i had the opportunity to check out the tomtom iphone app firsthand and i have to say that at first glance the iphone app looked really good, but upon further inspection there were some glaring omissions.

the good
the GPS app itself works reasonably well. the interface is very similar like their dedicated devices. it’s reasonably easy to use and after some use, quite intuitive. the menus actually feel a little simpler to use that the dedicated devices.

the update of the map while driving is actually not bad when you are on the move. when you are slow, though, the weaknesses of the iphone’s GPS are painfully obvious. the update doesn’t really register movement well when you are moving less than 10-15mph.

the bad
1GB of storage space is required to install the app.

no text to speech functionality!

POI appear to only be looked up in DB, no inet updates.

so after all is said and done is it worth the $100 for the app? well, functionally, the iphone app gives similar functionality as the low end tomtom units with text to speech, so it’s a nice consolidation of devices.

it’s unfortunate that tomtom didn’t include the text to speech functionality. one would think that the iphone would be able to handle it. still, if i had the app, i’d be tempted not to bring along my tomtom unit when travelling.