Magellan Beats Garmin To The Punch WIth Their First iPhone GPS App

roadmate

Magellan today introduced its first GPS app for the iPhone.

The app looks as if it has the bells and whistles of its standalone Roadmate brethren, like turn-by-turn directions, highway lane guidance and voice guidance with spoken street names.

In fact, its siblings might be a little jealous as the iPhone version adds a pedestrian mode, in-app music control and direct navigation to contacts on your address book.

The icing on the cake is an iPhone car kit Magellan is releasing in December with a GPS receiver that improves accuracy over the iPhone’s, an amped speaker and Bluetooth capability

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Magellan Premium Car Kit Boosts Your iPhone’s GPS Capabilities

The app costs $79.99 and the car kit will set you back a further $129.99

5 comments »

About the author

When he was eight, Eli Milchman came home from frolicking in the Veld one day and was given an Atari 400. Since then, his fascination with technology has made him an intrepid early adopter of whatever charming new contraption crosses his path — which explains why he's Cult of Mac's technology editor. He calls San Francisco home, where he works as a journalist and photographer. Eli has contributed to the pages of Wired.com and BIKE Magazine, among others. Hang with him on Twitter.

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Jeff
I would suspect that this is a simple “make money while you can” situation…Suspect that Google’s app will kill most of these.
blondepianist
$80 is pretty steep for an app, but it’s still great to see a turn-by-turn navigation app for a one-time fee of less than $100.
http://www.kmctechguy.com Kmctechguy
Would love to see this available with Europe maps. I need a good navigation solution on my iPhone. Can’t wait to try it.
Tony
Just purchased Navigon’s app for the iPhone and used it Saturday for a 3 hr drive out of town. It was spot on and pretty easy to use. The reality view and lane assist were very welcomed at interchanges that tripped my Garmin unit up.
Not sure I would consider Magellan as I discounted their GPS units during my first purchase.
http://msn.com Pete
Eli, I think the headline is misleading. Pretty much everyone is going to beat Garmin to the iPhone, because I suspect their partnership agreement with Asus precludes them from developing competitive applications for smartphones. Really puts the pressure on Garmin to focus on the nuvifone, when their natural inclination is to take their GPS gospel to the streets, so everyone can enjoy their smooth user interface. Until the Garmin-Asus partnership dissolves (which doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon), we have to swallow the news that others are jumping on the iPhone gravy train or preparing for battle against Google’s free turn-by0turn app.