A Review of Route 66 

Introduction

Thanks to MTekk member ddhytz I learnt about another entrant into the Australian Personal GPS navigation market. It is good seeing more choice being offered and I was keen to see how Route 66 compared to those packages I have previously reviewed. I was even more eager when I found out that it uses NAVTEQ maps.  NAVTEQ have a reputation overseas for supplying premium maps and if they stay true to form that means more details and larger coverage in Australia.

Route 66 is offered in a three flavours, the Symbian version, the SmartPhone version and the PDA version, which is the one I’ll be reviewing. Note! The borders around each picture are something I have added to separate the pictures, they are not indicative of the way Route 66 is shown on a PDA.

I downloaded my copy via an FTP link provided by the Australian agents Force Technology International so the installation procedure may not be typical of how the final package will be presented or installed. I have therefore skipped the installation procedure except for one important point which is explained below. For the purposes of reviewing, what counts is how the application performs, so without any further delay lets get into it.

My copy required installation onto a SD card (because I have an XDA2) it could also be a compact flash, or mini SD depending upon your device. What actually occurs is that the Storage card is formatted and then a self installing executable along with all the necessary datafiles are written onto the card. When the card is placed into your PDA the installation onto your device takes place. The problem is of course any data on your card is erased in the process.  It is not really a big deal, because it is a relatively easy thing to copy your card contents to your computer and then after Route 66 is installed, copy every thing back. In my case I had additional complications because I have other GPS software on my SD card. It seems that Route 66 also uses folders that have the same name as Copilot and Destinator and if you are not aware of this the chance is high that your existing folders will be overwritten. Fortunately I caught onto this and all is well. I’m not sure if this procedure will be altered or is different on the actual retail package.

Product Activation

Route 66 like all the other systems has a product activation procedure you must complete before it can be used.I was unable to test this to see how easy (or otherwise) it is. 

Upon running for the first time (after the application has self installed) you are presented with an Activation screen with two choices, Now or Later. Tapping Now gives you two further options, Internet or SMS. As my copy is for review only I was unable to test this aspect. Route 66 also presents a disclaimer screen and as far as I can tell there is no way of disabling this so you will have to put up with this every time you start the program.

GPS Setup

GPS setup was very straight forward – provided you have already paired your device. Simply make sure that the GPS receiver is switched on and Route 66 finds it and connects. Your current location is then displayed on a map. If the GPS is not found you are asked if you want to continue without a GPS connection. This feature is essential if you what do some planning, or if you are indoors or just don’t require a GPS connection at that time. The process of finding the GPS is quite quick -  if you have a connection – around 5 seconds. If you don’t have a connection though, it might take a few minutes before you get the GPS not found prompt and be able to plan a journey. I found this wait a little annoying.

Map Options

To access the various options and configuration screens, simply tap any where on the map to bring up the main menu. Movement between the pages is accomplished via the scroll buttons on the right. The graphics are clean and neat and the written descriptions make it very clear what each section does. Although it becomes obvious which screen you are viewing once you get used it, there is no guidance given (for example page 1 of 3 or a visual indication where a bar moves up or down) and initially what appears to be a scroll bar is actually nothing but empty space.  Given that there are only three possible screens you do get used it quickly. TMC (traffic management) information is not available in Australia.

I don’t think it is necessary to go into major detail on the options available because most of them are self explanatory and fairly standard across the various applications. I will however expand on items that I think are deserving of further explanation.

In general the option icons describe the action to take place. i.e.  Night colours will show when Day colours are active and visa versa.

Main Menu / Map Options

There are eight things that can be changed in these screens, of interest are Set 3D angle and Legend.

Map Options / Set 3D angle

This option allows you to vary the angle from close to overhead, around 70 degrees to a fairly steep 3D view – I'm guessing around 45 degrees. Personal preference plays a large part in how you might set this up. I prefer a fairly steep angle.

Map Options / Legend

This provides four further settings relating to the colour setup of cities, roads and areas such as parks and the like.  The icon symbol merely presents a list of the icons Route  66 will display if you select them for display on the map. Useful if want to see what a particular icon is shown as should you want it displayed on your map. For example petrol stations.

Change Settings

What these settings do and change are fairly obvious, however Configure alarm and Speed deserve some further discussion.

Configure Alarm allows you to set one alarm related to speed. Note one alarm only.  Unlike some other products Route 66 does not have speed alerts announced according to the road you currently on. In practice (for me anyway) this speed ends up being set for the fastest I am likely to travel. Setting it lower means it would be constantly going off when I travel on a freeway, unless I stopped and reset the alarm before reaching that point. Not something I am inclined to do - I hate stopping as it is. Speed merely shows a list of different roads and allows you to change the speed used in calculating route times.

