Verizon Navigator (GPS)
Verizon has hit a slam dunk with the VZ Navigator service on the Samsung SCH-u620. I’m usually a pessimist of any service provided by wireless companies as it’s generally too expensive and not worth the money. However, with GPS I make an exception. If you travel a lot or just generally get lost and don’t want a bulky GPS device in your car; this is pretty much for you. The VZ Navigator software allows you to download maps, get directions, or points of interest with a couple finger taps. The GUI is pretty intuitive, it also saves previous searches, and has a capability to enter a home address, so you can route back to “home base” pretty quickly. The GPS receiver on the phone works well and haven’t had any problems with it in three cities I’ve tried (Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Los Angeles). The service is priced at roughly $10/month–no contract etc. So the choice is either to choose buy a GPS without the service fee (a fixed cost of $250 to $500) or use the one available on your phone; The break even point is somewhere between two to four years if you’re looking at service based versus buying the equipment and mounting it to your car. Given that there are road updates and perhaps soon the VZ service might have traffic updates (I hope) I’m a happy customer of the cell GPS. Any thoughts or experiences for other people?
Disclaimer: I am a proud Verizon (VZ) shareholder (who wouldn’t be, have you looked at their stock lately)
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Please mention that VZ Navigator connects to cell sites during travel, and if you don’t have a data plan ($15 per month), then you get charged a fee for each trip on top of the $10 monthly fee. I’m curious what the cost of this added data download is for a one hour trip?
One note on “added costs”, I downloaded three video clips whilst at the San Diego Airport. Each short clip was $2. Verizon is out to get your money and hides how much you are spending. Including rounding UP to the next Megabyte for downloads. Rounding up to the next kilowatt, cubic foot of gas, 1000 gallon of water, in your house would be similar. Our utilities don’t cheat you, why does Verizon ROUND UP? More $ only. Computers calculate accurately. They don’t need to “ROUND UP”. Accountants should be shot with truth serum permanently.