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INTRODUCTION

    I’ve been intrigued by GPS and GPS devices
(as you can tell from the plethora of GPS reviews that I’ve been doing
recently). I have a pretty good sense of direction, but I’m also the
person that will doubt my own handwritten directions pretty quickly
(if I get into an area I don’t recognize). I already use a Pocket PC.
So why not combine the two together and gain additional functionality?
Let’s see how the Pharos GPS lives up to my newfound established expectations
of how a GPS should function. Read on for the full review.

WHAT’S
HOT

   Pharos’
Pocket GPS Navigator (Bluetooth GPS) not only functions as a BT GPS,
but can also act as a Compact Flash GPS (if you purchase the optional
adapter). Thus giving those interested in both CF and BT use more options.

IN
THE BOX

   Let’s take a look at what comes in the box:

Here’s
the contents of the box (friction pad not shown).

  
The included car charger attached to the GPS. Note the extra dongle
at the end. You can’t actually plug the car charger directly into the
GPS. You must first plug it into the included dongle, and then into
the GPS. The dongle does provide the option to power your PDA (if you
have the correct plug or adapter), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s
just another item I could possibly lose.

Red
light on the dongle means the GPS is charging.

Green
light on the dongle means the charge is complete (or that the GPS is
not plugged in). There isn’t a charge indicator on the GPS itself.

SETUP

   The setup and installation of the GPS itself is
standard. The manual found with the Ostia CD tells you to visit Pharos’
website for Bluetooth
installation instructions, but in the bottom of the box is a paper
copy of essentially the same instructions. Assuming that Bluetooth is
already initialized on your Pocket PC, you open your BT Manager and
pair with the device (the default pin code is 12345678). Then you just
verify the COM port assigned (8 on my iPAQ 2215). The setup of the software
doesn’t take too much more effort or time.

After
inserting the CD, the Ostia Setup loads. The default choice is to Install
Ostia (to your Pocket PC).

You
can just install MapFinder (say if you already have Ostia installed).

Online
links (for registration, accessories, and Smart Navigator).

You
can also view a PDF version of the user manual.

Lastly,
you can exit the setup page. We will cover the software in detail a
little later in the review.

THE
DEVICE & FEATURES

    On to the devices specifications (copied
verbatim from Pharos’
site):

Advantages:

Completely
Wireless with Bluetooth Connectivity
Place anywhere in your car with a clear line of sight to the sky

Specifications:

Performance

Chipset:
SiRF StarIIe/LP
Antenna: Integrated patch antenna
Frequency: L1, 1575.42 MHz
Sensitivity: -140 dBm (typical)
Channels: 12 Channel all-in-view tracking
Acquisition time: Cold Start: 60 sec / Warm Start: 40 sec / Hot
Start: 5 sec
Reacquisition: 0.1 sec
Position update: 1 Hz
Accuracy: Position: 10 meters 2D-RMS, SA off
Velocity: 0.1 meter/second, SA off
Time: 1 microsecond synchronized to GPS time
Datum: WGS-84

Electrical

Battery:
720mAh Li-Polymer rechargeable/removable battery
Battery charger: AC battery charger included, DC charging adapter
optional. Constant current charging circuit included in both AC
and DC battery charger.
Operation time: 6 hours minimum continuous use with full charge
> 6 hours in trickle power mode

Interface

Communication:
Communicate with Host Platform via Bluetooth (Class2) Serial Profile
Protocol: NMEA-0183 (V2.3) standard
Data Rate: 4800 bps
NMEA message: GGA, GSA, GSV, and RMC
WAAS/EGNOS: Programmable
Bluetooth spec:

•
Frequency band: 2400-2483.5 MHz
• Data rate: up to 721 Kbps
• Security: data encryption up to 128-bits
• Typical range: up to 32 feet (10 meters)

Physical

Dimension:
60 mm x 85 mm x 25 mm
Weight: 85 grams
Environmental
Operation temperature: -20°C to 60°C (-4°F to 140°F)
Dynamics:

•
Altitude < 20 km
• Velocity < 900 km/h
• Acceleration < 3g

The
GPS receiver, in hand.

GPS
height

GPS
length

GPS
width

   
The power button is on the right hand side of the unit. This rather
shocked me when I started removing bits and pieces from the box – as
the fit was so tight, and every time I attempted to pull out the GPS,
it would blink at me in a "What are you doing Tim?" fashion.

On
the back of the unit is the sliding battery door and removable battery
(additional batteries are available).