Points of Interest

Depending on what your needs are, Route 66 has a pretty good selection of POI's. But as with all of the POI databases I have seen in other applications I'm not convinced yet that they are truly useful. Restaurants within 40Km's of my Home location showed just about every Macdonalds, Pizza Hut and Subway, but missed out on some rather good establishments, quite near me. ATM's seem to be very well covered. Some POI's such as High Rise buildings found nothing, and left me wondering why that category was included and what it is supposed to represent. Over all the POI inclusions seem to be on par with other applications.

I quite liked the way that POI's are implemented in Route 66. You get a choice on where and how the alert is given, and by and large the system works well if the POI's are included and or correct.

Schools was one item that caught my interest, and because you can set individual alarms for the POI items it was a good way to test how effective this particular inclusion was. On a 60km trip down the highway from the Blue Mountains, through Blacktown and into Parramatta, the score was about 60%.  It seems Route 66 includes Tafe's and Public Schools but not Private and Catholic schools for example. Also the warning was not time connected, so the alarm was given regardless of the time or day.

Route 66 also has convenient tools for adding POI's, adding additional categories and the maintenance of POI's -  i.e. deleting or renaming the items you add.
This is quite useful if you want to maintain a list of friends or particular locations of interest. It is possible to assign icons from a list to each category you make and (presumably) add sound alerts as well. The package as I reviewed it did not have many sounds included and at this time I am not sure if it possible to add more.

In a similar vein to POI's, favourites can be added and these can also be displayed on the map. Individual sounds cannot be assigned to them however.

One other handy thing with the POI's is that you can tap on POI item in the list (using zoom to for example) and it will pop up a box containing the full address and telephone number. very handy as well.

Zoom to is a great little feature that lets you quickly go to specific areas on the map. The options greyed out are only valid if a route is currently being run or in the case of Favourites if at least one favourite has been defined.

As you can see the choices are quite extensive and it's very handy to look up a location, be that a POI, somewhere you have recently been or just to if an address is included in the maps.

Each tap onto an icon takes you another screen where you enter further details or pick a place from a list. There are to many possibilities to show in this review unfortunately, but is a very useful thing and something you will find yourself using a lot.

GPS information can accessed via the main menu or via the main map by selecting the bottom right box next to the GPS signal strength status icon. Incidentally tapping on any of the middle boxes at the bottom of the map screen also brings up a GPS Statistics screen with some nice to know information regarding distances, average speeds and even what time the sun sets and rises in your location. 

Using Route 66

Once the application is loaded and the GPS is connected Route 66 is quite easy to use out of the box. In it's most basic use, simply tapping anywhere on the map screen loads the first of three main menu screens, the first button is Navigate to so tapping that starts the destination entry procedure.

Home and Office are locations that you should pre-enter and provide a convenient way of calculating a route from anywhere on the map to either of those places. The easiest way to do this is to enter the locations via the Point on map function when you are physically at the locations. This eliminates problems with missing street numbers. 

Locations is where you would typically start from and requires you to enter in an address. Route 66 is somewhat unique here as you don't need to (in fact you can't) enter separate fields for City, street and number. Rather you would enter the details depending upon the type of destination you want. For example if you wanted to go to the Sydney Hilton, entering Sydney Hilton finds two matches, one being the Sydney Hilton itself and the other the Sydney Hilton Car Park. Very impressive. 
History allows you to quickly navigate to a recent destination

Lets say you needed to get to the Sydney Airport.  Entering Sydney International Airport, finds four  matches. One for the airport, one for a bus station at the airport, one for a hotel called the Airport Sydney International and one for the  restaurant associated with the hotel.  Another example, this time an address in Wollongong, namely 125 Park street. Four matches are found but it is not too clear what those matches represent. There is no way of quickly seeing if that address is the one you want other than completing the operation and getting Route 66 to actually calculate the route. When this is done, using the Zoom to button and selecting destination will zoom the map to that point.  Street numbers are not shown so while it is possible to confirm that the street seems to be correct it may be the wrong end of it. In general  I have found that the street numbers are missing a fair bit of the time. This is also on par with those products that use Sensis or MapInfo maps, so it is not something where Route 66 is deficient in comparision to the others.

One last example - 22 Third Avenue Condell Park. The location of a public Basketball facility. this time three matches are shown. One for the basketball facility, one for the High School a little further along the street and finally a private address at no21. Not a bad effort.

Contacts are supported in Route 66. However as with other competing packages, the address needs to be in a certain format for this to work. In my case I had about a 60% success rate. For example 19 Pullman Pl Emu Plains returned no matches, yet the address if entered as 19 Pullman Emu ( not a typo - this is how I entered it) found the place with only one match. If you want to use your contacts you will need to make sure that your address entries in the contact file are up to scratch.

