This article is written by mick 

Review of 3 GPS Software for Pocket PCs

This is the 2nd part series of GPS software reviews for the Pocket PCs.

Mapking 2007 for PPC

This is a review of the Mapking 2007 PPC (build 0131) developed by MapAsia.

System Requirements:
- Pocket PC 2003 or above
- For Chinese Map, OS must support Chinese display
- Minimum 32 MB RAM
- 8M hard disk space required
- 64MB storage card is recommended
- The PC MUST have Microsoft ActiveSync 3.7.1 or later

Platform:
- Pocket PC OS: Pocket PC/ 2000/ 2002/ 2003, Window
- CPU: StrongARM/ XScale/ MIPS/ SH3
- RAM: 32MB (support storage card)

Supported GPS:
- RS-232/ CF/ PCMCIA/ Bluetooth/ USB/ Build-in GPS
- NMEA0183 output

Good map coverage of Asean region and support for Asian languages has made Mapking a popular choice in Asia. Mapking uses the GPS engine developed by Maction Asia. Many other GPS navigation software such as PaPaGo also licenses the same GPS engine. Only the user interface and implementation differs between them.

Program Installation

The program was installed by running the exe program which transfers some files onto the PPC via ActiveSync and installation continues on the PPC itself. You are given the option to install on SD card or on main memory. I selected SD card storage. Mapasia provides download copies for evaluation at their website including maps! You can download the installer version of the mapfiles which you run on your PC to transfer to your PPC. The maps and program runs in evaluation mode for 3 days after which you have to purchase the software and maps, otherwise you can only play around with the demo Hong Kong maps which is a map of a tiny region in Hong Kong.

Program Startup

Startup screen / Main Menu

The program starts up very quickly compared to iGo (see part 1 review). The Startup screen shown above is simple. The first thing you probably need to do is to configure the GPS if it has not already detected the GPS unit.

The GPS setting menu allows you to configure you GPS parameters - auto-detect or nominate a specific port and baud rate. The track logging option is also located here.

Options & Settings

The program has quite a lot of features.

	Style->Asia	Style->Asia (zoom in)	Style->Malaysia

While in map mode (GPS not active or disconnected), the menu and options are located at the bottom of the screen. The Style option allows you to select a color theme. There are quite a number of bugs in the program. For example, clicking on the Style->Asia brings up the 2nd image above. I have absolutely no idea how I got to E17 Butterworth from Subang Jaya! Notice the bottom of the screen says Terengganu, Dungun. I realized that Mapking automatically zoom out to the maximum such that the whole of Malaysia is smaller that the vehicle icon (GPS position indicator). When I zoom back in I got the 3rd image above. I do not know if its the program or the map that causes the display as shown. I would expect to see Kuala Lumpur which is more important than PG Bridge to be labeled at this scale! Clicking on Style->Malaysia gives the 4th image above.

Style->STANDARD

Clicking Style->STANDARD will bring the 1st image above. This is rather funny. Not only is the map scale continuously changing, the program even changes my location! I started from Subang Jaya, went to Terengganu, Penang, Kg Pandan, KL and finally ended up in KLCC! Mapking appears to have a lot of inconsistencies. I find this phenomenon rather widespread in Mapking program. Most notably, the map scale is never preserved when switching between screens. I find this rather annoying.

If your PDA is a smart phone, you can send your position via SMS to you friend, who in turn can import the coordinate and save it as a POI or directly perform a route to that location. The SMS supports 2 formats - Mapking and PaPaGo. A handy feature for some.

Tools->Options

Under the Tools->Option menu the user has access to various settings. There are the standard auto day/night color mode, auto time synchronization with the GPS, degree of highway details and choice to select which types of POI to be shown on the map to reduce clutter.

While in map mode (GPS inactive), there are a few quick access menu icons located at the bottom of the screen. You can find POI, crossing, a location, a position within a certain radii of the current cursor position or a favorite. The cursor position is the last point click on the map or the last GoTo position. You can quickly start a route by clicking on the route icon. The main menu is directly accessible from here too.

There is a also a speed camera warning option, if set, would sound a alarm if you are exceeding the speed limit.

One important option - track up or north up is not available. The program always displays north up. Only during routing in 3D mode it will show track up to guide you to your destination.

POI & Favorites

The program forbids you to enter a POI during navigation. It must be done in map mode (GPS inactive). A POI can be easily created by taping the map at the required location and Mapking will popup a list of option. You can categorize the POI under any one of 6 predefined categories - Family, My Favorite, Confidential, Unknown, Flag, Speed Cam or Major City. I think the Major City category is redundant as the map itself will tell you which town you are in anyway. There is also a sound option which if set, will play a sound if you route is near the POI.

There is no need to save a target location before commencing routing. Instead of saving as a POI, you can immediately route to it.

