Pharos' Pocket GPS Portable Navigator
By: William | Reporter
Date: 5/26/2003

INTRODUCTION
    Pharos comes along with their Portable Navigator package.The Portable Navigator system comes with the iGPS-CF, a CompactFlash Type I GPs receiver. The iGPS is a NMEA-compliant receiver and as such will work with most common GPs software packages out there. Here, we focus on Pharos' own Ostia 2002.





MAP SETUP
   The only desktop component is the "download manager," which, despite its simplicity, is rather painful to use!

Here's the kicker. To install maps, you must insert either the northeast, southeast, or west map CD-ROM. If you're going cross-country, you'll need to install maps from two separate CD's using this process. MapHelper is straightforward to use: just right-click on the region your interested in to zoom in.

When you're at this level, you can't see further detail. Click on the name of a town or city . . .

and you'll be asked if you're interested in the associated area.

Now, that particular region will pop up as a WinZip Self-Extracting file. Unzip the files to your hard drive and then use ActiveSync to drag the files over to your Pocket PC. The positive part of all this tedious clicking is that you can drag the maps anywhere on your Pocket PC (pending it's in a \My Documents folder, in main memory or a storage card).

TECH SPECS
    A common denominator of all my GPs reviews has been a focus on the technical aspects of the receivers, and as such, I have collected specification sheets for all.

HARDWARE EXPLORATION
    With the maps installed on our Pocket PC, it is now time to check out the accessories and what not that come in the box. Pharos sent me a complete package, with not only the receiver and software but also a car cigarette adapter and a mounting kit.

Box shot.

Back of the box.

Inside the box you'll find the three map data CD's, an installation CD, a car power kit, an external antenna, and a mounting kit.

Interestingly, Pharos included an HP Jornada adapter for your convenience. None of the other packages had this adapter.

Here is the iGPS-CF receiver. Another huge antenna, but not quite as enormous as the WorldNavigator.

Though it's large, the iGPS-CF is still Type I.

Here is the tiny insert for the external antenna.

To use the antenna, just connect the two gold-plated ends (male into female).

I found the mounting kit to be too much of a commitment--you need to attach a sticky pad (adhered to a magnet) to your iPAQ.

The other end sticks to your car by way of your car's AC vent, which is a fine for those with rectangular vents, but not fine for those like myself with round vents.

Here we have the iGPS-CF inserted into a SilverSlider, surrounding an iPAQ H3850.

A side shot to give you an idea of how far the receiver extends.

SOFTWARE EXPLORATION
    Ostia 2002 is a Pocket PC-only product, so you'll be relieved to know that it feels like it was designed for Pocket PC, and it's not a rough port from their desktop version.

Upon first run, Ostia presents you with a splash screen and steps you through the process of configuring your GPs receiver.

We're told that if we crash, it's our fault. Very comforting.

Next, we choose the style of receiver we will be using. The first is the CF style, which does not require a COM port. The second is the device-specific receiver that plugs into the proprietary port at the base of your Pocket PC.

Next, we select the device we're using. Not completely sure why we are asked for this information, though it likely auto-senses how to access the GPs receiver. To begin accessing satellite data, select GPS--Enable GPs (the red frown will change to a yellow ambivalent facial expression).

After a considerable amount of time (satellite acquisition time from a cold start often took up to ten minutes!), you'll finally get data, and your little friend will turn green. These pictures are not retouched; there's actually a smiley face in the command bar. You can view your current position by selecting GPS--GPS Info.

GPS--Sat Info shows you which satellites are accessible (gray bars) and which you have properly connected to (blue bars).

To start doing anything in Ostia, we need to open a map file. Note that you can have more than one map can opened at a time, if, for example, you need to create a cross-country route. The idea of having one regional map for an entire trip makes a lot more sense than opening up several maps for a long trip, which has a big impact on performance.

Moving throughout the map is a matter of clicking the blue arrows and dragging your stylus across the screen to draw a zoom box. I'm ready to drive. Let's create a route.

Under "Find," you can define a route based upon an address, intersection, POI, or Waypoint. We've seen each of these options in previous reviews. Here we'll look at a route based upon an address.

Enter a piece of the street name (don't include street specifics like the part of the road, else you'll get no "hits"). Instead of clicking several times, as in the other programs, highlight the entry you want, and hit "Next."

Highlight the town or city.

Enter the address and hit "Finish."

Finally, you can store this destination as a Waypoint for future reference. We'll rely on iGPS to set the origin, so select Destination from this screen.

Although you'd expect your route to be immediately calculated at this point, you must first select Find--New Route for the calculation to take place. If iGPS is running and enabled, the trip origin is automatically set to be your current location.

The map presented has three colors: green surrounds your origin, blue defines the length of the trip, and red denotes the destination.

