iPhone, TomTom Cradle and BlueTrek Hands Free - A perfect combo

A (nearly) perfect car tech combo:

Iphone with TomTom GPS software, TomTom iPhone cradle and BlueTrek bluetooth hands free visor mount.

It wasn't too long ago that I was carrying a cell phone and a palm pilot for communication and address book/calendar. I kept wishing my Palm Pilot would have an added music player, but it never really happened. I guess there just want enough memory in the early days on these great, but limited gadgets. Then when Apple came out with the iPod which gave me a perfect portable music player, but now I had three items to keep track of. Then along came GPS and I avoided buying one at first, not because I didn't like the technology, but it was just too many gadgets to handle.

Apple came to the rescue again with the iPhone. Wow, this answered address book, calendar, phone and music player all in one. And all of these individual functions better then the gadgets they replaced. Now I could buy a GPS and did (see my previous review of the TomTom 130S). Samantha, the GPS, was a wonderful travel companion and I thought that with the iPhone and GPS life couldn't get any better.

But it can, thanks to Apple and TomTom getting together as one unit. I know have one unit for phone, address book, music, GPs, and much, much more. But without a cradle to hold the phone in GPS mode it wasn't really usable on the road. As of last week though, I now have my TomTom iPhone cradle. Pair that up with a BlueTrek bluetooth visor phone for hands free communication and this becomes a travel setup beyond my wildest dreams.


The TomTom iPhone holder, even without the GPS improved reception, is the best iPhone dock I've seen. The phone drops in the cradle and secures with a click. Power is supplied all the time I'm driving and with a 1/8 stereo cable I can easily listen to music and click through my music selections. An added benefit is that the volume is much better since the iPod music signal now comes from the connector and not the headphone jack.

The TomTom GPS software had some early deficiencies but as off version 1.2 has all the functions back that are in the stand along units with the addition of navigation directly to anyone in my address book and some music control. When navigation issues voice commands, the music that is playing fades out, the voice command is crisp and clear on the car stereo speakers, and then the music fades back in. Outstanding! If you don't have a stereo cable attached the built in speaker on the phone holder does a good job as well.


With a bluetooth hands-free device when a call comes in you can see who it is on the iPhone screen. To answer simply hit the bluetooth answer button and music fades out during the call and then comes back in when you hang up. I've mentioned that I have the Bluetrek visor mount hands free. I prefer this over an on-ear type device as it stays in the car so I won't loose is and is really easy to use and provides very clear sound and microphone pickup.

Pros in a nutshell:

- Phone, music, address book, calendar and GPS all in one and each one well done (plus thousands of other possibilities.
- Excellent music volume level and sound quality
- GPS directions played through car speakers
- Stand alone holder is an easy and secure iPhone holder and charger
- Pivots to portrait or landscape mode
- Very crisp map screen
- Nice selection of international voices for GPS (only Samantha does actual directions text-to speech)

So, I said nearly perfect at the top. Well one can always find a way that the sequence of integration doesn't work. You have to select the music you want in the iPod and start it playing then go into TomTom for navigation. In TomTom the music controls are limited to pause/play and previous/next selection. You can actually go into your music selection and, for example, choose a different album. Not a big deal though and perhaps this will come in a later version. Basically this is an issue with the iPhone in general. If multiple apps could run at one time then you could switch back on forth between iTunes and TomTom navigation without having to quite an app. It's pretty clear that Apple restricted multiple apps at once for battery life issues. The Palm Pre allows multiple applications to run together. As a result short batter life is the number one user complaint on the Palm Pre. So apples choice is justified, but also limiting.

There is another problem that is more annoying that I am trying to figure out how to solve. Unfortunately, there is electronic noise from the cars ignition system when I am playing music. It's not too bad if the music is loud enough, but in between songs and on quiet tunes it is annoying. The faster the engine revs the higher pitched the whine so it is definitely EMI off of the spark plug wires. This is actually the same problem I had with just the regular car 12v phone charger, so I usually listened to music on the phone without the charger plugged in. But with the TomTom holder, if I unplug the charger then music no longer comes out the dock connector, and it also won't work with the earphone connector, but instead comes out the built in speaker. This means I either have to put up with the background whine, or take the iPhone out of the dock to listen to music.

I'm sure there is a way to solve this prolem to get to a perfect, instead of a nearly perfect, car setup. Please leave a comment if you have any ideas or if you have experienced this side effect. I'll try changing the spark plug wires on the car to ones with better shielding and will also do some experimenting with different 12v power plugs to see it that makes a difference and will let you know what I find out.

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Update 12/26/2009. I picked up the noise filter shown hear from Amazon.com and this solved the iPhone noise problem. The system now gets a full 5 stars.

TomTom 130S Review

TomTom 130S, the perfect companion for a cross-country drive.

