TomTom for iPhone now available in US

I’m a dork...

I will probably get tomtom but right now I am trying out Waze, which is a free turn by turn social app that let's users report traffic, police traps, etc. Pretty cool concept. Not sure of the map quality at this point, but they say it learns.

After messing with it for abit, I have to say its the best GPS offering on iPhone so far for one reason: Its actually built for the iPhone, and not just some port of the GPS they already had, like iGo and Synic was. It feels right at home on the iPhone, and it has no issues so far.

Only gripes are the usual ones that seem to be rather universal now with GPS software: No TTS, no traffic. But also: What about adding voices? There's tons of navigation voices for TomTom GPSes, it would be nice to use them here too.

TomTom has posted the app's manual at

http://download.tomtom.com/open/manuals/app_for_iphone/refman/TomTom-app-en-US.pdf

Note, it contains some information on the TomTom iPhone mount. It's bluetooth at least with some functions. I wonder if it is just for handsfree profile or if it is actually a bluetooth enabled GPS receiver and that's what's holding up the release of the mount???

The amount of times I need, or could at least find a satnav useful can be counted on one hand but the other day I thought I would give CoPilot a go. For £25 it more than did the job and I couldn't justify spending any more than that. The amount they're charging seems a lot. I would say that on my 2 hour journey my 3G got really hot and then the sound went out as it kept saying that the headphones were connected, so it would be interesting to see how different apps perform in that regard.

I think it's a great value for families with multiple iPhones, assuming that it's like all other apps in that I can install it on multiple devices. My wife and I both end up with GPS navigators for $50 each and no extra devices to carry around. Not too shabby.

Now... I wonder how it will work with my FM transmitter... might have to bite the bullet and by a new car stereo with an aux plug.

I assume the $99 is the early adopter fee and it'll prolly go on sale in a month or so. I bet it ends up around $50 or thereabouts.

It makes no sense to me to pay $100 for an app like this. For the price dedicated units can be had, typically with bigger screens. Let's face it this is a rip off plain and simple. Why would anyone plunk down $100 ($99) for this?

The problem for me with the standalone is that I can connect my iPhone with bluetooth in my car or I can connect a standalone, but not both at the same time. Moreover, I find that swapping between music, my phone and the gps within one device to be an advantage, not a disadvantage. This is particularly true when I travel (by plane) to a destination and then rent a car, which I do rather often. So whether it's Navigon or TomTom, the all-in-one approach is a benefit not a drawback.
Obviously this won't be the case for everyone, but for me something like this sounds like it's much closer to what I'm looking for.

No traffic?? Come on, Tom Tom, everything is there for you to integrate live traffic and net-connected search features. There is nothing then to differentiate this from the others in the app store.