This review was created by Mike Arrigo .
He did such an outstanding job that wanted to post it on my journal.
Thanks Mike for a great review.
Hello everyone. Since I do have phones that use windows mobile and the
symbian platforms, I did purchase way finder access and Mobile Geo, which
allows me to have GPS features on both operating systems. Since I have both,
I thought I would post my thoughts on both of them. Both are good products,
but there are some differences which I will mention. First though, in
fairness, way finder access has been out for around a year, where as mobile
geo was just released recently, and I'm sure both will improve over time.
Also, remember that these are only my views on each product. A feature that
is important to one person may not be to another. Fortunately, you can try
each product before purchasing it. Also, currently Way Finder Access only
works on the Symbian operating system, where as Mobile Geo only works on
Windows Mobile. So, the type of phone you have will determine which product
you will need to purchase, unless you choose to switch phones.
Before I get in to the details and comparing of each product, let me say
that I think both products provide the functionality a blind person needs to
explore their environment and navigate to a destination. There are
advantages and disadvantages to each which I will talk about, but when it's
all said and done, I think both products are fairly even. Now let's compare
some aspects of each in more detail.
First, the method of storing the maps is different for the two products. For
Mobile Geo, you download the maps, and store them on a memory card in your
phone. This has advantages and disadvantages. You don't have to be in a
coverage area for the product to work. However, if you travel to another
state for example, you must remember to load the maps for that state, or
hope that you will be able to access a computer once you arrive in order to
do this. Way Finder Access on the other hand, gets its map information from
the internet as it needs it. The advantage here is that you don't have to
worry about loading new maps in to your phone when traveling since they will
be downloaded when needed. Of course, if you should happen to be in an area
with no cell coverage, this won't work. For this reason, way finder access
does allow you to load the maps in to your phone the same way Mobile Geo
does. That said, cell carriers have quite good coverage now a days, so while
it's possible this could be a problem, I would say it's highly unlikely.
Also, since Access only works with Symbian phones, and Symbian phones only
work with GSM, in the United States you are limited to using either AT&T or
T-Mobile. On the other hand, there are Windows Mobile phones for GSM and
CDMA carriers, so Mobile Geo supports more devices. Personally, I think GSM
is a better way to go for a few reasons. First, it's considered the global
standard for cell phones, and is used throughout the world. Second, your
phone number is stored on a card, not in the phone itself. This allows you
to switch phones by simply moving the card to a different phone, and you are
not limited to the phones that the carrier provides. In order to use Way
Finder Access, you do need a data plan, and I will talk more about that in
the section on pricing for each product.
One reason many blind people purchase a GPS product is to know more about
their surroundings, such as intersections, and businesses that are close by.
I'm going to talk about intersections and points of interest separately
because the comparisons for both GPS products are different.
Both products provide features to automatically announce what you are close
to. Mobile geo provides the look around announcements, and you can set what
information you want to know about, such as street crossings and points of
interest. Access provides different views you can switch to, such as cross
roads near by, places near by, and all near by which combines both of these.
In the case of Mobile Geo, if you have the look around announcements
enabled, the software will announce the street you are on when it starts,
and will tell you what street you are approaching by telling you what street
is ahead of you, or it may indicate the approaching street is slightly to
the left or slightly to the right. It also provides commands for obtaining
more details about intersections you are close to.
Rather than indicating streets are on your left or right, way finder access
tells you the direction of the closest intersection. For example, it may
indicate that an intersection is 200 feet north. Access also announces this
as degrees, and I do hope they add a feature to disable this, as not
everyone is interested in the distance in degrees, feet and miles are much
more meaningful. While Access does not indicate if the crossing is ahead or
behind you, it is still obvious for a couple of reasons. First, if you use
the "where am I" feature, access will tell you the city you are in, the
street you are on, and the direction you are traveling in. So, for example,
if the software indicates you are walking north, and indicates an
intersection is north, north east, or north west, it's obvious you are
approaching it. Also, Access has the ability to automatically update the
list of intersections based on a time interval that you set, and if the
number of feet to an intersection is decreasing, you are obviously
approaching it. As far as I know, Mobile Geo does not provide a way to
adjust the time between updates for the look around announcements, it's hard
coded at 30 seconds. Way finder access also provides a command to obtain
more information about the intersection. So again, for automatically
announcing street crossings near by, I believe both products are equal.
