Map my India

GPS is finally coming of age in India. After years of salivating to the thought of affordable, dedicated in-car navigation, MapMyIndia has come up with this. The MapMyIndia navigator is essentially the Delphi NAV 200, pre-loaded with maps. Service and support for the hardware is being provided by Delphi India, while MapMyIndia will take care of all usage issues and map upgrades. It's a fairly standard in-car navigator, but isn't a PDA like many of the other GPS solutions currently available-the HP iPAQ 6965, Asus P535 and HTC Advantage, to name a few.

What you get in the box is the Navigator itself, a 12 V DC car adapter, wall charger, 1 GB SD card pre-loaded with the maps, and a windshield/dashboard mount. The windshield mount is essential, since the antenna needs a clear view of the sky in order to receive signals from the satellites.

In a departure from convention, MapMyIndia is providing an all-India map and detailed maps of 18 Indian cities with the device (including all major points of interest, arterial roads, petrol pumps, and shopping centers). Map updates will be charged annually, with updates coming twice a year. The map application is fairly straightforward. On first boot, the device manages to acquire four satellites in a minute (clear conditions)-an impressive time, thanks to the latest SiRF Star III GPS chipset. You can hunt for your destination using an on-screen keyboard and it'll guide you there (with voice assisted directions if you want). Accuracy is down to about 15 metres, pretty good for a consumer GPS device.

There are also a few welcome extras apart from GPS: support for video (AVI), photos (GIF, JPEG, PNG), music (MP3, WAV), a calculator, world clock, and a nice GPS trip computer. The trip computer can display an accurate speed reading (useful, if you want check for speedo error in your car) and distance travelled. Since there's a standard 3.5 mm audio out, you can connect it to a car stereo and play music, or have all other audio routed through the car's speakers. You can even use the device as your portable media player; though don't expect the 760 mAh built-in Li-ion battery to perform any miracles. In the car, you're supposed to leave it connected to DC power, and the device automatically switches on and off with your car.

I would've liked to have the option of giving voice commands to the unit instead of having to manually enter locations, but then again that would push up the cost considerably. Overall, an affordable and easy-to-use, multi-faceted GPS navigation solution.

Delphi NAV200 from MapMyIndia.com

Price: Rs 21,000 (Delhi),

Rs 22,000 (rest of India)

Recommendation:

Contacts: www.mapmyindia.com

Tel: 099990 04967 (Rohan)

navigator@mapmyindia.com

Specs: SiRF Star III chipset, 3.5-inch 240x320 pixel anti-glare touchscreen, Samsung 2440 processor @ 400Mhz, 32 MB Flash/64 MB RAM, SD card slot (upto 2 GB), dual speakers, 3.5 mm audio out, movies (AVI only), photos (GIF, JPEG, PNG), music (MP3, WAV), calculator, world clock, built-in Li-ion battery (730 mAh)