Here
you can see the GPS detached from the Bluetooth dock – ready to be attached
to the optional CF adapter.

On
the back of the GPS / BT dock is the standard serial numbers, part numbers,
and FCC information.

When
looking for a Bluetooth link, the GPS will blink it’s blue LED (and
quite brightly I might add).

Once
connected, the GPS glows a nice shade of blue. No extra blinking lights
(which is nice during night driving). The light can be so bright, however,
that I usually have to face the LED towards the windshield.

   
And here’s the missing friction pad (from the pictures above). As a
side note, if I moved the GPS from the dash to the passenger seat, I
would quickly lose over half my fixes. In comparison with the Socket
GPS, which would only lose 1 or 2 at the most. The Pharos
GPS did seem (in my opinion) to get the initial cold start fix faster
than my Socket GPS.

I
didn’t use the included PDA holder as I already have a powered Seidio
mount, and didn’t want to attack velcro to the back of my unit.

COMPARISON

Compared
to my Socket
Bluetooth GPS, the Pharos
unit is just about the same length.

   
Width and height wise, the Pharos
GPS is only marginally bigger. Taking into account the fact that you
have the option to replace the battery with a spare or move the GPS
to a CF adapter, the size difference is more than acceptable.

SOFTWARE

    Included in the Pocket GPS Navigator is
Ostia – the "GPS Navigation and Routing Software for Pocket PCs".
Software can be a fickle thing. Sometimes you pick up a quality piece
of work, other times, complete carp (yes, the fish). Then there are
the in-between’rs. Unfortunately, Ostia ranks in the low middle. Read
on for more info.

The
Ostia CD case, which contains the User’s manual, the installation CD,
and 3 map CDs (Northeast, Southeast, and West). Also inside of the case
is the registration code along with a brief history of Pharos.

MapFinder
(the software used to transfer maps to your Pocket PC) doesn’t create
an icon – it instead watches for the insertion of a Ostia map CD (and
then launches the application).

   
When you click on a section, it tells you the name of the area, what
CD it is located on, and the estimated size of that selection. You can
also select maps based on distance or search for a specific area. Note
that you can also load "Highway" maps.

   
You can see above that I’ve selected all of Oregon (and therefore, due
to the way things are divided, some of Washington and Idaho). The estimated
file size is 104.4Mb. To transfer said maps to my Pocket PC, I can choose
ActiveSync or Card Reader. Personally, I recommend using the card reader
(if you have one). There have been too many times that I’ve attempted
to copy large files (to my storage cards) only to have ActiveSync give
up somewhere in the middle.

   

MapFinder
then prompts you to make sure that you want to transfer the data, and
asks for the appropriate CD (if you don’t already have it inserted).

The
file is extracted from the CD to the local drive.

And
then copied from there to the storage location of your choice.

Above
is the file listing for the completed copy (all of Oregon plus some
of Washington and Idaho).

   

Then
it’s off to the Pocket PC. Every time you launch Ostia, you are greeted
with the Pharos
splash screen and the obligatory"Warning" page.

You
are then greeted with, well, a blank screen. But we’ll come back to
this.

The
first time you run Ostia, you need to enter the registration number
found on the inside (not back) of the CD packaging.

   

   
Then a quick start screen appears (which merely points you to the help
file). Finally, you choose your GPS. If you choose Bluetooth, it actually
informs you that you need to return the Bluetooth Manager and configure
the unit before continuing.

   
Meanwhile, back at the main screen…there are several menu choices
at the bottom. This equates to probably my biggest frustration with
the Ostia software: If all your navigation is required to go through
these type of menus and submenus, it can quickly become tiring (not
to mention distracting if you need to make a change, say, to night mode
while on the road).

   
The File menu is first. From here you can Open an existing map (or tap
on one of the 3 previously loaded maps), list and/or close maps, view
the About screen, and Exit the application.

 

Continue
On: Opening Maps. . .

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OPENING
MAPS

   
Choosing Open takes you to a listing of all the maps on your storage
cards. You can only load one at a time from here (you can set the
maximum number of loaded maps in the options) – so if you may have
to return here more than once.

Next
is the Find menu. From here you can,

start
the optional Smart Navigator add-ons,

pick
a Destination,

Origin,

or
Configure a Multi-stop. You can also start a New Route or Reverse
(if one is already running).

A
note before we move on: I found this "More…" text in a
lot of locations, and it did nothing that I could ever see. In fact,
when using Contacts as a choice, it only listed up to the F’s.

