Road testing the Magellan RoadMate app for iPhone

We got our hands on an early copy of Magellan's RoadMate iPhone app, so we're testing it out on the iPhone 3GS.

Including a quick safety message, the RoadMate app boots about as quickly as its hardware-based cousin.

Portrait and landscape viewing modes are available for all screens. The interface is nearly identical to the RoadMate 1470, that we reviewed recently. Both systems feature text-to-speech directions, but the app's menu system has been simplified significantly.

When approaching a major intersection, the RoadMate app's lane guidance displays digital representations of highway signs, illuminating the one showing the lanes valid for staying on the chosen route.

The RoadMate app comes preloaded with a selection of voices for turn-by-turn directions in a variety of languages. Voices that work with the text-to-speech system are marked TTS and will read street and POI names aloud as part of the directions.

When the app detects (using the current time) that it is nighttime, the color palette shifts to a night mode, which is darker and less likely to dazzle the driver.

The RoadMate app's maps come in three versions: 2D, 3D, and 3D+, which features 3D building data for people who like to navigate visually.

The OneTouch menu is a user-customizable favorites menu that holds frequently accessed shortcuts. Unlike the standalone RoadMate, the OneTouch menu can only be accessed from the map screen.

Up to 20 frequently accessed searches, addresses, and POIs can be added to the OneTouch menu, unlike the the standalone RoadMate, which only have six customizable slots.

Users are able to search for POIs by name...

...or by category. Both methods are remarkably quick relative to a similarly priced entry level PND.

The input screen features a large, easy to hit keypad--which is better suited for use at arm's length than the iPhone's tiny onscreen keyboard--with an autocomplete function that attempts to finish your words and blanks out invalid keys, reducing mistypings.

Rotating the screen to a landscape orientation enlarges the keyboard to fill the screen and adjusts to a QWERTY layout.

Once a destination is chosen, users confirm their trip on this screen. Touching the car icon toggles between driving and walking directions and hitting the big orange GO button starts the trip.

However, if you hit the Options button at the bottom of the confirmation screen, you're brought to this routing options menu that calculates a variety of alternative routes simultaneously and presents them for comparison.

The route comparison map presents all four alternate routes on one color coded map. I find this mode is great for finding windy driving roads when I'm not in a rush to be somewhere.

Additionally, users can preview the turn-by-turn directions for any route and simulate the trip before finally choosing an option and going.

Once you reach your destination at the end of a driving trip, the RoadMate automatically stores your car's location. Users can then use walking directions to find their way back to a lost vehicle with ease.

Searches to emergency services are located in the OneTouch menu and in the main menu. Because this is an iPhone app, users are also able to call emergency services directly from the search screen.

Users are also given access to their iPhone's media library through this playback screen, which means that you won't have to exit the app to pick a new playlist.