POI around GPS position is substantially as described in the POI section above and Point on map works exactly how I expected it to. The problem with Point on map is that it displays your current location, so to be of any use you are required to zoom out five or six times to get a good overview of the map, then centre the map on the approximate area you are interested in, and then zoom in.  I guess there is really no other way that this can be implemented, and it is good to have it as an option.

Once a route is loaded, the greyed out option become available, so for example you could select a POI around your destination (a public toilet perhaps? - pity they aren't included in the POI list)

Plan a route assists you to plan routes when the GPS is not connected. It is also active when the GPS is connected and is useful for seeing how Route 66 proposes to get you to your destination, rather than going back to the menus ans selecting zoom to. If simply using Navigate to an overview of the route can be shown by tapping Zoom to and selecting Route. No route optimisation is carried out however, so the calculated route follows the order that the destinations were selected. To test this I planned a route from Blacktown to the Airport, to Windsor, to Blacktown and finally to Hurlstone Park. A round trip of 193 Kms and over 3 hours. The screenshot above and the two below, show the complete entry process using History and Contacts as the departure and destination. These screens are what you see immediately after tapping the Plan a route button

Navigate via is quite similar to the plan a route button. I suppose it might be a little more structured but I found myself wondering just why it was included, given that the results and methods are almost identical   

On the road

The real test of a GPS system

The very first trip I plan with any new GPS program or system is a trip from my home to work. this pretty well gives me a good feel for how the program plans routes and how good the street numbering system is. My home street number has never been recognised by any GPS program I have used and the Work street number is always shown out of position by around 200 to 300 meters. Route 66 was (unfortunately) no better than any of the others - The home number is not recognised and the work number is around 250 meters out of actual position. I was hoping for a better result because of the NAVTEQ maps, but it was not to be.

The route planned in the first instance included the new M7, which is definitely the fastest way, however after turning off the toll ways the route planned was exactly the same as CoPilot and PaPaGO. i.e. it favours main roads to the detriment of the true fastest way to get from home to work. The route planned is some 5 kms longer and takes around 10 to 30 minutes longer (depending upon the time of day) . DestinatorPN and tomtom get it pretty right though.

Depending upon your personal preference this kind of route may be just how you like it, others (me for example) prefer a route that takes some shortcuts and in doing so may save some time. I say may because a route that has a more turns can become slower (or at least feel slower) sometimes.  Also remember the routes I have travelled with this software are based on the Blue Mountains to North Shore region of Sydney. Your location may produce different results.

An unexpected message

On the  trip from home to work I received a verbal message "you are entering a none fully coded area and may receive incorrect driving instructions".  This was not something that filled me confidence, and not something that a new buyer would like to hear, however the route was fine and I did not receive any incorrect instructions. in fact, I received this message throughout the Blue Mountains without any "incidents". All of the maps I have looked at within Route 66 seemed to be quite complete for my area, so I assume there must be areas that NAVTEQ have flagged as incomplete and Route 66 provides that message just in case. Actually I think that this warning is a good thing, because it certainly made me look and listen more than I normally would.

Map Views

Route 66 offers two views of the map - 2D and 3D. This in line with other Navigation programs, but the 3D maps in Route 66 are excellent, as good as PaPaGO and much better than all the others. The maps in 2D mode are also excellent abeit with a little more detail as all the 2D maps seem to provide. 

The zoom out ability is the best there is. I think it's great to be able to zoom out so that perhaps 20Kms of the route ahead is visible. There is some graphic penalty because the device screen just cannot resolve to the resolution required, but a compromise zoom (perhaps 75% of the maximum) works well for me. The zoom works equally well in 2D or 3D modes. See above for some examples

Verbal Prompts

The verbal prompts Route 66 gives are also good - not as verbose or as high a quality as some of it's competitors but sufficient, clear and loud. The prompts seem to made up of separate phrases and these are then strung together to provide the appropriate instruction. For example a common instruction goes like this "Now! Turn right! Then! Immediately! Turn Left!"  The first time I heard the "Now!" instruction I was alert, real quick, it's loud and has a toning  that demands attention.   I prefer this kind of instruction, loud, unambiguous and timely. Route 66 gives you plenty of warning of upcoming turns. This is very noticeable compared to tomtom and PaPaGO, who sometimes leave the announcement a little tight.

False prompts

Along with it's competitors Route 66 will in specific instances, give a false turn announcement. This always happens when the name of the street or highway changes even though your actual route is straight along.  Every program does this and Route 66 is no better or worse. When driving in unfamiliar areas a quick glance at the map is all it takes to put your mind at ease.

