Never text while driving. Call with caution while driving.
But there’s one phone application made specifically for use on the road — GPS navigation. Already, several car nav programs for mobiles are available, but today the most highly anticipated of them arrived: the TomTom app for iPhone, which was announced in June.
The app was designed to closely emulate GPS navigation units for cars, and indeed it has turn-by-turn directions, voice instructions, touch-screen commands, a choice of 2D or 3D mapping, day/night screen choices and coverage of the U.S. and Canada.
The price is not cheap — $99.99 — but that’s less than the cost of the vast majority of dedicated car navigation units. Of course, the iPhone screen is smaller than the ones on most car units.
The tech blog will have a full review of the app, upcoming, but early buyers who posted online had one main complaint — the vocal directions on the TomTom iPhone app do not include street names.
At the June announcement of the product, TomTom said it also would make available a windshield mount for phone. No word yet on when that would be available or at what price.
BTW, if you still need convincing of the dangers of texting while driving, view this public service commercial recently released in the U.K. It does have graphic content: It takes a much stronger stomach than any slasher flick.
– David Colker in the Los Angeles Times
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