Hi bartmanekul
could you please send me a copy of your review as well please. would appreciate that very much. Just bidding on a copilot 7 software on ebay and your review would help me decide how aggressively i am going to bid.
my email address is [Removed]
thanks
Done, removed your email address from your post, otherwise spambots will get it.
Its online, of sorts.
Excuse the website, theres no way Id usually let be seen in such a state, but I still have not heard anything, so heres the review:
http://www.symbiansatnav.com/copilot.html
There will be more screenshots in time.
It looks reasonably nasty in IE, and even worse in firefox so Im told, best I can do in a few hours. But it will save me emailing the review to loads of people.
If anyone would like to get involved with this website, let me know, be it in any capacity (especially anyone with HTML skills 😉 ).
Why is it that GPS programs gets me excited every single time? I wanna buy them ALL! Been that way since I first got TomTom running on my SPV C500 (HTC Typhoon). GPS on the phone is just plain COOL 😊
A shortcut to your CoPilot review is now on my desktop and I look forward to finding the time to read it. Thanks! 😊
You feel the same way about it as me then, check your PMs 😉
Many thanks for the review. I disagree with you about the presentation, though. I think it's very good and certainly better than I would have created.
I am glad that I didn't buy before reading your review because I particularly want to use the traffic feature and ALK made no mention either on the phone or on their web site (that I can find, anyway) that this feature cannot be used with a Symbian device. So I guess that rules out CoPilot for my Nokia N95.
This is very disappointing but I am grateful to you for saving me the hassle of having to return the product.
I am amazed that ALK hide this important information.😡
Thanks again,
Chris
Thanks, but you didnt see it before it had a little change 😉
Im not sure on traffic info though. I think you can still have traffic information, but not TMC. TMC is the Traffic Message Channel, which is delivered over FM. Since TMC is free, Im guessing the £34.99 traffic subscription for 2 years is data transmitted (like Garmin).
I *assume* the normal traffic subscription works, but for to be sure I can ask them if you wish, but Im afraid I will not have an answer until Monday/Tuesday.
Edt: after reading up about TMC, it appears its a paid for service, I thought it was free. So definatly worth contacting Copilot to clarify this.
Nice review - thanks.
Do you know if/how well it uses the internal screen on an E90 ?
Not sure, I dont think ALK officially support it. You could try PMing this guy - http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showpost.php?p=375391&postcount=27
Or hope he comes back on the forum.
Thanks -
Do you know if there is a "preferred solution" (other than Garmin because of the card lockdown) for the E90 ?
Terry1100 wrote:Thanks -Do you know if there is a "preferred solution" (other than Garmin because of the card lockdown) for the E90 ?
Depends who you ask as to which is prefferred, but Im not sure of E90 compatibility tbh.
I'll add it to my list of things to do - make a supported device/program table.
But that might take a while, so if Garmin and copilot are out, your next best bet might be route66. Im unsure as to E90 compatibility though.
Thanks - TBH for the amount I use it, I can stick with paying for a few days of Nokia Maps guidance when I need it until something else comes along (unless the E90 is too "yesterday" for the developers).
Route 66 (directly from them) is only €119 for all of Europe. Is anyone using it with an E90 ?
Bart, do you have one of your excellent reviews for R66 online ?
Not yet, sorry. Like everything else, its on the cards, but just not the time to do it at the moment, and its not at the top of the list either.
As soon as I get the website in a decent state, I'll do the R66 review. Apart from Copilot, that seems to be the most asked about satnav at the moment.
But a quick and dirty opinion -
Its got a reasonable interface, and I like the menus etc.
My main issues are:
Maps have not been updated for ages - latest is 2007 Q2 (unless one has been released very recently)
Its got the 'bear right/left' issue worst out of all of them.
The routes it generates are sometimes very bad.
But like I say, you need to talk to a E90 owner thats used it (or Route66 themselves) to see how compatible it is with your phone, as Im unsure on that.
Hi Bartmanekul,
Just spoke with ALK tech and they confirm that TMC does not actually work with CoPilot 7 except in Germany. Not just Symbian phones but for everything.
Traffic info is still available, however, via the internet so Symbian phone users can still make full use of the traffic functionality.
I also requested an idea about the data transmission estimates as many phone users may need to pay an additional amount to their service provider for this. Although, it will be included in my 30Mb per month package from Orange.
The estimates are based on CoPilot 6 but she said that they should be relevant for ver 7, also.
2 hours usgae per day with 20 working days = 2Mb per month.
7 hours usage per day with 20 working days = 7Mb per month.
So the traffic subscription works? Thats good to know.
And thanks for posting those usage figures, I'll probably end up using those.
And if its anywhere near that, I think you would find it extremely difficult to get those to be any sort of large chunk of your data allowance.
