Introduction

CoPilot 6 for PDA’s was released to Australia around August 2006, and I initially thought that big difference was that the new version used NAVTEQ maps in lieu of the Sensis maps in previous versions, but I was in for a real surprise.

Gone were the clunky Safety Camera warnings and inefficient routes. In addition quite a few enhancements have been done and the program just felt more reliable and solid.

CoPilot has always been a little different to other GPS navigation programs in that it focused more on giving directions and providing simple, yet effective information that did not require users to focus on the maps. CoPilot 6 has improved on this formula even more. In Driver Mode all the information required for you to get to your destination is shown without the distraction of additional map information. Of course you can turn this view off and see the map if that’s what you prefer, but really in the interests of safety and simplicity Drivers view is excellent. This leads me to one of the best things I like about this new version it is so configurable.

Standard features

• Dynamic Route Guidance: Provides voice guided, turn-by-turn directions to any address.
• Automatic Route Recalculation: Directions are updated every second. If you miss a turn, you get new directions instantly.
• Voice Instructions: Clear, spoken instructions give you plenty of warning before each turn.
• Basic Routing Options let you easily select between Quickest, Shortest, RV as well as offering a Toll Avoidance option.
• Detour and Avoid Roads: Gets you around unexpected traffic or street congestion and lets you avoid roads.

• POI Alerts notify you when you're approaching gas stations, restaurants or rest areas.
• Night Mode reduces glare and eye strain to improve night time safety.
• Large Map Display combines a large map view with concise text directions.
• Route-Over Highlighting clearly defines the route ahead.
• Text to Speech provides spoken Street names
• Auto-Zoom 2D map view options include current location to Next Turn or Destination - when selected, CoPilot progressively zooms in on the map as you approach either your Next Turn or Destination.
• Driver Safety Screen toggles between an all-text display and a full-map view.
• Routing Options have been expanded to include Auto Quickest, Auto Shortest, RV Quickest, RV Shortest and Toll Avoidance.
• Customizable Display lets you decide which pieces of navigation information are displayed on CoPilot Live's screen. You can choose among Current Road, Crossroad, Current Time, Speed, Elevation, Nearest Town, Next Major Road, Time Left in Trip, Heading and Destination.
• Waypoints let you tailor your route preferences and allow you to pass through a particular area on the way to your final destination.
• Guidance Mode provides voice guided, turn-by-turn directions.
• Walking Mode enables you to make the most out of CoPilot when on foot.
• Planning Mode gives you the ability to pre-plan and optimize routes before driving.
• Lane Change Warnings alert you to upcoming left exits, ensuring that you have plenty of time to safely get to the proper side of the highway.
• Side of Street Notification tells you which side of the street your destination is on, making it easier to locate the right building when you arrive.
• Pick Stops from the map - tap and hold a road to add an address as a stop.
• Route Optimization re-orders your stops in the most efficient manner.

Summary of new features in version 6

• Enhanced 3D map display
• Finger sized software buttons and text entry
• Configurable Routing profiles
• Improved Bluetooth Setup for GPS connectivity
• POI compatibility (via in Device conversion) with OV2 formats (TomTom POI’s for example)
  

Installation and Setup

A new installation is a breeze to install, simply pop the supplied SD card into your device and the installation proceeds automatically. Provided you have previously paired your GPS , this is picked automatically too and after a simple and quick Activation over the internet your are ready to go. If you do not have a connection to the internet a call to tech support will be required though. The included Quick Start will walk you through each step if you need it, however I suspect in most cases even that is not necessary.

Once your PDA is restarted you’re ready to roll…err Drive!

Or you could use the program via your PC do this. If you currently have a large card and wish to keep CoPilot on that card, the easiest way is to pop the CoPilot SD card into your device, install it and then, using a card reader copy across the entire contents of the card onto your old card.  Full instructions are included on the CD in PDF format if you need them.

Like most other GPS packages CoPilot must be activated before it can be used and this is a quick and painless procedure.  CoPilot can be uninstalled and inactivated so that it can be used on another device, for example if you change devices. This requires an internet connection if you want to do this yourself, otherwise a call to tech support will be required.

GPS setup is also very quick and painless. As with other packages the developers have realised that this needs to be simple and quick. Most users don’t want to or don’t have the knowledge to get into complex configuration menus and Copilot have done a good job here as well.

Using CoPilot

I found CoPilot fairly easy to use, though it is somewhat more complex than the previous version. The distinction to Options and Settings is a little vague and some Options/Settings are a little difficult to find and not intuitive. For example you may not want to use the CoPilot Keyboard, however to change this (from the Home Screen) requires a trip to Settings/ Language and Speech and then unticking a check box.

In general, I still find myself getting a little lost when navigating through the menus, and often I need to go back and select another button.

