[Galaxy Tab General] ResonanceZero:
I've been testing CoPilot, Google Navigation, Navigon, and Sygic Aura over the last few weeks, both around town and on a slightly longer-distance trip from Maryland to Pennsylvania (USA), both driving and acting as a navigator for another driver. The hardware in question is a T-Mobile Galaxy Tab.

Current winner: Garmin. Oh, alright, of the above options: Navigon with pre-planning done by Google Nav.

Seriously though, as someone coming from a Garmin device, every single option for the Android seems to suck in one or more ways. More details follow.

CoPilot good: Cheap. Very cheap. Pre-downloads your maps, so it works offline. Interface is fairly clean and responsive. Editing map waypoints wasn't great, but was passable. I didn't get to test marking off-address locations.

CoPilot bad: I don't know if the version I was testing with was just a one-off buggy release that was fixed later, but it got discarded pretty quickly when I discovered that 1) it couldn't read my contacts list, 2) it failed to re-route when I didn't stick to the plan it proposed, 3) it attempted to route me through a fence and over a section of road that had been closed for years. After that experience, I didn't even try to continue testing, so I'm not sure how well its voice directions work, and it's been long enough now that I don't remember how easy it was to get to the directions list or if it even had traffic warnings (I don't think it did). It also can't get an early lock on your position from a network IP, a problem it shares with Navigon.

Google Nav good: Free. Map interface is gloriously beautiful, with traffic indicators that are easy to understand at a glance and the ability to overlay satellite photos for a better idea of what you're driving through. It's two easy clicks to get a top-three-routes list, a feature only shared by Navigon, and also only two clicks from the route details. It can get a frighteningly good idea of where you are just from your network connection, wireless or 3G, without a GPS lock (it correctly determined which building I was in, inside a secured U.S. Government compound, without a GPS). It accessed my contacts mostly correctly, with one odd bug (below).

Google Nav bad: Doesn't function without a network connection, and whatever system it uses for caching sucks, as it reloads maps on a far too-frequent basis. In addition, it doesn't let you store waypoints locally, but auto-synchronizes with maps.google.com, which if you care much about your privacy is a bit of a problem. In addition, you can't store off-address locations, or at least, not in any obvious fashion. To do it at all requires getting an address pin posted via Google Maps (a separate app!), then starring that location. Map loading was a bit glitchy, with squares sometimes failing to load unless the map was resized. Text-to-speech voice synthesis is awful and difficult to understand. A bug in the contact reader caused my own name to show up 6 times, each with just one piece of my address as opposed to my full address (it looks fine in the Contacts app itself, and no other apps have had that problem).

Navigon good: passably clean interface, though arguably the least pretty of all of the ones I tested, pre-downloads maps and works fine offline. Easy access to multiple routes, though only when initially setting a destination (i.e. if you want to change your mind, it requires a number of presses first to cancel out of the current navigation, then reselecting the destination and picking a different route). This is made up for by the fact that it will learn your driving paths and present them as a route alternative, and is the only app of those tested to do so. Traffic information is present, but only for major roads/highways and is more cluttered and hard to read than Google Nav. This is somewhat made up for by the fact that it will automatically route around traffic if you tell it to. Very clear "good lane" indicators. Reasonably clear text-to-speech (though it will still mangle street names occasionally, as even the best TTS systems will), and a human-recorded directions-only voice that is very clear, even if it does sound a bit like a lifelong smoker. You can insert saved waypoints as additional routing points to create multi-waypoint routes, though you cannot save the combined route to use later except through the auto-learning mechanism, which can be a bit hit-or-miss unless you use a particular route consistently. It will show you the local speed limit, and has an option to sound an alert if you are more than x speed over, or are approaching a known red-light camera or radar trap.

