Thursday, January 10, 2008

Free GPS Navigation on Blackberry

I have been playing around with the free GPS navigation software from amAze. I was not expecting too much given it's free but I am impressed after using it. I tried the route from my work to my home The voice directions are accurate and the voice is loud, clear and pleasant. I intentionally tried to drive off the route and amAze GPS was able to detect that and automatically calculated a new route. When approaching an intersection that requires me to make a turn, the system will warn me three times ( in 1 mile, 500 feet and right now).

The only thing I don't like so much is the startup time. It takes almost 1 minute just to start the software. It seems it is trying to connect to some server to download some data. Don't know why it needs to happen on every startup. To get around this, most of the time I would just keep the application in memory instead of exiting. It does not seem to drain the battery too badly like some other GPS applications (e.g. Google Map).

Here are some screenshots of amAze GPS:

Inputting Route


Map View



Navigation View

6 comments:

*Bill* said...

I have a BB 8830 and cannot get the Amaze application to run for the life of me.

You're lucky that you can get it to locate your GPS.

Unknown said...

I downloaded Amaze and can't get it to locate GPS satelites. When I go into my GPS setting it has SAT and nothing else. What should I write their to catch my position?

dan said...

Don't upgrade to version 5.0, you lose all the free features. Stick with 4.5 if you have it.

Unknown said...

I had the 4.5 upgraded to 5 :-(
4.5 worked a treat anyone know how to get it back

yours hopefully

Chris said...

Too bad it isnt free anymore :'(

Unknown said...

these apps are not free to use only free to download you have to purchase a data plan to use these gps apps thats not free where i come from