REVIEW: Ask Mobile GPS as reliable as a nervous aunt riding in the back seat

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t in the mobile content industry. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: Ask Mobile GPS
Running on: Sanyo M1 over Sprint Nextel’s EV-DO network
Yay: Clearly articulated GPS directions at an easy-to-follow pace, and quick rerouting if the driver deviates from the outlined route. Simple and intuitive to use.
Nay: Sometimes the screen indicates directions that don’t line up with the audio directions-the latter seems to be the most accurate anyway.
We say: First, a confession: I have never used a GPS device of any sort-I’m a print-Google-maps kind of person. But this nifty app from Ask Mobile may just push me over the edge to get a GPS-enabled phone the next time I upgrade.
Ask Mobile GPS offers five location-based services including driving directions, local search and the ability to send an event invitation through the Internet service Evite. I first tried the driving directions option, which provides directions to intersections, addresses, airports, search results or saved locations-and one must definitely input this information before getting behind the wheel, as tapping out an address or search term while driving is, shall we say, a bit distracting.
Once I determined a destination, up popped a small map of my immediate area centered on a car-shaped icon that putted along in-step with my driving. The bright, clear screen and graphics were easy to follow. The screen switched between the map and graphics representing each direction, such as a left turn-but I hardly used the screen due to audible prompts from a sweet-voiced lady. This was good, because a couple of times I glanced at the map and/or directional graphic and it offered different directions than the GPS lady’s audio prompts. This difference may have been due to occasional “route checks,” which were indicated by a binging sound and the GPS lady informing you that she’s conducting the check. If I ever defied the directions, the app responded with a route check and then smoothly provided an alternate route.
One thing I did wish for was voice-activated interactivity-say, the ability to have the phone respond to “repeat last direction” or a similar simple phrase. Sometimes, especially in highway driving it seemed, there were several minutes of silence from GPS lady between updates on my progress toward an exit, and for some reason that made me a little nervous. Had I missed something? I drove without the radio on, wary of not being able to hear GPS lady whenever she decided to speak up again.
On the other hand, she was near-obsessive about forks in the road and exits, and suddenly it was like having a nervous aunt riding in the back seat, fretting that I would miss a turn or that I hadn’t heard her reminder the first three times. That did get a bit annoying, but I was impressed at the sensitivity of the location detection-it seemed that whenever I passed the initial lip of the treacherous fork that GPS lady was frantically warning me about, she immediately congratulated me with a friendly, “Good!” for obeying properly.
The local, Citysearch option tackled the highly unlikely situation that I would actually know the address of a business that I wanted directions to-craft shop, fast food joint, post office. It also offered the option to search for local businesses.
An additional nice touch was that each search was saved in a short “suggestion” list on the search page, so if I wanted to pull up the directions again easily I could. Another handy feature was that if you swung the Sanyo flip-phone shut, the application kept running until you made the effort to shut it off-so you didn’t have to go through the whole process of asking for directions again.
And to me, the best part was the overall usability. I never once needed to crack the user guide in order to figure out how to make the application do what I wanted it to do-and given that many users avoid opening their manuals, that’s a definite advantage for the application.