Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Quick review: Navionics iPhone Charts V2

Quick update as just downloaded the latest version of the Navionics iPhone charts application. The ongoing laptop problems mean probably didn't downloaded as soon as possible (sorry to those Googling for reviews of it)

It's a full point update, to V2.0 no less. There is an argument you should never buy release 1 of any software so now is a good time to look again at it.

And the initial impressions are good - we have waypoints (hurrah, pic above), there is the ability to track the ship's position on the screen, you can also select cruising speed and fuel consumption (see below)

Fuel consumption sounds like Navionics are aiming more at the motor boat market than sailing.

I've been trying to do things like enter way points directly as lat/longs which is pretty crucial, and move them around having created a route, but all have managed to do is create a lot of new way points. Maybe because of that there is a very useful "undo" feature - kudos to Navionics for that as undo is not as easy to implement as it is to use!

I've also been trying to find the "all new" tide display tools, but that seems to need the full charts rather than the free ones, and those files are so large that it requires the laptop to be ready to download from the Apple store.

More later when had a chance to download the software for the full charts. I might (gasp) even have to see if can find a User Guide (the horror, the horror)


Note: update with more screenshots here.