App of the week – Navmii

Navmii, £20
www.navmii.com



Pity the poor makers of in-car GPS gizmos, for their days are surely numbered. It's getting harder to justify buying one as well as a smartphone.

Navmii is the latest turn-by-turn GPS app for Apple's iPhone and makes its entrance by undercutting even the superb CoPilot Live, launching at just under £20 for the UK and Ireland edition.

The main thing that Navmii lacks compared to the other iPhone apps is customisation. There's one voice, one day and one night map style, and you can't overlay points of interest (POI) onto the road ahead. Live traffic information is also missing, but at least it's regularly updated with the position of speed cameras.



The thing is, none of that really matters. The map may be locked in position, but it's supremely easy to follow with a pale background and highly contrasting route colours. And the voice sounds like its directing you through a call centre holding system, but it has proper text to speech.

It doesn't just tell which direction to turn but which number road you should be on too. That may not be invaluable, but it's certainly worth more than £20 if you're traversing the famed roundabouts of Swindon.



Navmii also has iPod controls built in and, whether by design or accident, having all the controls are on the left side of the screen make it perfect for UK drivers seated on the right. If it occasionally confuses a dog-leg bend with a roundabout, well, at least it's telling you the right direction to go around it.

The extra seven quid for Co-Pilot will get you a much more comprehensive POI list and details like local fuel prices, but it's hard to fault the slightly rough and ready approach of Navmii when it does so much for so little. At a quarter of the price of TomTom or Navigon's phone apps, the future of GPS clearly belongs to the little guys.



Pros
Less than £20, complete UK & Ireland, text to speech road names

Cons
No map customisation, one voice, no 'live' services