Now let's look at how both products provide information about places that
are close to you, also known as points of interest. The type of information
provided is similar to what is provided for intersections. That is, mobile
geo will announce for example that McDonalds is 200 feet ahead and slightly
to the right, where as way finder access would say something like 200 feet
north east, 38 degrees, Mcdonalds. So, if you used the where am I feature in
access and it said you were heading north, you would know that McDonalds was
slightly on your right, since East is a quarter turn to the right, and north
east is less than a quarter turn. Both products provide a method for
obtaining more information about a point of interest, such as address, phone
number etc. You can even automatically call the place if you wish.
Way Finder Access does currently have an issue where it does not
automatically announce every point of interest in it's database. So, at this
time, Mobile Geo will automatically announce more places as you pass them
then Way Finder Access does. Hopefully this is something that will be fixed
soon. A good example of this is an ice cream place near where I live in
Saint Louis. In the places near by or all near by views, it is never
announced even when passing it. However, if I do a search for it by name, it
is found and I can create a root to it. Both products allow you to set the
categories of places you are interested in hearing about. For now, when it
comes to automatically announcing places close to you, I would give mobile
geo the advantage because it announces more places. If the issue I mentioned
can be corrected, so all points of interest are shown in the places and all
near by views, I think they both would be about equal.
Besides obtaining information about what is in your environment, the other
main purpose for having a GPS system is to receive directions for getting
from one place to another. Both products provide this feature, and I will do
some comparisons of these features for you.
First let's look at creating a root to a place that you are close to, which
may have been announced by the look around feature of Mobile Geo or in the
places near by or all near by views of Way Finder Access. It is quite easy
to create a root here, on the Mobile Geo main screen, press enter on the
point of interest which will give you more information about it such as
address and phone number. If you press enter again, you can choose to set it
as your destination and whether to create a vehicle or padestrian root. In
way finder access, in the places near by or all near by views, move to the
business you want to create the root for, and press the left soft key to
open the options menu. From here, you can choose to get more information
such as the address and phone number, or to navigate to the place, which
creates the root. The type of root that is created, vehicle or padestrian is
determined by changing an option in the settings screen of the program. One
thing I would suggest for way finder access is that it would allow you to
select vehicle or padestrian when creating the root rather than having to go
to the settings screen to do this. In Way Finder Access, there is also a
setting to determine how a root is created, either for the least distance,
or the fastest way. Usually, for a vehicle root, you want to choose the
fastest way, and for a padestrian root, you will want to choose the least
distance, but it's up to you in either case. Both products allow you to
access other points of interest besides the one that is closest to you. For
mobile geo, doing a long press of the number 8 on the keypad will open a
list of places that are close to you along with their location from where
you are. In Way Finder Access, there is no need to access a different
screen. If you are in the places near by view, the closest place is shown
first, if you want to see others that are close by, just arrow down. Both
products will allow you to create a root to a point of interest using the
methods described above.
Now let's talk about creating a root to an address or place of business you
may not be close to. Both products allow you to do this, however, this is
where I believe more work needs to be done in Mobile Geo to make this more
user friendly. In fairness, again, this is only the first release and I'm
sure this will get better as the product evolves. The quickest way to create
a root is to do a long press of the number 2 on the keypad, then choose set
destination. You now need to select a city to use if a default city has not
been set. You can choose a default city that will always be used which will
allow you to avoid this step. You then press the left soft key to go to the
next screen where you enter the house number, not the street yet. Press the
left soft key again and type the street name. Press the left soft key once
again and the program will search for the street. If more than one is found,
select the appropriate street from the list, and you can then choose what
type of root to create. Assuming your GPS receiver is connected, the root
will then be created from your location to the destination.
If you want to search for a place of business you must go to a different
screen, the long press of number 2 only searches for addresses. For this,
press the left soft key for the functions menu, and choose search, then
choose advanced search. Now enter the minimum distance from your location
and press the left soft key to go to the next screen, then enter the maximum
distance away from where you are that you want to search. Press the left
soft key again, and choose the category of place you are searching for.