Bought CP7 (the one certified for Symbian 60 S3) and tried to install to micro SD card in phone Nokia N95 (not the 8Gb model)
I received the instructions from the ALK tech dept but went through them over the phone to be on the safw side as there are a couple of missing details like destination folders for files.
The basic process is to add maps to the phone via the CP Central application and then to copy 4 folders (Copilot, Private, Resource, Sys) from C:\Program Files\CoPilot\Central\CentralData\Installer to the root of the memory card.
The techie advised that when the warning message pops up that each folder already exists on the memory card just OK it and select 'Yes to All'.
I made the assumption that each of these folders only existed on my memory card as a result of the first part of the above process, ie the adding of the maps.
This is not the case for the 'SYS' folder, however, which already existed on my memory card and contained a lot of applications. Following the ALK instructions, many of my applications have been corrupted and need to be re-installed.
In addition the CoPilot installation does not automatically start-up when re-inserting the SD card - all of the above was done within a card reader, as per ALK recommendations.
This issue has been escalated to next line support which I am informed will take about 48 hours.
Conclusion - Not one bit impressed with ALK and will probably return the software for a refund. If the existence of the SYS folder is what is causing the issues then this should have been picked up during testing. I'll update you if I get a response from ALK before returning the software.
Hi Guys
I finally took the plunge and bought copilot 7 for my n95 8gb phone. reviews have helped me a lot in the past and i thought it is time i wrote one myself to help others decide.
i have used garmin xt, tomtom 6 and copilot 7 on my n95 8gb ( latest firmware v15). i have found those reviews that don't sit on the fence and those that compare the product to a gold standard useful. So i will be comparing copilot 7 to tomtom 6 in my review ( no point comparing it to garmin xt which in my opinion is inferior to tomtom 6 anyway and frustrated me in more ways than one). So here is my short review. After getting conflicting advice from 4 different
copilot technical support people which made installation a tad unpleasant i decided to just copy the 4 folders ( except the 2577 folder) from the supplied memory card to my n95 8gb through data transfer mode. copilot then installed without a glitch. ( by the way bought the software on handtec where it cost � 65 with UK and ireland maps)
Things copilot 7 did better than tomtom 6
1. The user interface is in my opinion better than tomtom overall. nicely laid out
and one quickly gets used to them.
2. the guidance screen looks better than tomtom. nice bright screen with the
POI nicely laid out.
3. lot of choice to personalize copilot
4. few nice touches like automatic day/ night mode.
5. Nice little perks like free speed camera updates and configurable voice
warnings.
6. Calculating a journey is faster than tomtom and re routing is near
instantaneous.
7. For what its worth when u call copilot you get to speak to a person real
quick.
Things tomtom did better than copilot
1. 2 out of 3 times tomtom's route is shorter than copilot's by 3 to 4 miles. i
think that this is due to the the difference in maps that they use. i still have
tomtom 6 on my PDA and plotting routes ( both softwares using the quickest
route) to manchester and heathrow airport from sheffield i found that the
journey time was the same but tomtom's route is shorter by 3 to 4 miles.
2. this is probably a one off but when i navigate to my place of work the copilot
software directs me straight into a wall! the entrance to the hospital has
been moved more than 5 years ago!. Navteq maps need a bit more work.
Some POI around my home no long exist ( like non existent petrol stations)
Where tomtom and copilot differ
people who have got used to tomtom will take to copilot 7 like duck to water. All of the features are very intuitive. However i miss a couple of things that i have got used to on tomtom.
1. No browse map feature on copilot 7.
2. No navigating from A to B feature
However both these features can be accessed from plan trip option and is only a matter of getting used to. However moving the map to pick a point on map to navigate to, is not very fluid ie the map takes a bit of time to move
the above is only based on 4 days of use. However for those who have a GPS enabled phones and have the itch to find a tomtom like software that uses internal GPS, look no futher.
weighing up the pros and cons so far, i am pleased with copilot and tomtom ( who seem to have no interest in getting a software out that uses internal GPS on mobile phones) is already a distant memory.
robinkings
The issue (below) was escalated within ALK on Friday 09/05/08. The advice received 30 minutes ago was to format the memory card in my phone. So they are suggesting that I lose absolutely everything in order to install CP7.
I may as well use the SD card that came with the application but then I would need to carry 2 cards around and keep swapping them over which is what I wanted to avoid and the reason that I went for CP7 rather than Garmin.
Having waited months for the Symbian S3 version of CP7 I think that they could at least have provided a proper installation routine using a .sis file rather than expecting customers to remove all of their existing applications.
The first line support staff i.e. the people that ALK actually allow customers to talk to are very polite and try to be as helpful as possible. Unfortunately, the second line support seem not to liaise directly with customers and this leads to a very inefficient communication path.
