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Nokia 500 Auto Navigation

Reviewed by

Bonnie Cha

on 07/23/2008

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Page 2

Maps are available in 2D and 3D view with day and night colors, and you can change it so north is always at the top of your screen or the direction in which you are driving. There are various map screens that you can choose from, depending on your needs. In tracking mode, you get more technical data such as elevation, geographic coordinates, and satellite connections, while browsing mode will simply display your current position and the name of your current street. Finally, the Navigation screen will provide the information you need for a planned destination, including the current and upcoming street names, direction and distance to your next turn, and distance to destination. A plus and minus icon are available in all modes for zooming in and out of the map.

To complement the visual aid, the Nokia 500 Auto Navigation unit offers text- and voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, as well as text-to-speech functionality so the system speaks actual street names. There's a built-in FM transmitter so you can have audio piped through your car's stereo. Note: Be sure that you choose a voice with the TTS label (General Settings > VoiceSkin), otherwise you'll just get generic directions. We're not sure why text-to-speech isn't set as the default--who wouldn't want this feature, right?

The GPS device also doubles as a hands-free speaker system with its integrated Bluetooth. We're pleased to see that the Nokia 500 will download your phone's address book, so you don't have to manually enter numbers. The unit also supports voice dialing from a compatible phone. Plus, if a point-of-interest has a phone number listed, you can dial out directly to that business.

Finally, the Nokia 500 has multimedia features, including a music and video player and an image viewer. The integrated media player supports MP3, WMA, AAC, and eAAC+ music files and MPEG4, 3GP, and WMV video formats.

Performance
We tested the Nokia 500 Auto Navigation in San Francisco, and from a cold start, it took the unit about three minutes to get a fix on our location under cloudy skies, while subsequent starts took anywhere from a few seconds to a minute. The receiver did a good job of tracking our position as we drove throughout the city. It did lose its lock when we drove through the Broadway Tunnel, but it was able to pick up a signal soon after we exited the tunnel.

We used the Nokia 500 on two trips. On the first journey, we plotted a course from the Marina District of San Francisco to Sunnyvale, Calif. We punched in our start and end points, and the system was pretty quick to calculate directions. Having never been to this destination, we took the Nokia 500 for its word and set out on our trip. We're happy to report that it got us there efficiently and without any problems. We also tested our standard route from the Marina to CNET's downtown headquarters, and again, no major problems. We missed several turns to test the route recalculation rate, which was fast enough to get us back on course. All that said, we have to say the text-to-speech directions were pretty bad. The voice sounded very robotic and while we understood what it was saying, it mangled quite a few street names.

We paired the Nokia 500 with the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330 for Verizon Wireless and had no problems connecting or downloading the phone's contact list. We were also able to make and receive calls. If you're interested in the multimedia experience (you know how I feel about GPS and multimedia), music playback sounded a bit blown out through the system's speakers, though you can plug in a pair of headphones or stream it through your car stereo via FM transmitter. Watching video was fine in short spurts. The Nokia 500 Auto Navigation has a rated battery life of two hours of continuous use.