From
the View menu, you can enable Text Directions (which only is useful
if you have a selected a route first),

View
GPS Info,

   

such
as a Compass or Satellite;

show
the SmartNavigator add-ons,

Trip
Trace, or Favorites; and also view your Destination, Origin, Multi-stop,
and/or Full Route (examples of which to follow).

The
last of the menus is Tools. From here you can run the Receiver Wizard,

   

record
a Trip Trace,

Store
Favorites (via your current GPS fix, your Destination, or Origin),

And
set any of the various Options, such as:

Voice.
You can disable the Voice, and even select Custom voice files.

Route.
Where you can avoid highways, or choose the Fastest/Shortest route.

Select
Comm (to select the correct Com port for the unit you are using -
in this case, Bluetooth is COM8).

   

Units
and Display Color (Daylight/Night).

   

A
note: The difference between Daylight and Night setting really isn’t
even worth having the option for as it only darkens the map area.

Along
with the Max Number of Maps and Restore Default (which returns all
the options and settings back to default).

   
Next on the menu bar is the "Happy Face" which changes color
according to the GPS status. Red means no data is being received from
the GPS (or that the GPS hasn’t been enabled).

The
"Happy Face" also acts as the GPS Enable/Disable button
(note the change in the Happy Face – he seems a bit concerned now).

   

Yellow
means that the GPS is currently acquiring a lock, and Green means
a sufficient lock has been reached for navigation.

After
the "Happy Face" is the Zoom In/Zoom Out buttons, which,
when tapped, bring up the Zoom scroll bar.

   

You
can also zoom in by tap-and-drag.

   

From
top left to bottom right is Zoom In, bottom left to top right is Zoom
Out.

   

The
final button on the menubar is used to cycle through the 3 Navigation
screens available – Map View (the default), Arrow/Text View, and Split
Arrow & Map View (shown above).

   
A nice feature of Ostia is the ability to double-tap on a location
to choose it as a Destination, Origin, etc. Or even to Save the location
for another time. This is especially handy due to the fact that a
large portion of street names aren’t what you, or the person giving
you directions might think of them as. For example: OR-213 (the correct
name) in Portland is actually known as Highway 213. If you were to
search for HWY-213, you wouldn’t come up with the correct location.

   
Now, let me show you how the Ostia really works. First thing you need
to do is load up whatever maps you feel might be necessary (up to
3, unless you have increased the maximum).

Then
Tap the Red Happy Face to enable the GPS (choosing Yes), which takes
you to the available devices screen, from which you would choose the
Pharos GPS
(or really any GPS that you want – Ostia is non-proprietary).

In
the example above, I’ve loaded just the Salem map, fixed the GPS,
and then selected Find, Point of Interest.

I’ve
typed in Airport, but there isn’t one in Salem (actually, there is,
but it’s a municipal
airport). So we cancel out of this, and load the Portland map.

We
now see a combined Portland and Salem Point of Interest list – and
there is airport at the top.

Selecting
Airport and choosing Next, we then choose Portland International,
and click Finish.

You
are then asked whether or not you wish to save this position. In this
example, we are saying "No, Thanks".

We
are now ready to either Route to the chosen Destination, or cancel
and restart – we choose Route.

   

After
a short wait, we see the route (marked in light blue), and the first
of our directions (Right turn on Capitol in .05 miles). You can also
see that the final destination is 57.4 miles away.

   
A note of warning: If you were to zoom in right now, as soon as the
next turn came, it would reset the zoom level automatically (to a
seemly arbitrary level). As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a way
to disable the autozoom "feature".

   

From
here, we can have Ostia show us the Origin, Text Directions,

   

Destination
or Full Route. Note the graphical refresh problem around the Next
Turn Text Display. This came up quite a bit, and wouldn’t return unless
you reached the next turn, or switched display modes.

   
If we were to continue on this route, the voice and sound prompts
would notify us of upcoming turns and exits. The problem is, they’re
minimal at best. If a left turn was coming up, you would hear "Left
Turn Ahead", but not at which street, or how far away. This means
you have to keep a closer eye on your Pocket PC than on the road.
A prime example, my friend and I were testing the GPS on our way to
a conference. It was informing us to look for a specific road, which
we couldn’t seem to find. Until we actually stopped looking the GPS
and looked directly ahead of us – there was the hotel (and the street
name). The GPS software that I normally use gives me so much information
(street name and distance especially) that I don’t really even have
to look at my Pocket PC once the route is set.

Now
let’s look at another minor issue. Let’s say I wanted to drive from
Salem to the Boise Airport. I’ve loaded Salem, Portland, and Boise,
chosen Boise Air Terminal, and requested a route.

