6. 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 digital yellow pages stored on the GPS. 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.

The Strada CN-GP50 ships with a paltry 1.8 million Points of Interest. By comparison, Garmin's nuvi models have around 6 million POIs, and Magellan's Maestro GPS units have around 4.5 million.

Figure 41: Main Menu

To begin searching for a restaurant, tap Destination from the Main Menu.

Figure 42: Choose A Destination Type

Tap POI from the Destination menu.

Figure 43: Telling Strada Where to Search for A POI

Strada lets you search for POIs near your current location (Nearby), in a specific city (in a city), or across the entire USA (Nationwide).

There's also three "Direct Access" shortcut icons located on this screen for quickly location nearby gas stations, parking garages, and restaurants.

Figure 44: Searching for A POI In A City

Searching for a POI in a specific city suffers from the same confusing zip code debacle as the address entry system: when entering a city name, you're forced to search within a specific zip code instead of being able to select an entire city.

Figure 45: Choosing A POI Category

When searching for a Point of Interest (POI), you need to tell the GPS what type of business you're looking for. The most common business types are displayed at the top of the scrollable list (Gas Station, Restaurant, Hotel or Motel), or you can scroll through the entire list of available POI categories and select one.

Figure 46: Choosing A POI Sub Category

Some POIs, such as Restaurants, have Sub Categories available. For example, when choosing a Restaurant as the main POI category, a specific cuisine can be selected as a sub category.

Figure 46: Start Navigation

Once a Restaurant has been found, tap Start Navigation to begin navigating to the restaurant.

The two biggest problems with Strada's POI database are the reliance on zip codes, and the relatively small size of the database. The first time I searched for restaurants in "Manhattan", Strada returned zero results. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the first "Manhattan" listed on the cities screen had an usual zip code. Scrolling through the list of dozens of "Manhattan" entries (one for each valid zip code in New York City), I finally ended up choosing a zip code I knew to be valid. There appears to be no way to search across all zip codes within Manhattan, making the POI database almost useless.

Also annoying is the overall sluggishness of the device. There's a noticeable delay of about 1-2 seconds as you tap letters on the screen, slowing down almost all aspects of using the device, and making text entry frustratingly slow.

7. Canceling the Route

Figure 48: Exit Navigation

When navigating to a destination, the current route can be cancelled by tapping Menu from the map screen, and then tapping Exit Navigation, as shown above.

Figure 49: Confirm Canceling Navigation

Strada asks you to confirm that you want to cancel the route. Tap Yes to cancel the route and return to the Main Menu.