolutely not. However, it has more than one view (and a night-view, too), but neither the 2D nor the 3D version is a joy for our eyes because the map has no street names on it. Not one. The small orange arrow is sliding on a grey net, and at the bottom the name of the next street can be read. On the map itself gas stations can be seen (the logo of the company), and the phone writes out graciously the names of the train stations.
All right, then maybe the algorithm will be an award-winning one. Not really. I could count more than a thousand cases when it tried to get me to the wrong direction, but now I’ll only tell one, my favorite. I was going from Kőbánya to Budakeszi, but I overruled the system in a short while and took the Lágymányosi-bridge. After this – as I expected – it directed me down to the embankment – but not the lower one, the upper to take me back - on the Petőfi-bridge – to Pest (!!!) to take me to the boulevard then onto the Margit-bridge back to Buda. Well, I have already had some navis with me, but I’ve never seen anything like this.
With these things comes the bonus, which is the voice-navigation on a female voice. It is very polite, starts every sentence with "please". It doesn’t use the word "re-planning", just calculating silently in the back, but has a couple of idiotic sayings. On of these is the word "Attention! " (just this one word) when the driver drives faster than the allowed. To pay attention for what, when or why – it doesn’t say. Maybe it’s better this way because the allowed max. speed on the Lágymányosi-bridge is 30 km/h from Buda to Pest, but I think at a speed like this I’d be even horned at by a truck with a trailer. But the funniest sentence of the phone can be heard shortly before the arrival: "You are approaching your destination in x meters. "
A cikk még nem ért véget, kérlek, lapozz!