If you'd like to zoom in on either the origin or destination, do so from the View menu.

Selecting View--Directions gives you a turn-by-turn output of your trip. Make sure you look for "NO NAME" street, else you'll find your way to NOWHERE!

Defining a route by intersection brings up the same street explorer as above, but route by POI is a bit different. Unfortunately, Ostia's POI database is pretty limited.

there aren't many items within each category. Hopefully this aspect of the program will improve with time.

PERFORMANCE AND ACCURACY
    Cold start acquisition time was unbearably slow for the iGPS-CF. It was so slow, in fact, that I complained to Pharos that my device was broken because I would stare at the Satellite Info pane for several minutes and see only three satellites get accessed, assuming that something was wrong. I even tried driving several miles into a more open area, and the same thing occurred. My problem, of course, was that I wasn't allowing the receiver enough time to set itself up. Once the software is running, re-enabling iGPS takes only ten seconds or so for data to begin pouring in.

    Turn-by-turn navigation was taken care of by a soft-spoken female voice without any huge arrows telling me where to turn, though large signs are something I've come to appreciate. My only notification came from the voice and information in the direction pane at the bottom of the map screen (not full-screen like Pocket CoPilot or TeleType). Accuracy was on par with the Copilot system, though not as stellar as the WorldNavigator from Teletype

HELP SUPPORT
   There is no paper manual comes in the Portable Navigator box, a trend that most software companies seem to be following today. If you want to read the manual, you'll have to snatch it online. Other online offerings include a FAQ page and a support contact page.

A quick overview of basic Ostia functions is available in a Help file.

OPTIONS
    Since there aren't any exotic package bundling options, we'll spend this section talking about software options; several are worth mentioning that affect the use of Ostia.

You'll likely want to keep Auto Reroute enabled at all times, though I find that it wasn't too quick to suggest a new path (it would repeat "Off Path! Off Path!"). Heading Up keeps the top of the map pointing in the same direction as your traveling. Turn off the voice if she bothers you.

If you opt to use another receiver with Ostia, you can manually select the COM port here. Teletype is more friendly to other GPs systems in that you can actually view the NMEA data being transmitted by the receiver. It's more of a guessing game with Ostia.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
    Ostia 2002 (v3.30) is a mere 700 kb installation and uses around 800 kb of program memory when active, about half the requirement of most other Pocket PC GPs software products. Maps, however, tend to be quite large. A region with a ten mile radius surrounding Philadelphia took up twelve megabytes on my iPAQ. If you use an SD card, you're in luck; else, you'll be scrambling to uninstall some applications. Too bad these CF cards don't have a chunk of ROM memory! Portable Navigator works on any Pocket PC or Pocket PC 2002 device with a CompactFlash Type I card. It does not run on a desktop or laptop.

BUGS AND WISHES   

    If you are planning short trips, where you remain within one map's boundaries, you'll have no problem, but getting several maps' data onto your Pocket PC is a tedious process. First, you must click on each region within MapHelper, which will launch a WinZip Self-Executable. Then extract those files to a local directory. Then move all of those files over to your Pocket PC. Pocket CoPilot's execution of this is far superior. I reckon I'm dodging an important issue: the map files are very large. Though they compress about 50% using ZIP, once on your Pocket PC, they are twice the size of the original ZIP file. So each of the three data CD's has about a gigabyte of data on it. Not sure how many of you have anywhere near that in internal memory, but I'm stuck with 64 mb, most of which is already used by other stuff. Don't expect to keep many maps on your device at a time. It is for this reason that the device-specific, non-CF version of Portable Navigator might be a wiser purchase, so you can slam a CompactFlash card into the CF slot.

    A pretty significant quirk is that if you happen to be somewhere that has no map data. Ostia gets confused and refuses to create a routing for you, not even one that starts at a predefined point closest to your current location.



PROS

• Pocket PC-friendly client
• Points of interest included automatically
• Client is small and undemanding
• Warm satellite acquisition is fast
• Regular software/database updates free online

CONS

• Cold start requires up to ten minute wait
• POI database is very limited
• Rerouting feature is easily defeated
• No large arrows to indicate suggested turns
• Downloading maps to Pocket PC is tedious

OVERALL IMPRESSION
   For $250, Pharos' Portable Navigator is a great deal, but the insane cold start acquisition time is difficult to ignore, unless your normal use for a GPs system is to plan long trips where a ten minute wait is insignificant. The software is competent and feature-full, and does everything I need, though a richer POI database would be nice.

   Should you prefer other Pocket PC software to Ostia 2002, because the iGPS-CF is NMEA-compliant, most products will accept the receiver. Experiment and find for yourself a database that has the newest gaps in your region.