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Review TomTom GO 5 firmware update

All our wishes fulfilled?

March 10, 2005 - We had to wait a long time for it, but soon our patience will finally pay off: then we will be able to install brand new firmware on our TomTom GO! MyTomTomGO already took the new 5.0 firmware for a spin and reports.

Does TomTom take it's users seriously and have they listened to our wishes?

Of course it's not the first time that TomTom releases new (free) software-updates for the GO. Last year the already provided us with two new firmware updates. The first one (4.21) only showed some minor improvements and enhancements. The second update (4.4x) was more substantial: it added the possibility to add your own POI's (Points Of Interest) to the GO, and also to sound a warning noise when you reach one of those POI's.

So now there's version 5.0! And let's get straight to the point here: this is the most feature packed update so far! There are so many expansions and new possibilities that most of us will probably need some time before they are used to all this feature-galore. But we're sure you'll agree with us: there are things that are a lot worse than that! ;-)

An important technical difference with the previous versions is that TomTom now uses Linux version 2.6 for operating system instead of 2.4. The reason for this choice is because this version standard supports Bluetooth that is used in the new GO 300, 500 and 700 units. For more info on that, read our newsflash: CeBIT: New GO's hit stores April/May

Beta
This is all great of course, but the average user will of course be a lot more interested in the new or changed possibilities of their GO. What's new? What's different? Are all our wishes fulfilled? MyTomTomGO had the opportunity to test the new firmware version for you so now we're already able to give you some insight of what's to come real soon now!

Just realise when you read this review that we based our findings on a beta version of the 5.0 software. The final version is still a work in progress by the TomTom team and so it's not unthinkable that some minor details may still change. Because of this, we cannot make any comments about improved satellite reception and or ASN (Assisted Satellite Navigation) quality. TomTom has told us that they are still working on the problem, so it wouldn't be fair to claim any final impressions based on this beta software. For this, we'll have to await the final product, due for release by the end of this month, beginning of next month...

Ok, enough with the intro now, let's get on with it! We'll give you a summary of all the new stuff, which we will review feature by feature. We'll also tell you what our impressions were.

Planning options

We already predicted it by means of the possibilities of MOBILE 5, but now it's completely certain: from version 5.0 and on you'll have the possibility to select how you want your route to be calculated. You can choose from the following options:

Fasted or shortest route
Avoid motorways
Walking-, bicycle- or routes for limited speed

You can set your preference as a standard for each route that has to be calculated, but you can also select the option ask me when i plan with which every time you plan a route your preference will be asked.

Navigate to...

The 'navigate to...' options have expanded a lot in version 5.0. Most noticing is probably the ability to navigate to a certain postal code by means of a 6 or 7 character number/letter combination plus a house number. Very handy to quickly enter a destination. This postal code supports sadly only works in Holland and the United Kingdom, but that's not the GO's fault; those are the only two coutries that use this extremely handy postal code system.

Other new ways of entering a destination is by 'Point on map', 'City centre' and 'POI in city'.

Avoid toll roads

For GO users who like to ride through the countryside or who simply want to save some cash, there's the new option of avoiding toll roads. Three choices can be made in the 'Toll charge preference' menu:

Always avoid toll roads
Never avoid toll roads
Ask me when it happens

When you select this last option, the GO asks you your preference when it calculates it's route, similar to the route planning options mentioned above.

This is probably not an option most of us will use everyday, but it's handy to have nonetheless...

Itinerary planning

Completely new in the 5.0 update is the Itinerary planner. With this it's very simple to plan a complete trip with multiple stops and destinations. This way you can plan a vacation trip in which you can add a lot of sights. You can make multiple of these itineraries, save them and reload them at any later time.

It's very simple to do. Just add a new destination to a list every time before you depart. For this you can use standard addresses, but also recent destinations, postal codes, POI's and GPS location.

After choosing start navigation, the GO will run down the list of destinations one by one.

View route

With this menu option, you can get all sorts of information about the route that the GO has planned. Again, a lot of possibilities: browse as text describes how the route will be. You can determine the information you would like to read yourself. Think "time until" or "distance since" and travel time from the current location. browse as images shows an image for every indication and the direction you'll have to choose when you reach it. There's also browse map of route (the old trusty map browser) and show route summery (as is show after calculating a route).

Spectacular is the new option show route demo! This will show you a 3D, moving demo with spoken navigational comments of the entire planned trip! This will enable you to check out a certain route beforehand. The demo speed is adjustable from 10% to 500%. Great stuff!

Car speed dependent

With this option, the volume of your GO is coupled with the speed of your car as the GO perceives it. The volume is automatically turned up when you drive faster (with more outside noise), and it's lowered at lower speeds.

Eg. the volume will be 100% at 100 km/h (or faster) and gradually decline to 85% at lower speeds.

This turns out to work pretty good in practice. It end the manual adjustments that sometimes have to be made. It also makes the driving experience safer. Again, good stuff!

Keyboard

Maybe not as spectacular, but very handy nonetheless: there's the option now of choosing the keyboard layout of your choice. There are three options:

ABCD
QWERTY
AZERTY

We KNOW a lot of people have been looking out for this one!

Status bar

The possibilities to make the GO's status bar user-definable have improved dramatically. You can now determine yourself which information is shown at the bottom of the screen:

Remaining time, remaining distance
Time of arrival, current time
Street name
Speed

If less features are shown, the font size automatically increases! Very handy! Just have a look at the screendump to the left for an example of four different status-bar settings.

Map colours

For those who think that a lot is still not enough, TomTom has added the map colours of australia en deuteranopia. The total number of map colour choices is now 10.

You can also choose a day and night mode for every colour scheme independently from now on.

Compass function

For the boy scouts amongst us TomTom added the possibility to display a compass in the bottom left corner of the screen. Here also, there are different options:

Direction up (arrow always faces north)
North up (arrow points in driving direction)
Distance to destination (arrow points at destination)

The first two options enable you to show the driving direction (eg. WSW) on the compass or the degress (eg. 251º) the last option tell you how many km's (or miles) you're still away from your destination. Bird's eye view of course. Not an option that will be used by everybody, we know. But you have to admit it's pretty cool!

That's it? Well, no. There are still a few items which we haven't discussed yet. Eg. The possibility of showing tips on how to use the GO, or some extra options for the optional carkit. But we think that this review is pretty complete in showing you what version 5.0 will present to you all. We expect some pretty lengthy discussions about it in our forum!

Conclusion
We started this review asking if TomTom took their users seriously. And, fair is fair: if this firmware 5.0 doesn't prove that then we don't know what would! I think you'll all agree with us that most of these new features were items that were very high on a lot of people's wishlists. In general a lot of valuable new features have been added, and the existing features have been improved a lot too. The user-friendliness of the device has been raised to another level...

Does this make the GO perfect? Certainly not! But it does mature the GO a whole lot. Are there still some wishes left? For sure! And luckily so, because otherwise there would be nothing to look forwards to in a next firmware update!

Thanks to Danny & Bart for their contribution!