Metroview GPS App for iPhone | The Gadget Grill

If you’re looking for a turn by turn GPS solution for your iPhone, you could do a lot worse than getting the Metroview application.

First of all, it’s inexpensive: about $25.

Next, it works. And it works pretty well, too. While the map updating is a little jerky an slower than you would see on a dedicated GPS solution, you must (a) remember that this is not a dedicated GPS solution, and as such, your iPhone is doing a multitude of other tasks and (b) understand that this is not a major issue anyway: in actual usage, it is certainly quick enough to give you assistance while driving through Sydney’s streets.

In use, it’s pretty easy and straightforward. Start it up, enter the address that you’re wanting to go to, and away you go.

One truly major advantage that the Metroview app has over the dedicated GPS units that we’ve tested so far is that it’s not been programmed by idiots. For other units, I’ve been critical of the lazy programming practices with their failure to take account of the time of day when dealing with hazards and trip events such as school zones. Here, the Metroview stands head and shoulders above the pack, in that it checks the time of day, and withholds notifying you that you’re entering an upcoming school zone. At 2am on a Sunday morning!

For this one point alone, the Metroview App earns a gold star: they are not treating me as a fool, and they are not being annoying.

Otherwise, road hazards and alerts are gently notified by tones; enough for you to notice, but not too much that it will piss you off, so the annoyance factor is also lower here than is with other units.

Take the functionality, the lack of annoyance factors, and the accessible pricing, and you have what is truly a very usable product.