Press the left soft key again, and choose the subcategory if any, then press
the left soft key once again. You can now enter the name of the place you
are looking for, or just leave this blank if you want to see all places in
the category you have chosen. Press the left soft key one more time and the
program will now conduct the search. When the list appears, you can select
the item you want, and create a root using the method I have already
described.
The way all of this is done in Way Finder Access, at least in my opinion is
far easier and less cluttered. In Way Finder Access, arrow to search and
select it. You can now type either the name of a business or a complete
address, no need for two different screens. While Access does provide a
place to enter a city or zip code, and a state, if you leave these blank and
your GPS is connected, it assumes that you want to search in the city where
you are based on the information from the GPS. I don't know how many miles
it does for the search, at least 100 I think, which could produce quite a
few results if you search for a common place such as McDonalds for instance.
If you want to limit your search to a category, press the left soft key to
open the options menu, and choose select category. Also, if you just want to
search for a category around where you are such as a resturaunt, leave the
field blank where you would enter the address or business name, and choose
select category from the options menu. Press the left soft key to open the
options menu, and select search. Assuming a match is found, the search
results list appears. Select the result that matches what you want, and the
root is created based again on how you have this set in the settings screen.
At this point, I think it is much faster and easier to do a search for a
point of interest or address in Way Finder Access. Both of these are done
from one screen, an address can be entered all at once, and there is no need
to set default cities or choose the city you want each time. If the city,
zip code and state are not entered, Access assumes, rightly so, that you
want the search to take place in the area where you are. You only need to
fill in these fields if perhaps you are going on a long vehicle trip.
Hopefully, in Mobile Geo, this process will become less cluttered in the
future. The one suggestion I would have for Way Finder Access in this area
is to allow you to limit the search to a certain number of miles or
kilometers in case you want to make your search in a certain distance range.
Ok, we have looked at searching for an address or business, now what about
root creation, instructions to guide you, and handling a situation where you
may go off track. When it comes to creating the root, by far, Way Finder
Access is faster. There is really no comparison here. On any of my Symbian
phones, after selecting the item from the results screen, the root is
created in a very short time, at most 5 seconds. This is because the root
creation is not actually done by the phone itself. What happens is, a
request is sent through the internet to the way finder server. The server
actually creates the root, then sends it to your phone. Obviously this could
be a problem if you were trying to create a root in an area where cell
coverage is not available, but again, with the coverage carriers have now,
this is highly unlikely. Also, once your phone has the root, even if you
were to lose the coverage for some reason, you would still continue to
receive instructions for this root. The only time you may have a problem is
if you were to go off of your root, and that particular spot had no
coverage. In that case, the program would not be able to create a new root
from where you were, but again, the chance of having no coverage at that
point is very slim.
For Mobile Geo, at least on the phone I am using, it takes quite a bit
longer to create a root, usually around 20 to 30 seconds. I am using an HTC
Mteor with 128 MB of memory, about 40 MB free, with the maps on a memory
card. The processor is a 300 MHZ processor, which is fast for a Mobile
Phone. It's running Windows Mobile 5, and there are no firmware updates for
it, so I'm assuming the firmware is current. Also, when calculating a few
roots, the connection to the receiver was lost, so I needed to reconnect and
then recreate the root. I'm not sure if this is actually a Mobile Geo
problem, or a problem with Windows Mobile itself, but it is something to be
aware of, and I don't think it's the receiver, since it has happened with a
few different ones that I have.