Another example, if you enter a trip and tap the Start Driving Button it is not at all intuitive on how to get back to the address entry screen if you have changes your mind. I suspect many people would quit CoPilot and start again, because at first glance that is how your options appear. In fact there are a few ways but they are not obvious. One is to edit the trip accessible by tapping Menu, then Trip, then Edit. Another is to tap Options then Home and re-enter the details.  

The built in CoPilot keyboard is finger friendly but NOT QWERTY. To me, this is a real pain and it takes me more than twice as long to enter and address using the ABC… XYY alphabetical offering. An option to show it as qwerty would enhance it’s function and save a little frustration as I hunt through the letters.  Of course the downside to using the OS keyboard is that is definitely not finger friendly, so out comes the stylus on my XDA2.

CoPilot has two software buttons which are called Home and Work, and, obviously these are meant to contain the correct address for each location once you enter the details. This is great for quickly going to either of those destinations from anywhere in Australia.

CoPilot also has the other following methods of inputting destinations:-

• Address – where any address in Australia can be entered (within it’s database of course)
• Favourites – Addresses and other location you have saved
• Recent – a list of recently added addresses
• Contact – provides a way of accessing addresses from you Outlook address book
• POI – Points of interest, broken up into lots categories (for example Airports)
• Pick On Map – pick a destination by tapping it on the map. This usually requires a bit of zooming and scrolling, but is useful if the location is not included in the database
• Intersection – Useful if the street address is not shown (and many times it isn’t)
• Lat/Long – allows you to enter the Latitude and Longitude, great for Geo-Caching especially when combined with walker mode.
  

The full Address entry sequence is shown below – this is the basic point to point method used 90% of the time. You will notice that in one of the screens I’m using the Windows CE keyboard rather than the CoPilot one, this is for illustrative purposes.

If Routing customisations are done, it is also possible to get CoPilot to prompt you on the type of route you wish take. This offers users an unprecedented amount of flexibility depending upon how you want CoPilot to get you there. In the example shown below I chose a profile I had previously made called “notolls”

Unfound addresses

Whilst Copilot does not have a street/city/ address entry routine like Destinator it is quite good at finding streets in suburbs that are close. For example the screen shots below show the results when trying to find 129-135 McCredie road Guilford NSW. TomTom wouldn’t find it. Destinator6 did using the street/city sequence and Route66 did too. This is however a tremendous improvement over the previous version, which like TomTom comes up a blank and requires local knowledge to guess at close by Suburbs. Well done CoPilot.

Contacts

CoPilot is able to use addresses contained within your Outlook address file on your PDA. The previous version 5 had some problems with this but that seems to be resolved. The format for addresses must be correct though, abbreviations, misspellings and incorrect field placements  will mean the data will be much less useful.

Routing

The previous version (V5) heavily favoured main roads, and whilst sometimes this was acceptable, other times it produced routes that actually took longer and did more kilometers than was optimal. But that was then!

Now, out of the box, it produces routes which are much more balanced and efficient. When combined with personalised routing profiles you can get a route for almost any occasion or mood. Want to see the longest way to get from Home to work? Want to see places you have never seen between Home and Work? Want to take tollways or freeways on Tuesdays and Wednesday only?  No problems CoPilot is for you. All of these options are available by setting route profiles and then getting CoPilot to ask you to choose one before it calculates the route.

The amount of tweaks you can do that will affect the routes calculated is quite extensive – however as with all things this customizable, you can quickly get youself into trouble. Luckily Basic mode comes to the rescue and you can edit your advanced options at your leisure.

I actually used the route defined below on a trip from work to home – it was interesting to say the least, Copilot refused all roads unless they were local or meant you couldn’t make it to your destination. Surprisingly it only added 15 minutes onto what is usually a 50 minute journey, and, like I said, I saw places I didn’t even know existed!

Trip Planning

For casual users that mainly use point to point routing, trip planning is probably of little use, but, if you are a Sales Representative or even a Courier, Copilot’s Trip planning and route optimisations may be very worthwhile. I entered 6 addresses into Copilot in a random order. These were; (all In NSW)

Wollongong, Bankstown, Kings Park, Home, Newcastle, Frenches Forest and back to Wollongong and then ran the trip. I then ran the trip again after Optimising. This changed the order to Wollongong, Home, Kings Park, Frenches Forest, Newcastle, Bankstown and finally back to Wollongong.

Other Modes

CoPilot like other similar programs has three modes :

Guidance, which shows your route and gives you turn by turn instructions.

Planning, for planning trips and multistop itineraries

Walking Mode. Unlike others, walking mode simple draws a straight line from your current position to the destination. This is fine and actually makes it quite useful for Geo-caching for example. To get walking directions around a city for example, just use the normal point to point address entry and be sure to pick a profile that only uses local roads.  I think this the logical way to provide a walking mode myself.

