9. Finding A Restaurant

Figure 72: Main Menu

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, parking garages, and more. In GPS speak, a "Point of Interest", or POI, is a business address saved on the GPS. You can think of the POIs as a pre-loaded yellow pages on the GPS.

The GO 920T ships with a POI database of 5 million entries. That's about average: Magellan's Maestro units have around 4.5 million POIs, and Garmin's nuvi units generally have around 6 million POIs.

To search for a restaurant, tap the screen to bring up the main menu, then tap "Navigate to..." and then "Point of Interest".

Figure 73: Navigate to a POI

The GO 920T prompts you to specify where you want to search for a POI:

• POI near you - searches the POI database for business close to your current position
• POI in city - allows you to input a city name and search for POIs near that city
• POI near Home - search for businesses near the saved Home address
• POI along route - When navigating to a destination, this option allows you to search for businesses along the way. For example, you might want to search for a restaurant along the way to your destination
• POI near destination - Search for businesses near the destination address

Figure 74: Specifying the POI Category

After telling the GPS where to search for a POI, the GO 920T prompts the user to choose a POI category. 60 POI categories are available to choose from, but the commonly used categories have dedicated icons, as shown above in figure 71.

Tapping on the right arrow displays the full list of POI categories to choose from. In this example we'll be searching for a restaurant, so I'll tap on "Restaurant".

Figure 75: POI Search Results List

The GO 920T displays up to 30 results (paginated in groups of 6), ordered by closeness. Tapping on the Find button lets you filter the results by entering part of the restaurant name you're looking for.

When looking for POIs in a city, I wished there was a way to continue searching beyond the initial set of 30 results. For example, when searching for nearby restaurants in New York City, a limit of 30 results per search is less than optimal.

Of course, if you know the exact name of the restaurant, you could just search by name. But there are times when you either can't remember the name, or just want to continue browsing.

Figure 76: POI Map Screen

Tapping on a POI from the results list brings up the POI map screen, shown above.

This screen displays the POI on the map, along with the phone number of the business, and the ability to pan/zoom the map. If a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone has been paired with the GO 920T, the "Dial" button can be used to call the phone number of the restaurant. Tapping "Select" starts navigating to the restaurant.

Figure 77: POI Details Screen

Tapping on "Details" in the previous screen displays the POI Details screen. Some POIs have more details than others. In this case, the restaurant's complete street address, phone number, and food cuisine type is displayed.

10. Itinerary Planning

An itinerary is TomTom-speak for a trip that includes more than one stop. An itinerary consists of a destination and waypoints (stops). Itineraries are useful when you want to make multiple stops along the way to your final destination.

Figure 78: Itinerary Planning

Begin creating an itinerary by tapping the "Itinerary planning" icon from the Main Menu.

Figure 79: Adding Stops to the Itinerary

Tap "Add" to add a stop to the itinerary.

Figure 80: Choosing an Address Type

Any of the regular destination types can be added to an itinerary, including POIs, street addresses, and recent destinations.

Figure 81: Building the Itinerary

You can add as many stops to an Itinerary as you like.

Once all the desired stops have been added to the itinerary, tapping "Done" starts navigating to the first stop.

Figure 82: Itinerary Options

Tapping "Options" from the itinerary planning screen allows you to save the itinerary for future use, or change the order of the stops.

Figure 83: Begin Navigating The Itinerary

Once the itinerary been created, the GO 920T asks if we want to start navigating to the first destination in the list.