Publications
Partners
THE CELLPHONE IS steadily swallowing the GPS, just as it did the pocket camera and wristwatch. GPS navigation was once the domain of specialised companies which, like Kodak in its industry, are being forced to adapt or die in a world where cellphones have GPS chips and Google provides maps of the world for free.
NDrive is one company embracing the shift with GPS software designed for cellphones, which we tested on an Apple iPhone and found to be comparable to dedicated GPS navigation devices. One of the best things about using any GPS on a smartphone device is that you have a permanent 3G Internet connection to exploit. That can be used to stream maps à la Google or for other features. In the case of NDrive, the Internet connection is used for assisted GPS mode, which allows the GPS to connect to satellites much quicker than offline GPSs do. While disconnected GPSs can take several minutes to find satellites, assisted GPSs download co-ordinates and connect in seconds.
NDrive has maps for most of southern Africa and comes with the default language set to Afrikaans. However, a long list of other languages is installed, including Zulu and, of course, English.
In terms of features, the NDrive has everything you'd expect from a Tom Tom or Garmin GPS, including a point of interest (POI) database and the ability to reroute around roadblocks and the like. It also has a database of fixed radars designed to save you from speeding fines. However, I deactivated that feature within minutes because it warns you of radars - even if they're on the other side of the road or on flyovers. The GPS knows which road you're on and in which direction you're heading but it doesn't use that information to determine which radars are relevant to you. So if you drive through a busy interchange, such as Gilooly's in Johannesburg, it goes crazy for minutes.
It also annoyingly requires you to enter city names first when entering an address, which really means a suburb's name. That's a common problem with GPS devices, where you must first guess the suburb before it lets you enter the street name.
But for the most part the NDrive is a highly competent GPS navigation solution that will get you to where you need to go. It's a tad expensive at US$70 (around R580) but is a lot cheaper than a GPS device and a lot more than Google Maps Navigation, which will be free and available for the iPhone soon.
