GPS information

Really turn-by-turn navigation from TomTom for the iPhone? Really? Yep, really. Yesterday TomTom announced two new upcoming products for the iPhone. First is a dedicated navigation application which will soon be available in the App Store. It’ll include TomTom’s IQ Routes and Tele Atlas maps. Second, and pretty interesting from a PND maker, is a TomTom car kit for the iPhone. It will include a special docker, voice directions, hands-free calling over Bluetooth and in-car charging.

It’s about time. There has been rumor of a TomTom GPS app for the iPhone since last July when the iPhone 3G was released. While some sort of development restriction hampered the app’s time to market, the company did say it would eventually release an iPhone app. Things were pretty quiet for awhile, until last month when TomTom posted a job advertisement for an iPhone developer. I never thought that the company would pursue what seems to amount to an all-out partnership with Apple. It’s a smart move.

We’ll have to wait for pricing and availability details until later this summer after the iPhone 3.0 OS is officially released. But for iPhone owners out there, the complete package will probably be a more economical (in price and hardware) solution to in-car navigation than a traditional PND.

PCMag’s Craig Ellison recently had the opportunity to test out the Garmin nuvi 1260T, one of Garmin’s 2009 models that comes complete with a pedestrian navigation mode, Bluetooth, voice directions and subscription-free real-time traffic information. I was expecting the nuvi 1260T to blow the review out of the water, but the reviewer clearly feels that for most of us the Garmin nuvi 265T is a better buy. Why is that?

First of all, the $300 suggested retail price is a bit on the high side. And though the nuvi 1260T is the thinnest GPS navigator on the market because of its pedestrian aim, it isn’t particularly accurate with its public transportation routes. In fact, the reviewer tested out a pair of routes that incorporated the subway in New York City and found that both HopStop and Google Maps produced more economical routes. That said, the nuvi 1260T would still be handy if you’re visiting a strange city with a complicated public transportation system.

For the rest of us though, the Garmin nuvi 265T will do the same navigational job as the nuvi 1260T, but for half the price.

Garmin nuvi 1260T–$299.99 from Amazon; shipping June 28
Garmin nuvi 265T–$179.99 from Amazon

Google Earth Blog’s Frank Taylor has dug up some of the best community-created maps of the Air France Flight 447 crash site. One map, created by ‘rafaelds‘, shows the approximate flight path from known data, the points at which radar contact was lost, and the position at which the doomed flight send its last signal to air traffic controllers. Another map, created by ‘smokeonit‘, overlays a weather map over the crash site enabling a fairly clear picture of the dangers the flight attempted to navigate through. Strangely, Flight 447 appears to have chosen to fly through the worst weather at a time when its radar was still working.