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.
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.