Once the root has been created, you will begin to receive instructions as
you travel. Mobile Geo provides two methods for following the root, you can
have it only announce the points that require you to make a turn or do
something else such as exit the highway, or it can announce every point in
the root. My suggestion is to only have it announce points where you must do
something, having every way point announced, at least for me, is far too
much information run together, especially while on a highway. Granted, some
of the highways we have around here have long names on the map, so I don't
know if this would always be the case. Even when set to only mention the way
points where you must do something, some times this still is too verbose and
runs together. For one thing, a setting should be provided to not mention
the way point number in the root, also, especially on a highway, the program
repeats the instruction to continue ahead on the highway several times. In
the roots I tested the program with, the person doing the driving already
knew where to go, but if this wasn't the case, it could be difficult for the
user to sort out the information given in each instruction and then relay it
appropriately to the driver. This wasn't as much of a problem on streets,
since the instruction would simply say something like, turn right and go
south on first street. Also, while on a highway, I needed to turn off the
look around announcements because between that and the instructions, it's
way too much speech. Again, some of this could be the way the highways are
named here, but it's definitely something to be aware of. Also, while you
can always check the distance to your next turn, this is not automatically
announced until there is only 0.4 miles to that turn. That may not always be
enough time for the driver to prepare for the turn, this should probably
either be a user setting or at least be increased to one mile for the first
automatic message.
Way Finder Access takes a bit of a different approach for the instructions.
If you create a vehicle root, the guide view shows the distance to the next
turn and what street to turn on or exit the highway to. This can be read
with your screen reader. A female voice provides the actual instructions.
However, when instructing you to turn, she does not say the street names,
this may or may not be important, but you can always find out what the
street is by using your screen reader to read the guide view. Typical things
she will say include "In a quarter of a mile, turn left," and "turn left
here." She will also tell you when to exit a highway, and to keep left or
keep right if getting in a certain lane is important. She will also tell you
when you have reached the destination, or if you go off track. Though she
doesn't say the street names, none of the drivers I have been with have
problems following the instructions, and remember that you can always find
out the name of the street to turn on by reading the guide tab. Way Finder
Access also provides a turn instruction much earlier so the driver can
prepare for the turn. THe first prompt comes when the turn is in 2 miles.
The next is 1 mile, then a half a mile, a quarter of a mile, 500 feet, and
finally the turn left or turn right here prompt. If that is too many
prompts, you can decrease this so only the last few are given.
When you create a padestrian root in Access, by default, the female voice is
muted, and your screen reader, either talks or mobile speak provides the
instructions. For these roots, the street names are spoken. For example, you
might hear "Walk 500 feet then turn right in to First Street. Of course, you
are also told exactly when to turn at the appropriate times. While the
direction of travel is not given in the instructions, you can always use the
where am I feature by pressing 8 on the keypad, which will tell you the
street you are on and your direction of travel. In a padestrian root, the
screen reader will also tell you when you reach your destination or if you
go off track. I haven't tested Mobile Geo yet with a padestrian root, hoping
to do that next week, however I have had no problems getting to places using
the instructions in a Padestrian root in Way Finder Access. To summarize
this section, I think both products provide good instructions to get you
where you need to go. I think Mobile Geo needs more options for eliminating
some of the speech in the instructions, particularly the way point number in
the root. Perhaps Way Finder Access could include the direction of travel in
the instructions for Padestrian roots in a future release.
What about the ability to know what you are close to while on a root? Both
products allow you to monitor the streets and places you are passing while
on a root. In the case of Mobile Geo, the look around feature works while on
a root, so streets and places will be announced along with the instructions.
Depending on the root you are taking though, this may produce too much
speech, especially if you are dealing with long names, but the feature is
available if you wish.
In Way finder Access, you have a few options available. The program provides
a feature called "Around you. This view is most useful while on a padestrian
root. It provides instructions for the root, as well as announcing a point
of interest or intersection as you pass it. By default, the female voice is
muted for padestrian roots, but you can override this in settings and bring
her back. If you do this, you can then switch to the other views such as
places near by, or cross roads near by, and they will read and update as
usual. In that case, your screen reader will read those views, telling you
what you are passing, and the female voice will give you the turn
instructions. The one thing you will lose though if you use this approach is
having the name of the street you will be turning on announced. Other than
that, it works fine. If you need to know the streets you are turning on, and
also want to know what you are passing, the "around you" view is a better
choice. In short, I think both products are equal here. Both will allow you
to monitor your environment while still providing instructions for a root.
