Friday 27 January 2012

Road - Getting lost

When it comes to SatNav the name Bosch doesn’t exactly tickle the thinking box, but the company has been around in the field of electronics ever since man found that a spark could set petrol alight inside a cylinder.

Anyway, the mapping side of things is easy to get hold of these days so it boils down to what you do with it that makes the difference between those SatNavs that guide you home and the others that send you up a dead end.

Taking things a stage further, Bosch has designed this latest system for Smart Phones, and it is available to download from iTunes as an App, although there is no word of an Android version as yet, nor a pedestrian mode.

But what it has going for it are the 3D maps with landmarks and buildings dotted around the landscape to help those unfortunates who can’t work a 2D map printed on a sheet of paper, and another thing, you can key in a list of intermediate destinations, i.e. suitable for those on a delivery run!

Naturally there are a few other gimmicks including an ‘EcoNavigation’ option which assigns a route based on fuel efficiency and ‘Plus Routes’ which claims to offer ‘real time re-routing’ suggestions if our tarmac arteries get clogged up with static traffic.

And if you’re really stuck on a night time navigation rally, perhaps the ‘Driver Assistance’ mode will be of assistance. It calculates the severity of upcoming bends in the road and proposes an optimum speed to help drivers avoid unwanted surprises and increase road safety. In other words – cheating.

Whether it will replace a ‘proper’ custom built device, like a Garmin (but not that Dutch made device, I hate them) who knows, but Bosch is offering the App for an introductory promotional price of £26.99

For a limited time, Bosch Navigation 1.5 can be downloaded at the promotional price of£26.99 (regular price £44.99).  

It is available to download from the App Store as of now.

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