   
What happened, you ask? Well, it couldn’t find the route from here
to there with the maps I had loaded. It would actually require 4 maps
to be loaded in order to see the route properly (or load the appropriate
"Highway" map, assuming you wanted to use highways). Normally,
this wouldn’t be such a big deal – UNLESS, you don’t know where your
destination really is in relation to the maps you have. In which case,
you would have to load each map, via trial and error, searching for
a specific address or location. And sometimes, even when you know
the area, the map names don’t coincide with something you might recognize.

   
And for the coup de grace, if, by some chance, you get off route,
the autoroute feature only seems to kick in after it has informed
you, "You are off route" 3 or more times. You can use the
action button (in the case of my iPAQ 2215 – the center of the D-Pad)
to help it along, but who is going to be trying to press the action
button while trying to find the right street during the middle of
rush hour? Sadly, I’m not the first to notice this oddity (but I am
surprised that it wasn’t fixed yet).

   
When traveling down the road, the arrow moves instead of of the map.
This brings up another Ostia bug: Heading up doesn’t mean heading
up all the time. If the road curves heavily, the heading won’t be
up until the map resets (placing the red arrow in the middle) and
reorienting the heading.

HELP
SUPPORT

    Pharos
has an extensive support page in addition to the included help materials
(User’s Manual, Bluetooth installation instructions, etc). You can
find FAQ, Custom Voice Prompts, and a phone number on the Contact
Us page (ignore the Technical Support link if you were hoping
to email, it returns you to the FAQ section).

BUGS
AND WISHES

    I found no fatal errors but I do have
a wishlist, dealing mostly with Ostia:

• Make
  the car charger plug directly into the GPS, but include the dongle
  if one wants to split the power to a PDA
• Make
  the autoroute feature work faster (very important)
• If Heading
  Up is set, the Heading should always be up
• Add
  more capabilities to the voice prompt, ie "In 1.5 miles, turn
  left onto Union Street"
• Allow
  users to disable the "autozoom" feature when using routing
• In the
  addition to menus, give the user some way to navigate through the
  software via large, finger-tappable buttons
• Give
  the user the ability to search for a location based upon the maps
  stored on the device (rather than by trial and error).
• Update
  the User’s Manual to include Bluetooth installation instructions (rather
  than putting them at the bottom of the box).
• Fix
  "More…" button
• Fix
  refresh problems

PURCHASING

    You can purchase the Pharos Pocket GPS
Navigator (Bluetooth GPS) directly from Pharos/MobilePlanet
for $395 or Amazon.com
for $266.74. Yes, those are the exact same unit. You can also purchase
just the Bluetooth GPS from Amazon.com
for a little over $206.

PROS

• Removable
  / Replaceable battery
• Can
  be converted into a CF GPS (with optional equipment)
• Small
  form-factor
• No
  blinking lights to distract
• IT
  GLOWS BLUE! (I know that doesn’t seem very important, but I like blue
  lights *chuckle*)
• Comes
  complete with navigation software
• Price
  (when purchased from someplace other than Pharos)

Removable
/ Replaceable battery

CONS

• Completely
  menu-oriented
• Extra
  dongle is bound to get lost
• Autoroute
  feature takes a long time to react
• Voice
  prompts don’t give enough information
• Software,
  while nice for showing your current location, wasn’t on par with other
  GPS software I’ve used
• Heading
  Up didn’t always mean Heading Up
• Refresh
  problems

Completely
menu-oriented

OVERALL
IMPRESSION

   I was impressed with the functionality of the
GPS itself. The unit connected without really any problems at all, and
worked like a champ the whole time. The battery life (at 6 hours) isn’t
as great as Haicom’s
BT GPS, but it certainly was a lot smaller. The biggest complaint that
I received from my friends (as they came along for test runs) was that
the software wasn’t easy to use. I really feel this statement sums up
my Ostia experience: If my first experience with GPS had been with Ostia,
it probably would have stopped my GPS addiction in it’s tracks. Not
that the software doesn’t have potential. Pharos could step up to the
plate and revamp Ostia, turning it into a powerhouse. Is it worth the
extra $60 (Amazon.com
prices)? Perhaps. But I think that I would be inclined to recommend
the GPS highly, and recommend that you wait for updates before choosing
the Ostia path.

Have
you used the Pharos Pocket GPS Navigator (Bluetooth GPS)? See something
that isn’t quite right? Tell us what you think! Click on the Discussion
Link below.