Little did I imagine when I acquired my Motorola MPx220 Smartphone that I would be able to use it for GPS navigation. But I soon discovered the Bluetooth-equipped Smartphone could be used with Bluetooth-equipped GPS receivers. In addition, I found two GPS applications that work with Windows Mobile Smartphones: Co-Pilot Live, and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005. I decided I had to have an adventure to test everything for this article. It was spring break, snowing in Idaho, sunny in California, and I'd just read that the wildflowers were spectacular in Death Valley after heavy rains in the region. I also had a new car I wanted to road test, and my wife's brother lives in Las Vegas. With all those forces pointing the way, I couldn't resist this tempting getaway. My plan was to use Co-Pilot on the way down and Streets and Trips on the way back. This 2000 mile round-trip sojourn ought to be a good test for any mapping program.
In the spring after heavy rains, Death Valley blooms in a spectacular display of life. (Photo courtesy of Frank Powers)
Co-Pilot Live
The Co-Pilot Live package comes with a 12 Channel Bluetooth receiver, an AC charger and a car charger along with an installation and data disk for North America. It costs $349 ($249 without the Bluetooth receiver) and is available directly from ALK Technologies (http://www.alk.com/store/smartphone_options.asp). There are versions available for Pocket PCs and laptops, each sold separately.
Installing Co-Pilot Live and creating a trip
I connected my Toshiba M205 Tablet PC to my Motorola Smartphone and installed the software. The installation process is simple and quick, setting up the Desktop Trip Planning application on your PC and then the CoPilot Live navigation program on your Smartphone. The Desktop Trip Planner lets you select and download the map files you'll need on your trip from a map CD that ships with the program. The first step is to select the map files you need for your trip. Selecting the maps from Moscow, Idaho to Death Valley was as easy as typing in the two locations and clicking on "Run." It was just as easy to select additional maps for the waypoints of Boise, Idaho, and Las Vegas, Nevada.
The next step was to transfer the selected maps to my SanDisk 512 MB mini-SD card (http://www.sandisk.com). Clicking on Co-Pilot Live's File and Data Download Wizard started the process. I found it curious that the wizard will only download the map data to a storage card; the wizard will not transfer it directly into the Smartphone, even if it's connected to your PC and ActiveSync is running. It was a good thing that my Tablet PC had an SC card slot. If you're PC doesn't have a card slot, there's a work around. The wizard can save the maps you select as a route file on your PC's hard drive. You can use ActiveSync's Explorer option to copy the route file from your PC's hard drive to your Smartphone.
Before you download the maps to the SD card, the File and Data Download Wizard lets you specify the route from beginning to end, as well as the "width" of the route (for example, how much map data adjacent to the route you want to include). The wizard then calculates the route and tells you how much file storage space it will take and how much is available on your card. It also gives you the option of downloading a grid of the U.S. highway system. If you have the storage space available, I recommend doing this—it's a good travel reference to have with you all the time. When you're finished specifying your route, click on "Download." The wizard reduces the file size by downloading only those portions of the maps that you've selected. You don't have to specify individual counties or select geographic regions; the wizard does all that for you. It's absolutely the easiest and slickest system I've seen yet.
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