7. Finding An Address

Figure 39: Navigon's Start-up Splash Screen

Navigon's logo appears the first time you power on the Navigon 7100. It takes exactly 30 seconds to boot up. Waking the GPS from standby mode is almost instantaneous.

Figure 40: Legal Disclaimer

The legal disclaimer only appears if the 7100 was fully turned off; waking the GPS from standby does not display the legal disclaimer.

Figure 41: Main Menu - Entering a Destination Address

Once the GPS has finished powering up, and the legal disclaimer has been accepted, the Main Menu is displayed, as shown above in figure 41.

The first step in entering a destination is tapping on New Destination, as shown above in figure 41.

Figure 42: Choosing an Address or a POI as a Destination

Tapping on New Destination causes a sub-menu to appear, as shown above. In this example I'll be entering a street address, so I'll tap on Enter an Address to continue.

Figure 43: City or Street Name First?

Navigon's interface allows you to choose whether you wish to input the street name or city name first. I'll choose City First, although you could just as easily choose Street First, depending which method you prefer.

Figure 44: Changing the State Name

This is Navigon's text entry page. More than any other aspect of the Navigon 7100, the text entry page is the area that needs the most improvement. First, all of the icons and text are too small. In figure 44 (above), notice how small the "City or ZIP Code" white text is in the upper-left corner. The row of icons across the top of the screen are tiny, and I almost had to use my fingernail to tap on them.

All of the letter icons are also too small. Navigon has designed the text-entry screen such that the keyboard only occupies 50% of available screen real estate -- a poor decision that makes the keyboard too small and leaves more room than needed for the address area and "Start Navigation" button.

Making matters worse, the touch-screen isn't sensitive enough, and requires a fairly firm press to register a button has been tapped.

I also found the unit generally sluggish and slow to respond. This combination of small icons, lack of touch screen sensitivity, and overall sluggishness is an almost lethal combination that makes the 7100 frustrating to use.

In this example I'll be navigating to a street address in New York City, so I'll need to change the State to NY by tapping on the State icon, as shown in figure 44.

Figure 45: Entering the City or Zip

After setting the State to NY, the 7100 asks us to input the city name or postal zip code.

Figure 46: Spelling the City Name

As you spell the city name using the on-screen keyboard, the Navigon 7100 displays a list of matching cities in the left portion of the screen. The list of matching cities is refreshed with each new letter entered. There's a healthy delay between each results-list refresh -- enough of a delay that you might think there were no results found for the letters entered.

Once the desired city name has been entered (or selected from the list of matching names), tap the green check to continue on to the next step.

Figure 47: Entering the Street Name

With the city name successfully entered, the Navigon needs the street name next.

Entering the street address is the same process as inputting the city name: as you spell out the desired street name, the Navigon 7100 produces a list of matching streets on the left side of the screen. Once the street name has been entered, tap on the green check to continue.

Here again the sluggishness of the unit is frustrating, as are the small icons and insensitive touch-screen.

Due to Navigon's small letter icons, I found it generally difficult to enter street names without making typos. Scrolling through the results list was also tediously slow. There's also no page-up/down function in the results list, so you have to scroll one line at a time.

Figure 48: Entering the House Number

Entering the house number is straight forward: using the on-screen keypad, enter the house or building number of the destination address and tap the green check mark.

Figure 49: Start Navigation

With the State, city, street, and house number successfully entered, the Navigon 7100 is ready to start calculating the route. Tap Start Navigation to continue on to the next step.

Figure 50: Calculating Route

After tapping Start Navigation in the previous screen (Fig. 49), the 7100 begins calculating the best route to get from the current position to the destination address.

Route calculation was a little slower than Garmin or Magellan, but not much slower. On average routes took between 5 and 15 seconds to calculate.

From this screen you can view a turn-by-turn list of all maneuvers along the route, or start driving to the destination by tapping Start Navigation.

Figure 51: Viewing the Turn-by-Turn List

The turn-by-turn maneuvering list displays a list of all upcoming turns along with the distance between each turn and the direction of the turn.

Figure 52: Excluding Roads from the Route

When viewing the turn-by-turn list, it's possible to exclude any particular road or highway by tapping the green checkmark next to the road you want to exclude from the route, as shown above in figure 52.

Figure 53: Navigating to the Destination

Once the route has been calculated, tapping on Start Navigation begins navigating to the destination.