5 great GPS apps for your iPhone
— -- It's happened to all of us: You're meeting your friends at a local bar that no one's been to before, and you've gotten yourself a bit turned around. Luckily, you've brought your trusty GPS-enabled iPhone along with you. You know all you have to do is type GPS into the App Store search bar to find something that'll have you sitting at that private table with bottle service in no time. But wait — the results list goes on and on forever, and many of results aren't related to driving. Other than the star ratings and listed price, how are you to know which one will get you where you want to go with the least hassle?
There are a vast number of GPS apps listed in the AppStore, and not all are created equal. To be honest, some free apps are just as good if not better than several of the large-cost alternatives. We've tested some of the most common in order to see which app is best suited for getting you back on track once you've lost your way.
1. Google Maps
Price: Free
Download: Preinstalled on your iPhone
Google Maps was likely your first foray into mobile GPS apps on your iPhone. Considering the power and resources Google has, its iOS app leaves much to be desired. You're stuck with a top-down view of the route, even though we all know and love street view.
The biggest annoyance with Google's Maps app is that there is no option to read the trip summary in one screen. In order to find out what to do next, you must push the arrow buttons on the top of the screen, which makes traveling without a passenger to help navigate just about out of the question. If you get lost or make a wrong turn, Google will not automatically reroute you, but you can press the edit button on the top of the screen and let Google start over from your current location.
Also, the overhead map will help you see your position in relation to your destination. If you're familiar with overhead maps, you'll find your way relatively easily, but if not, you want another option.
Pros
—Directions for driving, walking and public transportation
—Finds almost any business or address easily
—Detailed traffic info
—Navigate to contact
—Free
Cons
—Must manually advance the directions
—Top-down map view only — no street view
—No route summary
—Lack of voice guide
2. TomTom
Price: $39.99
Download: TomTom USA for iPhone or iPad
TomTom is one of the biggest names in GPS, and it delivers with a very solid app. In fact, most of the other GPS options base their features off of TomTom's. TomTom offers voice-guided navigation assistance, 3-D maps, and our favorite feature, Lane Assistance. The Advanced Lane Guidance images help you discern which lanes to take at those complicated freeway transitions. When we intentionally got lost and opened TomTom to lead us home, it found our location and destination faster than expected. We even made several more wrong turns, and the reroute feature put us back on track in no time.
We do, however, have a few grievances with this app. The $19.99 per year charge for HD traffic info is odd, as it is a feature several of TomTom's competitors provide for free. Also, the points of interest database is still very limited and won't find many small businesses. We ended up using the included Google local search to find our destinations when we didn't have an address.
