Ariadne GPS 4+

I have never taken the time to offer a review of a mobile application however, this app deserves one. This is by far the best navigation app I have seen and it is absolutely worth every penny of its purchase price.

Ariadne GPS has been my main GPS app since I got my iPhone in June. Each of the 4 GPS apps that I use has a particular combination of benefits for me. Here are some of the things I love about this 1:

) Today, I discovered that a driver who is used to working with me can use the visuals, with me zooming in/out and changing the center of focus, to plan our route;
) We enjoyed discovering the different colors for highway and other features (I forget the details now, but it was a lot of fun);
) When I am walking, I feel the range of nearby addresses and the distance and direction to a tracked point or nearest favorite on my Braille Sense with my left hand (not holding the white cane);
) By putting my own keywords in the descriptions of my favorites, I search my favorites for a keyword and a particular set of favorites appears;
) I have query interval set to every 5 seconds, and I rarely worry about data usage;
) I'm still getting used to exactly when to expect to hear street names and feel vibrations when I'm dragging my finger around the screen to add to my mental map; it does seem pretty good, and I'm betting I'll get the hang of it with more practice.

According to today's driver, the rotating map feature didn't seem to do anything, but I'll reread that section of the instructions and see if I understand better.

This app will provide you with real time updates of your location if you activate the monitor feature and then press the "where am I" button. However, as another reviewer wrote below, the app sometimes fails to mention the name of a street onto which you have turned. In addition, the app is inconsistent at announcing streets that you have crossed. One truly revolutionary feature I would like to see added would be for the app to detect the direction of your movement and to announce the street you are approaching, and the street that is behind you. In other words, an audio summary that is equivalent to the "look around" function.

In addition, there does not appear to be any method of zooming in or zooming out on the map. I would really like to zoom in on the map so that only a few streets are visible at a time.

Finally, I think that adding audio tones to the map would make finding the lines that represent the streets a bit easier.