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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

BUGS AND WISHES

• 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

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)

• 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

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.