Both products have a feature that will recalculate the root if you miss a
turn or otherwise diviate from the root. However, though I had this enabled
when testing it with Mobile Geo, for some reason, it did not work at all. To
explain what happened, I need to tell you a little about my street. There is
an exit to my street from the highway, the only thing is, when getting off
the highway on to my street, you will be on the wrong side. Both Mobile Geo
and Way Finder Access must realize this, because both products include a
turn somewhere in the root to go around the block, thus putting you on the
correct side of the street. However, many times, those who are familiar with
this area will simply stay on the street all the way, then make a u turn at
the destination. Neither product includes instructions for making a u turn
like this, and that's probably a good thing since this can be unsafe. So,
using Mobile Geo, we got off the highway, and it wanted us to turn on to
another street in order to circle the block. The person I was with has
driven this way countless times and always just continues to my place, then
does the u turn to get on the correct side of the street. So, rather than
following Geo's instruction, we remained straight. Though the option to
automatically reroot was enabled, Mobile Geo never recalculated the root, or
even indicated that we had reached the destination when we pulled in. When
checking the next turn, it was still indicating the turn we passed and that
it was a couple miles behind us. I'm not sure what happened here, I will
test this again next week on the bus to work, since the root the bus takes
is not the most direct way to that destination. But, at least for the root I
tested Mobile Geo with, it failed the reroot test completely.
Way Finder Access on the other hand handles this situation without problems.
It has never failed to reroot, at least for me. I took the exact same trip
home the evening of Thanksgiving, and when Access said to turn, we didn't.
We continued straight, and as expected the Way Finder female voice gave us
the friendly message that we were off track. It rerooted, and after the u
turn, as we pulled up to my apartment, told us we had reached the
destination. I have tested Way Finder Access in other situations like this
as well, some times the person I am with will choose to go a different way
perhaps to avoid a long traffic light. Access has never failed to reroot at
those times. I will do more testing with Mobile Geo next week with the
reroot feature, I'm hoping that this was just an isolated case, otherwise
this is a serious bug.
Well, we have looked at creating and following roots in real time, what
about exploring everything virtually? Is it possible to have a look at other
places to find out what interesting businesses or streets are in those
areas? The answer is yes for both products. It is also possible to create a
root, then have a detailed look at the root without actually walking or
driving around. In Mobile Geo, you can press 7 on the phone keypad, and this
will switch you to virtual mode. From here, you can move up down left and
right to explore everything on the map. If you switched to virtual mode
while connected to a GPS receiver, your virtual position will start where
the GPS says you are, unless you have set a virtual position manually. In
the case of Way Finder Access, you can go to the map view, and move around,
and your screen reader will announce the streets you land on. If you want to
explore an area other than where you are, you can set a virtual position
just as you can with Mobile Geo. To do this in Access, first select
disconnect from GPS from the options menu. Now go to the search screen, and
enter an address or point of interest that you want to use as your virtual
position. In this case, you will need to enter information such as city or
zip code and state. Now press the left soft key and choose search from the
options menu. Select the result you want, then open the options menu again
and choose use as position. Way Finder Access will now pretend you are at
this location, you can explore the map, or use the different views to find
out what is around this area. This also works in Mobile Geo. That is, you
can enter an address or find a place on the map, and tell Geo to treat this
as your virtual position. From here, you can do a long press of 8, and the
points of interest will be provided relative to this position. With both
products, when you are done traveling in the virtual world, it's quite easy
to warp yourself back to where you are in reality. In Mobile Geo, just press
7 on the keypad again, and at an amazing warp speed, your position is
transported back to where you are, as indicated by the GPS. In Way Finder
Access, from the main screen, press the left soft key for the options menu,
and choose connect to GPS. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, the
virtual world will fade away, and the software will once again indicate
where you are in the real world.
Whether you create a root from a virtual starting position or from your GPS
position, it is possible with both products to have a good look at the root
without actually driving or walking it. In Mobile Geo, pressing 6 on the
phone keypad will tell you the next turn you will need to take. If you press
6 again within 6 seconds, the next turn will be given. You can continue
doing this to see all of the turning points in the root. If you would rather
see the root point by point, just do a long press of number 6. You can now
cursor through each point and take as much time as you want in order to
familiarize yourself with the root.