Last year I headed out for a four week cross-country business driving trip. I was planning to cover the US from coast to coast. It was a great trip and a perfect excuse to buy a GPS. I did a little reading online and ultimately decided that I wanted either a Garmin or a TomTom unit. I also wanted one that I could carry with me when walking around a city and that wouldn't take up too much windshield space. So I opted for a 3.5" inch screen instead of a 4.5" screen for portability. It was price that decided on the TomTom as I was in a Radio Shack that had the 130S on sale for $149.99 down from $199.99 so that was a good deal. (This was in the July 2008. The original price on the TomTom 130S was $249.95. As of this writing it is still a current unit at TomTom.com with a price for the 130S is now just $149.99, but your can find it refurbished at Amazon.com for only $69.99). Oh, and I had one last strong argument for the TomTom. I'm a Mac user and they support Macs with their desktop software (not without issues as you will see below).

Overall, the unit performed well, was easy to use, and comes highly recommended, but I'll go into more detail about the pros and cons.

You can get a great deal on a refurbish TomTom 130S, only $69.99, at Amazon.com

or buy a brand new one at a the best price I've seen for this new.

Review Details
Screen Size: The 3.5" is very readable. I tried units with the 4.5" screen and didn't feel that I got enough extra detail to make it worth the larger size.

Mounting: This is one of the aspects I like best about this unit. The suction cup windshield mount stays on well (sometimes it takes a couple of tries). But what I especially like about it is that it folds nearly flat so it is easy to take with you. It's also easy to pop the unit in and out of the mount and you can swivel the unit easily in the mount which allows it to be placed in many ways on the windshield and still angle the screen to face you. I tried some other units with large and cumbersome mounts that always seemed to be overkill.

Speaker: The unit speaker is large and clearly audible

Display: TomTom unit excel on the versatility of the display. The unit is crisp and readable in all lighting conditions.

Features: The TomTom 130S is a basic GPS navigation unit. It doesn't show you what lane you are in, but the voice navigation is well done, and the 3D map is clear to read. I tried a similar Garmin unit and this is where I found a big difference in the TomTom. On the main screen of the TomTom along with the map I had 5 additional piece of information: Distance to next navigation change, distance to destination, current time, estimated arrival time, and current speed (also speedlimit if on major highway). Other types of information can be swapped out and also a compass can be shown on the moving map screen. Other information on the moving map are current road name and next destination road.

My big complaint when I tried the Garmin Nuvi was that all I got for added information at the bottom of the screen was speed and estimated arrival. These items could be changed, but you only got tow items at a time instead of 5. You can get the extra info on the Garmin by switching screens, but who wants to do that to get such basic information. In fact, I used the TomTom on my motorcycle and found that my motorcycle speedometer was 5 MPH slow, so I like having the moving map and the speedometer function at the same time. It was this display of information on the TomTom that has made be recommend this over Garmin units.

Easy of Use: Take it out of the box, turn it on, set a destination and off you go. It's that easy, but like any good piece of equipment it can do so much more. You can save common locations, set "home" so you can always navigate home with one touch, customize the display, find local whatever (gas stations, museums, airports, on and on). There are just too many fun way to set up and use the unit that I still find new things on it. The coolest feature I discovered late one night was the "avoid roadblock" button. About midnight coming home for a music gig and still an hour and a half from home traffic came to a standstill for a major accident. I noticed a left turn that I could get to before the accident. Do I hit "avoid roadblock" set the distance for 300 yards, and waited few seconds for the screen to recalculate. Then I was off on a series of dirt roads for about 5 minutes that came back out on the original road I was on about 1/4 miles past the accident and I was on my way. I've used it since several times and it has been great.

Oddities: I found that major roads and highways were always accurate, but in the very rural area that I live in there are many mistakes. Mostly these are old dirt roads that have been closed for years and years, but the maps on the TomTom still think they are viable routes. They are if you have a Hummer, I suppose.

Computer connection: Updating the unit is easy via a USB cable to your computer. Unfortunately, I have found that the Mac software can be a bit buggy. I had a friend moving to Europe and we purchased the Europe maps and tried to download and install the maps on a Mac deleting (but saving aside) the USA and Canada maps (there isn't room for both on this unit, so if you want both get a unit with an SD card). The end result was that her GPS crashed and wouldn't reboot. After many tries and finally called TomTom tech support. Tech support was friendly and knowledgeable and he new enough to tell me that it was the fault of the Mac software. But I happened to have Windows running on my Mac under VMWare, and so booted that up and went back through the process on W98 and that fixed the unit quickly. Part of the reason I went with TomTom is that I wanted a unit supported on a Mac, but that support isn't 100%.

Summary: A great first GPS unit, and even a great only GPS unit. It does everything needed for any basic driving and has plenty of bells and whistles. The S on the unit number stands for speech which is very useful in traffic. Sometimes I turn it off, but I would not recommend getting the unit without speech. It doesn't due some of the things the more expensive units do (no bluetooth, no live traffic), but to get these features one would have to spend a lot more money.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars for the price range.

For another review of this product see this CNET review.
This review comments on some of the other great features I didn't cover. Oddly, the one complain that  reviewer had was problems with low speaker sound level. I found it plenty loud as did others who commented on that review. Maybe he had a bad unit, or this was perhaps something TomTom fixed in later versions.