The issue has been re-escalated and I am told that the technician intends to call me on Friday. I have no idea what is so special about Friday but my impressions of ALK are becoming more and more negative.
LoneRanger wrote:Bought CP7 (the one certified for Symbian 60 S3) and tried to install to micro SD card in phone Nokia N95 (not the 8Gb model)
I received the instructions from the ALK tech dept but went through them over the phone to be on the safw side as there are a couple of missing details like destination folders for files.
The basic process is to add maps to the phone via the CP Central application and then to copy 4 folders (Copilot, Private, Resource, Sys) from C:\Program Files\CoPilot\Central\CentralData\Installer to the root of the memory card.The techie advised that when the warning message pops up that each folder already exists on the memory card just OK it and select 'Yes to All'.
I made the assumption that each of these folders only existed on my memory card as a result of the first part of the above process, ie the adding of the maps.
This is not the case for the 'SYS' folder, however, which already existed on my memory card and contained a lot of applications. Following the ALK instructions, many of my applications have been corrupted and need to be re-installed.
In addition the CoPilot installation does not automatically start-up when re-inserting the SD card - all of the above was done within a card reader, as per ALK recommendations.This issue has been escalated to next line support which I am informed will take about 48 hours.
Conclusion - Not one bit impressed with ALK and will probably return the software for a refund. If the existence of the SYS folder is what is causing the issues then this should have been picked up during testing. I'll update you if I get a response from ALK before returning the software.
I finally got bored waiting for a response so backed up the phone memory card and formatted it.
I removed and re-installed the CoPilot Central application from the PC and then copied (with memory card in a card reader) all of the folders from
C:\Program Files\CoPilot\Central\Central Data\Installer to the memory card (as advised by ALK).
On re-inserting the card into the N95, the installation process fired-up and completed.
Using the card reader, I then loaded the maps to the card from CoPilot Central.
The final step was to re-install of the other applications lost when the card was formatted. As there is a proper installation routine for these, the .exe files were added to the SYS folder on the memory card without issue.
Everything seems to be working now but what a ridiculous procedure to have to go through!
One additional thing that I noticed was that the safety camera option from the CP7 menu on the phone is greyed-out until the software is activated. I have not seen a reference to this in any of the ALK documentation which is strange because customers are given a 4 day 'grace period' before having to carry out activation.
I must point out that I have had a lot of feedback from 1st line support at ALK who seem to fully appreciate why I have been so annoyed about the clunky installation process. They have been polite during all of our conversations and done their best to assist even insisting that I contact them with any further issues - which I hope will not be necessary!
Apologies for the length of this post but I hope that it may be of use to someone.
LoneRanger wrote:The issue (below) was escalated within ALK on Friday 09/05/08. The advice received 30 minutes ago was to format the memory card in my phone. So they are suggesting that I lose absolutely everything in order to install CP7.I may as well use the SD card that came with the application but then I would need to carry 2 cards around and keep swapping them over which is what I wanted to avoid and the reason that I went for CP7 rather than Garmin.
Having waited months for the Symbian S3 version of CP7 I think that they could at least have provided a proper installation routine using a .sis file rather than expecting customers to remove all of their existing applications.
The first line support staff i.e. the people that ALK actually allow customers to talk to are very polite and try to be as helpful as possible. Unfortunately, the second line support seem not to liaise directly with customers and this leads to a very inefficient communication path.
The issue has been re-escalated and I am told that the technician intends to call me on Friday. I have no idea what is so special about Friday but my impressions of ALK are becoming more and more negative.
Hmmm. Thats a rather long winded get around for putting it onto a memory card/mass memory.
But still, thanks for putting that up, it will no doubt help many others.
Hopefully copilot can refine this.
been reading this forum for a while, and patiently waiting for the past year for tomtom to release an update, also using route66 mobile 7 since they included support for the internal gps, as back up for when im not in my car and forgot my bluetooth gps
after reading all the reviews from various posters i can't decide if i should buy route66 8 or copilot 7
the thing i hate about route66 7 is the routing (amazingly bad and rerouting, it just keeps on taking you back to the original route ie make a u turn make a u turn, rather than work out a new route) if mobile 8 has these problems it would drive me mad!!
the main feature i use on tomtom is the navigating from A to B feature, due to my work (self employed working in a different place everyday), does co-pilot have this feature? and how easy is it to use it?
if only i could trial the software for a few days it would be great!!
any help greatly appreciated
There is a 4 day before CP7 must be activated.
Prior to my purchase I was advised by a techie at ALK that this was the trial period.
Please confirm this with them, though and make a note of who you speak to. Also confirm this with the retailer because it was news to the one that I used.
does anyonw know how to get agps to work with co-pilot 7?
Time to fix without agps takes way too long, but co-pilot 7 does not seem to
activate the agps, I've even resorted to starting up nokia maps first until it gets a fix and then starting co-pilot