Navigon bad: The ability to locate a non-specific address on the map and save it as a waypoint kind of sucks. This is to say, it still does it better than Google Nav, which can't do it at all, but Navigon will only let you do it by browsing the map manually before you have set a destination, then moving the pin and setting that as your destination, then saving as a favorite. You can't search for an address then move the pin. You can't even search for the address, abort, go back to the map, and reset a pin because the main map location will reset to its pre-address-search position, so when you're trying to tune around a known location, you have to find it, attempt to direct to it, futz with the map a bit until you're sure you can find it again, abort nav, find the location from raw map, and favorite. Map dragging also isn't as smooth as on the others: when you drag, you get a blank area until you let go, and you can't just flick-scroll through an area, and you have to use the dedicated zoom in/out icons, rather than doing pinch-to-zoom. The most major problem I have with it is that you cannot view the list of coming directions. You can see the overview on the map, of course, but you can't see the road/turn list, and if you're over a mile away from the next direction change, it won't tell you which way you'll need to turn, though it will tell you what road name to watch for. The interface is also often nonintuitive -- as an example, the command to mark the current position to a Favorites waypoint is hidden under the "GPS Info", which is where the raw Lat/Long/Alt numbers are listed. This is also by far the most expensive software package, costing $60, compared to Sygic Aura's $30 for USA, or CoPilot's $5.

Sygic Aura good: Pretty, smooth-scrolling maps and interface. Rough initial position can be found from network information without a GPS lock, though it doesn't show as much detail as Google Nav, so I can't tell if it actually found my building. Maps are downloaded offline and available without a connection. The special features of Sygic Aura are tied to its social networking site, however, so it suddenly acquires some of the weaknesses of Google Nav. If you don't care about your privacy, or that you're leaving evidence of where you were interfering with law enforcement, or that you need a continuous data connection, you can use that social networking to contribute speed trap (or other road hazard) warnings that other members can also see, get weather information, and other information about your destination. Sygic Aura had by far the best options for voice directions, with male and female options for just about every civilized region, including different voices for the USA and England (though I did find the English female voice clearer than the American female voice, even as an American). You can flick around the map and add waypoints, though this feature was often buggy. It *is* possible to get a list of upcoming directions, but it's not convenient to do so while driving, as it's buried a full four menu levels deep. Of the paid navigation apps, this is the only one that offers an extended trial period, with maps being available for a full week for free, rather than just the 24-hour return period that the Marketplace allows.

Sygic Aura bad: Traffic monitoring is an optional component with an additional fee, and I didn't test it. The click-to-waypoint is convenient, but difficult to use accurately (it gives you giant targeting brackets, not a pin with a point) and often buggy (I had a hard time getting it to give me the option on several occasions). Multi-waypoint routes don't appear to be supported. Browsing the map while navigation is underway can also cause the app to freeze for as long as fifteen seconds or so, making me wonder more than once if it had crashed. Road information also isn't as detailed -- while Google Nav and Navigon both found the internal road names on the facility I work at, Sygic Aura did not (Navigon, in fact, got bonus points from me for actually having a voiced message for "Warning: your destination is in a restricted area."). Sygic Aura also doesn't present multiple pathing options, nor does it allow insertion of a waypoint to force an alternate route.

Garmin good: This isn't fair, of course, since Garmin doesn't actually have their Android software out yet (though supposedly it's on the way), but there are some things I've learned to expect from a GPS unit from using a GPSMap 76Cs that just aren't available on Android apps. Some of it is simply interface refinement; from the main map, it should be one press to the directions list and back, simple to zoom, and simple to add a waypoint (even if it's with a nondescriptive name like "1"). It should also be possible to pre-set routes with multiple waypoints, then reverse them to take the same path back, and possible to do all the work on a desktop app where the maps are easier to read, then transfer waypoint/route/track information back and forth between the PC and the GPS.

Garmin bad: Since I'm being unfair to Android above, let me be unfair to the Garmin for a moment as well and note that there have been a few improvements over my 7-year-old device (some of which also exist on later models). First, I can fit *all* of my maps, rather than just some. Second, I can get actual voice turns (I'm gritching about the quality of the voices, when on my Garmin all I got were different patterns of beeping to indicate what was coming). The screen on a Tab is much larger and easier to follow, and waypoint names can have more than 10 letters. Perhaps most significantly, multiple-route generation and selection is a killer feature, and traffic monitoring is kind of cool too. The lack of this in Sygic Aura, combined with some of the bugginess of the interface, is what eventually caused me to go with Navigon instead, despite the fact that it is more than twice as expensive.

What I've taken to doing when running solo is getting one set of directions from Google Nav before I leave, browsing the directions list to get an idea of what my roads will be, then setting a similar route on Navigon and letting it do the actual guidance.

In the spring, I may look into topographical maps.

I hope someone finds this wall of text useful. Your Mileage May Vary.