CoPilot Live for iPhone
The basics
The pricing on CoPilot’s satnav app is pretty keen, being 30 quid less than TomTom’s equivalent app and having full postcode entry (in the UK and Holland at any rate), which is an exceedingly useful feature. There’s no dedicated mount available, so get some sort of generic iPhone holder from somewhere like Halfords.
The good
CoPilot Live is cheap, does a job once you’re on the motorway and has some simple features that work very well. For instance, if your next turning isn’t for 30 miles, it just displays a simple black screen basically saying, “Keep driving for 30 miles”. This is non-distracting and presumably saves battery life, too.
You can also drag the map around with your finger, via the touchscreen, which is more than can be said for TomTom’s app. Satellite lock is fast and reliable and rerouting swift, and it deals with motorways and rural areas with aplomb.
The bad
In just about every other way, CoPilot lags noticeably behind the TomTom. Most seriously, it goes into meltdown in big cities. At one point it sent us round and round a one-way system, and it routinely left voice cues to turn corners till comically late.
It’s a bit like having an annoying friend trying to direct you. “Turn left!” “Where?” That turning we just passed!” “Gee, thanks.”
And if the TomTom drains your iPhone battery, this thing is an absolute vampire. We got one hour of use out of it before the battery had emptied. One hour!
The bottom line
If you don’t plan to visit London, Birmingham or any of Europe’s other major cities, this could be a good-value purchase. You MUST get an in-car charger if you want to also use your iPhone for, you know, making phone calls and the like, but battery massacring aside it’s a solid performer on motorways, autobahns and country lanes. In cities it simply can’t cope.
User comments (8)
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12345678904456618 December 2009
not as good as the tom tom iphone app im not suprised.
Report as inappropriateMark Tennent31 December 2009
Your experience with coPilot does not mirror my own. I wonder if you had old software? I have never seen just a blank screen as you describe and find battery life can be measured in many hours, 4 to 6 in general. CoPilot Live can seem a little reticent when it comes to turning info but unlike TomToms I have used here and in Europe, it does know what your position is and never insists you "make a U-Turn when it is convenient", or continually "recalculate" as in Garmins. Using a TomTom in France, told us we were in Paris suburbs rather than Carcassonne and Narbonne, many hundreds of miles away. My pal in Phoenix says his TomTom plots his house as 20 miles from its location.
Report as inappropriateL Chopra11 January 2010
Got this app a month ago! When first got it thought great a sat nav on my iphone for under £30! However no one explained to me (other than the page I have just seen) that in big cities e.g London or in a lot of stop start traffic the app just freezes and requires nearly 2 mins just to find out the current position. However I am warned by the people at co pilot that they are trying to fix the problems related to freezing. Overall a great little app if you mainly use your sat nav for motorways or less congested areas.
Report as inappropriatePaul N02 May 2010
I must say that my experience of this app is far different from the one in the article. I am running Co Pilot Live Ver. 8. I have used it in Birmingham centre and did not experience any of these problems. I have used this on many an occasion and find it much better than my previous Tom Tom Sat Nav. It also has some very neat functions that are not mentioned, like remote tracking where someone you allow to can see where you are, what journey you have planned and when you arrived. It has lane highlighting to tell you what lane you should be in, built in Speed Camera database, speed limit warnings (which can be switched off!). It does eat your battery, I get about 4 Hours of use (that’s where a good in car charger comes into play)
Report as inappropriateTommy A01 June 2010
What is this crappy thing? paying for navigation? Nokia has a wonderful and free navigation on their phones and it is not even eating the batteries. I would never go back to iPhone now...
Report as inappropriateSteve Lee05 November 2010
I have used Copilot for several years and have been a convert from Tom Tom. Mostly it has never failed apart from on one occasion on the motor way when it asked me turn right at next junction although there was'nt one for miles. One of the pluses is the time taken to find satelite location which compared to Tom Tom seemed alot quicker and the free speed camera update an added bonus
Report as inappropriateCraig Price17 November 2010
In my experience CoPilot is a fabulous little program that completely falls apart when it comes to battery drain. I have an almost brand new 3GS iPhone and both myself an a colleague bought copilot, unfortunately she bought it on my recommendation before I'd tested it properly. Both of us have the latest Live version 8. The problem is this, on both of our iPhones which both run iOS4, the copilot software drains the battery so much that even with a decent in car charger, it can't charge the phone up as fast as copilot is using the battery. This means that if you are on a long journey after about 2 and a half hours the phone just gives up the ghost and switches off. After contacting the publishers support desk they simply washed their hands of it, saying that it must be a faulty battery, seems a bit of a coincidence that in the same office, two completely different brand new iPhones running on different phone networks are suffering from the same issue. The more I read up on this on various forums, the more it becomes obvious that this software just isn't up to the job. I seriously hope that the software publisher sorts this out sooner than later instead of taking peoples money and then just blaming the hardware for the issue, which incidentally runs flawlessly for many high video performance games and other apps that I have on my phone, and when not using copilot the battery lasts days! If I were you, I'd avoid this software and fork our an extra £30-40 for a dedicated sat-nav, all in one's like the iPhone are fab when they work, but really peev you when they don't!
Report as inappropriateJoe26 January 2012
In response to Craig Price.. You are Absolutly correct. The battery drain in CoPilot on a iPhone 3GS is awful. Mine lasts 2 hours then tells me the adapter I'm using ti charge the phone is not compatible with Co-Pilot. I too received the same response from ALK, must be your phone, we never receive complaints about battery drain.
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