U turns

Some GPS programs have a tendency to announce U turns whenever you deviate from a planned route. Route 66 does this too, but it is quite minimal, I place it amongst the best in this regard. Route 66 will also direct you to do U turns at traffic lights - once again something they all do. Fortunately, at least most of the time, it simply recalculates without the U turn. I'm not sure about this, but I believe in some Australian States U turns at traffic lights are permissible and that would explain why Route 66 allows it. In NSW it is not allowed. In the example below the U turn would have to take place at traffic lights

Route Recalculation

If you follow the planned route to the letter, the speed at which the GPS program recalculates routes is probably not important - until you strike a mapping anomaly or unintentionally make or miss a turn. Then the speed of the program to recalculate becomes pretty important, especially if you are in traffic with cars all around you.  personally I think the perceived quality of a program is influenced greatly by the length of time it takes to recalculate a route. Route 66 is fast, not the fastest, but a very close second. This coupled with the programs ability to calculate a new route rather than try to get you back on track (mostly) makes it a pleasure to drive in unfamiliar areas with confidence and minimal stress. There is nothing worse than a program droning on and on to turn around when in fact you cannot and there are cars all over the place. Route 66 just recalculates and carries on. Tops marks to Route 66. 

Other items of Interest

• Route 66 did not have Speed and Redlight cameras in my review version
• Route 66 does not have a detour function - actually this is something I rarely use anyway
• I saw no use of sign posts along the map route as claimed in the brochure - unless they meant the road number signs, in which case they didn't seem to match the locations on the roads I travelled.
• Direct dialling as indicated in the brochure did not work for me - I will follow this up
• Route 66 will allow you to transfer  your licence to another device via a web site. Look HERE for the official policy
• For a complete list of supported phones and PDA's look HERE
• Route 66 does not have text to Speech - If you have read any of my previous reviews you'll know that this is no great loss to me.
• Route 66 is WM5 compatible
• Route 66 is not VGA capable at this point in time
• Route 66 has a walking mode - but to be honest I can't see the benefit, so I haven't really explored that area other than to notice that the routes appear similar to those given for cars. It does have limits on distance in this mode as well.
• If you plan to use Route 66 on a Phone enabled device (Atom, JasJam and so on) and you recieve or make a telephone call during navigation,  Route 66 will not automatically restore itself after the call is finished. Rather it leaves a small icon in the bottom tray that needs to be tapped to restore it. As far as I am aware only Destinator PN and CoPilot 5 will do this, all of the others act the same way without the icon in the tray.
  

Conclusion

I use any currently reviewing GPS package almost exclusively for around three to four weeks before I finalise my thoughts, and then, for balance I  use at least two other systems for a day or so.  This gives me a feel for how the review system compares. Route 66 has everything you need in a Personal Navigation system. On paper it does not appear to be as feature rich as some of the others but it does what it is supposed to, and it does it very well.

I had no glitches, and I found no bugs during this time.

I was impressed with the "fuzzy" search system and I really liked the fact that the full details of your selection appeared in box at the bottom of the screen, this took the guesswork out of selecting a destination most of the time. I found that generally less detail in the search box had a greater chance of success than a lot of detail. This is probably due to not being sure if the destination address is an avenue or street. It certainly shows if you enter an abbreviation like Pl for place as my example above demonstrates.

The NAVTEQ maps weigh in at around 133 Mb on the storage card - less than most of the other applications available. This could be due to better compression, or it could be due to less data.  I am unable to say which. I must say however, that all the rural areas I looked at, had more data compared to the Sensis V12 maps.

The program looks great, it has a nice clean interface and the maps are as detailed as Destinator PN and much more detailed than the Sensis V12 maps used by others. In 3D view the maps are very detailed compared to tomtom, CoPilot and Destinator.

The verbal prompts are as good as they need to be and if anything are given somewhat early, though that is better than being given to late.

Initial route calculations seem to be (this is subjective) about as fast as other packages, but route recalculations are very fast. I have explained why I think this important earlier on, and it is something that any prospective buyer should pay attention to. The consequences of slow recalculations can really ruin your day.

If you are looking at getting a GPS System for your PDA in Australia, you now have quite a good choice. There are at least five packages out there and Route 66 should be high on your list.

In summary, I like Route 66 a lot, the clean look, the good verbal prompts and the ease of finding addresses make for an easy to use and reliable package. I am not sure how customisable Route 66 is, ie how easy it is to add additional alert sounds and updated POI's, however it does have POIEdit read/write compatibility so that is a good sign.

Route 66 retails for around $400.00 and is available from Force Technology International 

Edit 16th Oct 2006 - Force Technology Link is now active

Edit 17th Oct 2006 - Force Technology Link is inactive - site not ready

Discuss it HERE

You might also be interested in reviews on PaPaGO v7, Destinator PN, CoPilot v5, The tomtom ONE and The tomtom GO 300

This review was done a XDA2 with a WM2003SE upgraded ROM. The GPS receiver used was a GlobalSat BT338 and the program was installed onto SansDisk 2GB SD card.