The pre installed MMC card has you up and running in no time, here we were using the Nokia 6600 as a platform but any Symbian Series 60 phones running V 1.0 or higher will support the route 66 software.

Fire up the route 66 mobile software and you'll need to activate it via SMS then pair your mobile with the GPS receiver, this is simple and painless and also the end of the set-up. Time to set in our first location, selecting 1 stop we went for a simple local journey with 1 obvious route, using the street name we were given a number of options to scroll through until finally selecting the correct location. It is possible to use part postcodes or place names to navigate to but we did find the best option was a street name and number.

Then we hit our first snag, the kit isn't supplied with any kind of phone cradle, possibly because of the range of series 60 phones and the varying sizes, whatever the reason this left us a bit stumped. So the first trip relied entirely on audio navigation commands rather than the screen.

As it turned out this was possibly the best thing that could have happened, the screen is far too small to be of much use anyway and it allowed us to concentrate on the audio instructions which seem to have been tuned for the British taste? So much so that its almost a bit too posh, with a female polite queens English tone and also extra commands like "follow the course of the road" you won't hear that from an American SatNav!

The surprising thing is the level of audio commands that the mobile Britain programme produces, each turn gets an advance warning, a 300 meter one and then a "now turn" this is a 33% increase on our TomTom go unit, clearly they think most people will rely on the audio guidance. Sadly like all the mobile system we've tried route 66 is let down by the poor mobile audio level and small screen, we ended up using the hands free earphones in order to hear commands clearly, it works but isn't exactly comfortable. Perhaps if you have a Symbian series 60 phone with a hands free car kit this would solve the problem.

Back to the routing capability of Mobile Britain, route selection seems 1st class and easily on a par with TomTom mobile and even the TomTom go unit, we managed to take a few deliberate wrong turns and it got us back on track quite quickly and with the minimum of fuss. During our second journey we tried interrupting the guidance with phone calls something which flawed a previous system, but here route 66 merely suspends audio guidance and then  resumes when you terminate the call, the only risk is taking a wrong turn with only the screen to guide you during the call.

The second trip was much lengthier affair with a good deal of motorway and A road travel, again route 66 mobile coped well but did show that leaving your mobile with the application running for long periods really eats your battery. We also managed to kill the battery in the GPS receiver which seemed to last about 6.5 hours in total.

There is a nice extra which replies on having a GPRS enabled account, this takes TMC data giving traffic hold ups and accidents, this works well but as we found with the TomTom traffic product its only as good as the available data and you don't get quality info for free!

Over the course of a full week we found that route 66 mobile Britain was highly reliable and quite adept at selecting the fastest route, it copes well with wrong turns but you cannot really begin to operate it while on the move. Should you need to change address or even a view you'll need to pullover and fiddle with your phone, not really the fault of Route 66 merely an issue with using a phone as the platform.

Perhaps this is our only gripe with the system, most of today's mobiles are just too tight on screen space to provide a decent view and the speakers are too small to make them heard above the engine noise. Help may be at hand with the newer mobiles that have been designed for multimedia use and even PDA style applications but right now we'd have to caution that you need to get a cradle and be prepared to use a Bluetooth or cabled headset.

That said Route 66 Mobile GB is well priced at £199 and does do the job we asked of it very well.

Published - 22/06/2005

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