Way Finder Access also provides two different ways to study a root. Once a
root is created, you can go to the itinerary view, and arrow through each
step of the root. This will indicate all turns, as well as entering and
exiting highways. One item that can be a bit confusing here, for each step
of the root, two distance numbers are given, and some times the speech runs
these together. The first distance given is how far to travel before the
next turn or exit, and the second number is the distance traveled for the
entire root.
The other feature Access provides allows you to play the root. That is, the
program pretends you are actually driving or walking, and gives all of the
prompts acordingly. To do this, press the left soft key for the options
menu, choose root, and select play. There are also options to speed up or
slow down how fast the root is traveled. If you have some useable vision,
there is a setting you can enable to always show your position on the map.
This could also be useful for your driver as it will allow them to actually
view the entire root on the map beforehand. If a root is playing, and the
option to show the position on the map is enabled, you can go to the map
view, and the map will actually move as if you are driving or walking the
root. Though I do not have enough vision to see the map, I have been told
that the quality of the map that is displayed is quite good. So in summary,
I think both products provide a good way to enter the virtual travel world,
and study roots without actually driving or walking them.
What about getting a GPS status? That is, finding out how good the signal is
from the satellites? Both products will do this, but I think Mobile Geo does
this far better. By pressing 0 on the phone keypad, Geo will tell you how
many satellites you are tracking, as well as the signal quality, such as
fair, good, or WAZ which is the best quality. It will also indicate how
accurately your receiver is able to determine your position in feet. So, if
it indicates 10 or 12 feet, you are getting a much more accurate reading
than something like 30 feet.
In Way Finder Access, you can press 2 on the phone keypad, and this will
take you to a screen with several items that you can arrow through such as
your direction, speed, latitude, etc. One of the items here is the GPS
status, but it only tells you a percentage, such as 100 percent, 66 percent,
etc. Obviously, 100 percent is the best, but I really do think that Way
Finder Access should provide the status information that Mobile Geo does, as
it is much more informative.
The last area I want to cover is the price of each product. Since each
product only works on one platform, you will need to purchase the
appropriate product for that platform. Also, prices can change, so the
prices I'm mentioning here are not set in stone. I'm going to assume that
you already have a phone and screen reader, so these prices are just for the
GPS functionality. At this time, Mobile Geo is $845 for the United States
map coverage, and Way Finder Access is $280. Also, if your phone does not
have a built in GPS receiver, an external one is between $50 and $80. On the
surface, it looks like Way Finder Access is quite a bit cheaper, but there
is a bit more to it. Remember that with Way Finder Access, you need a data
plan. You can choose to pay for data as you use it, although depending on
how much data you download, this can add up. The prices I'm going to give
you here are for the unlimited plans for the two GSM carriers in the United
States. For AT&T, the media net plan is what you would need, and that is $15
a month. For t-mobile, it's $19.99 a month, So, if you are with AT&T, and
purchase Way Finder Access and the data plan, after two years, you will have
spent $640. That's still less than the initial cost of Mobile Geo. For
T-mobile, the price for Access and two years of the data plan would be
$759.76, a bit closer to Geo's price, but still a bit less. The only way I
could see the cost of Way Finder Access passing Mobile Geo's price is if
there is no charge to upgrade the software and the maps for a few years, and
that may or may not happen. So, at this point at least, Mobile Geo has a
higher price.
Well everyone, we have arrived at our destination, the end of this review.
Thank you for taking the time to read this review and comparison, I do hope
you have found it to be of value. I have tried my best to compare the two
GPS systems for mobile phones, and point out their advantages and
disadvantages. I believe both products do a good job of making GPS
accessible for blind people, and as time goes on, I hope both products will
continue to get better. I do think we should extend our thanks to all of
these companies for working to make this technology accessible. I was
actually in an electronics store earlier today, and all of the mainstream
GPS systems they had used touch screens. There is currently no way a blind
person would be able to use one of these. Yet, thanks to the folks at Way
Finder, Sendero and Code Factory, we are able to utilize this technology and
get the same benefits from it that sighted people do. For that, I know
myself and many other blind people say thank you!
If you have any other questions or comments about this review, feel free to
email me, my address is n0oxy@charter.net.
Again, thanks for reading, and happy traveling!
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