TomTom Mobile 5: a walk on the mild side

Crave spent the weekend wandering the streets in the company of TomTom Mobile 5, a sat-nav solution that runs on your mobile phone (in our case, Nokia's widescreen smart phone, the 7710).

The TomTom Mobile package comprises a wireless GPS receiver, a MultiMediaCard containing the software and maps, and a charger that plugs into your car's cigarette lighter (drivers are a bigger market than walkers). The GPS receiver is about the size of a credit card (88 by 43 by 15mm), weighs 68g, connects to your phone via Bluetooth and has a magnetic bottom plate that's completely useless for sticking it to your shoulder (and we doubt it works much better on a plastic dashboard). Nevertheless, there's something very sci-fi about receiving signals from space on a device that gets lost in your pocket.

The TomTom software provides voice prompts as well as a constantly updated map that shows your current position, route and speed. Our gadget-hating companion was mortified by the voice prompts, claiming it was one thing to listen to them in the privacy of your own car, but quite another to walk down the street with a disembodied female voice dishing out directions. In practice, the lady in the phone speaks rarely, offering instructions only as you approach a junction -- or sometimes just afterwards. Our speed of just 3mph (akin to a car in a massive tailback) occasionally threw her off, enabling us to sneak round corners before she'd told us which way to go. She also routed us down the largest, busiest, most car-friendly roads, but didn’t complain when we chose the quieter side streets. Once it became apparent we were going our own way, she politely updated the route to accommodate our deviant behaviour.

Although we could have found Pizza Express without any help, we can imagine phone-based sat-nav being useful when you're walking through a strange town. Next weekend we'll fire up the diesel-guzzling, atmosphere-polluting, road-congesting, pigeon-squashing vehicle of doom and let you know how TomTom copes at higher speeds. -ML