Points of Interest

POI’s seem to be about on par with other packages I have seen – and provided the details are correct, can be accessed via POI’s near your current location or at a particular city or suburb.

The big improvement here is in how CoPilot handles Traffic cameras. Rather that throwing up a full screen with a cryptic message like SafteyCam 5678 the way that CP5 did, it now sounds an alert and flashes a Camera icon on the bottom left along with the distance to the camera and your current speed.

On the Road

Using Copilot6 whilst navigating to a destination is straight forward and simple. As mentioned previously, I like the driver mode which is a simplified view of what your next turn instruction is. That said many people prefer the map view and Copilot has that too – both 3D and 2D modes as well as night modes for both. To me, 3D view is the amongst weakest implementation of the all the programs I have used, but that is a very personal opinion. 3D view has been improved in this version and now features markers that show distance along your route as well as distance to POI’s and other landmarks.

Voice prompts are given at appropriate distances and are clear and easy to understand. In all views turns are highlighted and provide good visual feedback on your position relative to the next turn. I can’t fault Copilot here everything works as you would expect and works well.

Route recalculations are sufficient – not the fastest but certainly not the slowest. You really need to read some of my other reviews to understand why I think this is important though.

U turns are now given with much less frequency that previous versions – and seem to be on par with TomTom and Route 66 which makes Copilot amongst the best in this regard. It still happens though and when it does; it does so without any regard to traffic lights. Something that all GPS programs do unfortunately.

Problems

I encountered a few problems but nothing to make me think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the application itself. Once I had an obvious out of memory problem, and twice the application locked up and froze on the spinning cursor whilst calculating a route.  Given that I have had Copilot produce hundreds of routes over the past few months I put the problems down to general Windows CE problems.

Other problems include some routes that appear strange – eg turning off the main highway on route to Canberra from Sydney. The strange thing about this is that not all users can reproduce the problem, even though the version numbers are the same. I my case the included desktop version does not exhibit that error, and in other cases it does.

All in all the problems are minor when taken into context, and I urge all users not to take calculated routes as the final word. Of course your point of view maybe different, but if you expect a perfect system you will be disappointed. Not one of these applications is perfect or even close to it.

Note! My comments are relative. Ie they are relative to other competing products out there

Other points

The desktop version supplied with CoPilot6 is a great added value feature. It allows you to check routes and explore the map on your PC and even produce routes for friends complete with turn by turn printed instructions and maps. Routes you plan there can also be downloaded to your PDA for CoPilot to use there.

Copilot 6 Live is so named because it has the capability to send  the position of a suitable Phone and GPRS enabled PDA to a server which will then update the maps on a remote PC running the desktop version. It is even possible to send simple messages from the PDA to the PC and visa versa. In other words a pretty good tracking system is possible that will allow you track ETA’s, next stop, speed as well as the driver’s position. – Once again a feature that not many users require but if you do, it is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

Text to Speech is available and to many people this is a desirable feature – not me though, I’m holding out for something that can pronounce some of our street names more understandably. Using TTS has some advantages and these include spoken Street names, and side of road announcements when you reach your destination.

Summary

I have not itemised every screen setting, possible option or every function, for example detour and avoid roads – that’s what manuals are for, and there is a lot of depth and functionality to explore within the program. Depending on your usage it can be complicated or very simple.

Finding locations is now better than ever, and at least the equal of its competitors – with the exception of Route66 which searches a database and does not rely on City/Suburb system and hence found everything I threw at it quicker.

Another important difference is that CoPilot now uses NAVTEQ maps – similar in many aspects to the MapInfo Maps used by Destinator previously – certainly obtained from the same base source at any rate. These maps seem to offer better coverage of rural areas than Sensis do, but bear in mind I am unable to test this.

I really like the routing customisation features and clean look that the interface has but I am less impressed with CoPilot’s 3D view. Nothing comes close to Route 66 here.

Initial route calculation times are not all that fast but they are acceptable usually not taking more than a minute or two. Trip Planning and route optimisation is fairly slow but once again not that slow that it becomes irritating.

My final thoughts are CoPilot 6 is a great program, looked at as a package it is unbeatable, so feature rich and yet able to be used by casual users. It gets my vote for being the best PDA package available right now – just keep the points I made about problems in mind.

Important note
This review was carried out on a XDA2 with WM2003se upgraded ROM and using a GlobalSat BT338 GPS receiver. The area covered by this review covers Katoomba to Sydney, Mona Vale to Sutherland. Please keep this in mind as map quality may, and does, vary in different areas. The PDA version is 6.0.106 and the Desktop version is 6.0.98

Discuss it here

You might also be interested in reviews on:

Destinator 6, The TomTom 910/710, Route 66, PaPaGO v7, Destinator PN, CoPilot v5, The tomtom ONE and The tomtom GO 300