Hi,

I've been using Maemo Mapper in the car for a couple of days and have some feedback (and some ideas) on how it functions in that environment. I am using an i-Blue PS-737 and do auto-updates of routes via a Treo GPRS connection.

I've previously only used a CoPilot on an old O2 XDA and also just loaded Nokia's navigation software onto a N61 and used that with the i-Blue. While I haven't tested the Nokia navigation sofware thoroughly it looks very good AND it is free to download. It picked up Australian maps over the 3G connection on the N61 and also showed POIs.

With Mapper I found that in the car the status alerts were difficult to follow because they overlayed each other and appeared and disappeared. It would be good to extend the GPS status screen to show information such as the speed, distance to next waypoint, an arrow showing the turn for the next waypoint. This information is all available in Mapper already but you need to go to multiple menus or keys to get it. In the car it would be great to have it shown all the time. Maybe a toggle key could be used that toggles between the current GPS info -> extended status screen -> back to the map?

The other area is the dynamic updating of the routes. It would be good to be able to simply enter a destination into Mapper and have it assume that the origin is the current GPS location and that auto-update was required. Something like a shortcut button?

Finally, the voice alerts are great. However, under auto-update they can get out of sync. Perhaps when Mapper detects that you have strayed off the defined route it could stop announcing untill the new route has been downloaded?

Cheers,
Andrew