Navicore Personal 2006/1 smart phone GPS

Routes are displayed in the usual 2D, 3D and direction-only 'safe view' displays. Navicore eschews separate car, cyclist and pedestrian modes for a single mode that makes it simple to plot a motoring run to another town and just as easily find the path to walk from the car park to the office you're visiting. I used it to guide me to a number of locations in and around central London. It guided me almost flawlessly.

The map view has two modes, Browse and Navi, chosen by pressing the select key on the phone's keypad. Browse uses the handset's navigation controls to steer around the map; Navi switches the left and right controls to zoom in and out. You can also display a cursor - invoked using the 3 key - used to select points on the map as destinations, to see what an icon is referring to or to mark out sections of road as blocked.

Clicking on a location with the cursor also provides the option of sending the site's longitude and latitude as a text message. Navicore continues to offer the opportunity to send a snapshot of the map on display as an MMS and to send regular location data messages to nominated mobile phones. Again, moving the cursor around was a slow business, really needing a faster phone.

Navicore is bundling the same highly sensitive SiRFStar III-based GPS receiver that it offered with the previous version of the software. It connects to the handset using Bluetooth and proved easy to pair and to link up to the navigation application. It got a satellite lock quickly, too. It's small, can be recharged with a standard Nokia AC adaptor and was able to get a decent, navigable signal despite being kept in a rucksack placed on the lower floor of a London double-decker bus. Car roofs? No problem, I'd say.