Garmin Mobile for Blackberry

BnA

I have 4 mobile users with O2 including myself. I am due an upgrade myself and I was thinking of testing out a BlackBerry Pearl 8110 with a view to getting them for all our users if it worked out well. The lads are all on the road 3 or 4 days a week and it would be great if they could keep an eye on their e-mail while they are.

I was looking at a few reviews etc of the 8110 and discovered that it has built in GPS. I then did a bit more googling and found "Garmin Mobile" which, if I am reading it right, would basically turn the Blackberry into a SatNav. If so, it might be the Mutts Nutts for me as the lads are onto me to get Sat Nav's for them as well.

I have one of those standard cheapo Garmins bought in Halfords in my own car. Would this basically turn the blackberry into the same thing ?

Does anyone have any experience of how good / bad this works ?

ondafly

I've used plenty of Blackberries - the new version of the Pearl does indeed have a GPS antenna. However its not like satnav you get with a standard Garmin, i.e. it does bark out directions to you, its all text based. I wasn't aware of any Garmin mobile software for blackberries, so perhaps, that does the directions out loud etc.

robinph

The Garmin Mobile XT on Nokia's does speak the directions to you so I'd assume it would do the same on the Blackberry.

chalkitdown

There is no need to consider Blackberrys exclusively, most of the current mobile devices with GPS are also capable of receiving email, although you may have to divert your email through a POP3 service.
Garmin XT does do spoken directions but not TTS (text to speech), so it won't read out the actual street names, which is a feature usually only available on the top of the range GPS models anyway.

parsi

The screens on the Pearls (or even the Curves) are fairly small compared to even a basic satnav and I certainly wouldn't recommend them for long-term in-car use.

Another thing to consider - does Garmin Mobile download the map tiles live (like Google Maps & Blackberry maps) ? This can add to data costs and refresh speed.

chalkitdown

No, Garmin XT is a stand alone GPS program with it's own maps. No extra data charges unless you use the contacts function for sending your location to another user by SMS, or traffic mode which is not supported in Ireland anyway.