14. Night Mode

Figure 42: Magellan's Night Mode

Note that switching to night mode is based on the time of day and not on ambient light conditions. Night Mode uses a darker palette on the map view to make night viewing easier on the eyes.

Figure 43: Magellan's Updated "Night Mode" TrueView Split Screen

Night mode looks good on the Maestro 3140. However, for some strange reason only the map screens get the "Night Mode" treatment. All the other menus remain in the regular bright blue theme, making them too bright in a dark car at night.

15. Using the Address Book

Figure 44: Accessing My Addresses (Address Book)

"My addresses" is where you store addresses that you want to keep as future destinations as well as access addresses that you have found to recently that may not be in your address book. The address book can hold up to 200 addresses (up to 50 of those can be marked as favorites).

To access the "My Addresses" menu, from the Main Menu tap the "Enter Address" icon, then tap on the "my addresses" icon.

From within the "my addresses" screen, you can view previous destinations, view addresses that have been marked as favorites, browse the address book, or create a new entry in the address book.

16. Setting the Home Address

Figure 45: Setting the HOME Address

The "HOME" address is a special address saved in the address book that makes it easy to quickly route to your home address. The first time you press the Home button, the unit prompts you to enter your home address.

17. Current Location Screen

Figure 46: Magellan's "Current Location" Screen

Accessed by tapping the direction icon on the map screen, the "Current Location" screen displays approximate address information, the next and previous cross streets, as well as your latitude/longitude. On the right side of the screen is a compass that points in your direction of travel, calculated elevation, and speed. The bottom bar displays the current date and time.

This screen also allows you to save your current location by tapping on the "Save" icon. This can be handy if you want to save a location that isn't in the POI database, for example, or a location that doesn't have an actual street address.

18. AAA Roadside Assistance

Figure 47: AAA RoadSide Assistance Screen

Tapping the tow-truck icon from the Main Menu brings up the "AAA Roadside Assistance Screen", shown above.

The "AAA Roadside Assistance" screen contains all of the information you will need to provide AAA Roadside Assistance emergency services to your current location. If you have a valid AAA membership, you can enter your membership # into the Maestro so that everything you need to call AAA is displayed on this screen (including the toll-free number to call).

19. Finding a Restaurant

In GPS speak, a "Point of Interest" is a business address saved on the GPS. You can think of the POI database as a pre-loaded yellow pages. Most modern GPS devices come pre-loaded with a Points of Interest database, allowing you to find nearby businesses, such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, and more.

Maestro 3140 ships with a relatively large POI database of 4.5 million entries. While 4.5 million may not be the largest POI database available (Garmin's nuvis have about 6 million POIs, and some other GPS devices have as many as 10 million), the Maestro actually outperformed both Garmin and TomTom in my POI search testing, finding more local POIs in almost every category.

Magellan has always been stronger than most in the POI department, and the use of newly updated (2007) NAVTEQ mapping data makes their POI functionality even better. For example, when searching for local restaurants or gas stations in near my home, I found many more local POIs using Magellan's POI search than the Garmin nuvi. Garmin's mapping data is several years old (although Garmin is planning to release updated maps within the next month or two), and many newer business are not listed in their POI database.

Figure 48: The POI Search Menu

Maestro lets you search for a POI either by name or by category. So if you know you're looking for a restaurant, you would tap on "Search by Category", but if you aren't sure what category a particular item might be listed under, but know the name of the place, you can search the entire POI database by tapping on "Search by Name".

I'll test the POI functionality by searching for nearby restaurants, so I"ll tap on "Search by Category".

Figure 49: Choosing a POI Search Category

Scroll through the category list and tap on the POI category you want to search.

Figure 50: Choosing a POI Search Subcategory

Some POI categories have sub-categories. For example, if you tap choose Restaurants as the main category, you can then choose a cuisine as a subcategory, or search all restaurants by choosing "ALL SUBCATEGORIES". Note that only categories for available restaurants are displayed. For example, you won't see a category for "Greek Food" unless a greek restaurant is found within the search radius.

Figure 51: Setting the POI Search Area

After choosing a category (and possibly a subcategory), you need to tell Maestro where to search. You can search:

• Near Current Position
• New City (requires entering a city name)
• Near Address (requires entering an address)

Figure 52: Viewing the POI Search Results

After telling the Maestro what type of POI to look for, and where to look, the GPS produces a list of matching POIs, ordered by closeness to the location you specified.

Tapping on the top portion of the display shows detailed information about the highlighted POI in the list. The arrow and distance indicates the direction and distance in a straight line from your current position to the POI. Note that this distance is "as the crow flies", and not the actual driving distance.

Figure 53: Finding POIs via the Map Screen

Another nice feature on the 3140 is the ability to view POI information directly from the map view. You can configure which POI categories will appear on the map screen while driving. Each category is represented with a unique icon, as shown above in figure 50. Notice that the Restaurant POI is represented by the knife & fork icon. To view details about a given POI, tap on the icon. You can then route directly to that POI.