Location Finding/Search

Tools->More	Tools->More->Find	FInding "KL..."	Map showing KL General Post Office

The find feature implements a progressive search. As you type in the letters, the program will display all POI matching the partial alphabets. In the 3rd image above, I found all POIs starting with KL and if you click on any item on the drop list, it should show the location of the selected POI with a large X in the empty space below as shown in the 4th image above. This is real neat! It really saves keystrokes. Most other GPS program will automatically display the full map for centering on the selected POI. And if you discovered you clicked on the wrong POI you have to go back to start all over again. For Mapking, this is a great feature.

There is another useful feature - the crossing search. When finding a road by index search (typing road name), a dynamic popup list will be displayed and refreshed to keep in sync as you spell the road name. At any point you can click on one of the roads and it will popup another list showing all the intersections this road has. This is a very handy feature and can reduce search time especially when the road is very long and has lots of intersections. It saves you time from panning on the road to search for your intended location.

The above screen (1st) shows the results of a partial search of road "sulta". The 2nd screen image above shows Jln Sultan Ismail highlighted and the lower half of the screen is then populated with all known intersections of other roads with Jln Sultan Ismail. The 3rd screen image shows the selection of the junction of Jln Sultan Ismail with Jln Ampang. Tapping on the Go! button brings up the 4th screen image. Again a useful feature.

There is a Q-Find option which is basically a search of POI by category. Various search options are shown above. An interesting item is the keyword search. This is interesting! Sometimes we do not know the actual spelling of a location but we know what it sounds like. In this case I tried "pang". An interesting list of locations pops up - Kalumpang, Ampang, Simpang, etc - handy feature. Tapping on any of the location will display a tiny map of the location.

Routing

Tools->More->Routing	Tools->More->Routing->Favorite	Click on Routing button	Tools->More->Routing->Avoid

The options available is a little restrictive for routing. Only options available are recommended, motorway preferred, motorway avoided and shortest route. Most other applications include include avoid u-turns, unpaved roads, toll roads, etc. These options are not available.

The routing screen (1st image above) takes a little getting use to. You do not click on the start flag to select the starting point of your route. Instead you click on the lower three icons - Favorites, Home or Recent to select your starting point. The same applies to the ending point. If you add many locations to the blue (finish) flag they will all be treated as 'via points' or intermediate points. The last one on the list will be used as the finishing point. There is a handy feature which allows you to re-sequence your intermediate points. There is one caveat here. You must already have created a list of favorites or POIs in order to select them as start or intermediate or finishing point. This current version does not allow you to search/locate locations from here.

Opening up the favorite from the routing screen brings up the 2nd image above. There appears to be another bug. The last POI is repeated forever! You cannot delete it. You can select any of the locations listed as either the starting or finishing point of your route.

The avoid button does nothing until you have generated the route. In Mapking's case its achieved by clicking the Routing button (3rd image above). Only after the route is generated you may popup the avoid screen to select which roads to avoid. The screen shows a list of roads for which the proposed generated route will take. You can nominate which road to avoid and Mapking will generate an alternative route. Excellent feature indeed. In other other applications you have to manually select which roads to avoid, while in some programs you do not even have an avoidance feature all.

There is an option to simulate your generated route. Unfortunately, the simulation keeps looping forever. It should allow for an option to simulate continuously or loop a specified number of times. For some reason, the simulation seems to overshoot the destination (4th image above) - the yellow arrowhead is supposed to point to the blue flag but it points to somewhere else instead. Minor bug.

Once you stop the simulation, all the routing information - start and end points are removed from the routing screen. You have to go through the whole process of selecting starting and ending and intermediate points all over again if you wish to re-simulate! There is another quirk here - when you reconnect to a GPS the screen will display a map showing the last routing's start point and not your current GPS position (above 1st image). Strange! It would be certainly useful if we can save such manual routings - well, at least the route points. This is especially useful for route planning purposes.

On this screen both the large ? and the small ? pops up the same menu. Only in active navigation will they open different menus. I was unable to get back to the map showing my current GPS position easily! You have to disconnect the GPS and then reconnect your GPS again, then only Mapking will reset the map to show your current GPS position. The large ? is used to display the upcoming turns during routing, otherwise it behaves as a menu button.

The other alternative is to exit the program completely and then start it again. By the way, there are two ways to terminate the program. Well, actually one way to truly terminate the program while the other is temporary suspend the program. The Tools->Exit will properly exit the program completely, whereas clicking the 'X' on the top right corner of the screen will only page out the application.

Due to the high CPU required for simulation, you will find the screen refresh rather slow. You will need a PPC with at least a 400Mhz or higher speed to really appreciate the simulation. Stopping the simulation also disconnects the GPS! So you have to reconnect the GPS again.

You can also view a summary of the proposed generated route complete with turns. Excellent! There is also a fuzzy learning option which is not fully explained in the manual - it just says sets the weight of the road. I suppose you can only use this feature in real routing and not during simulation mode. If I understand this correctly you can set a low weight to particular roads with heavy traffic so that the program will try avoid using the road automatically in future routings.

GPS Operations

Searching for GPS	Navigator Mode - GPS on	Map Mode - no GPS	GPS Status

On starting up the program managed to detects the GPS unit very quickly on startup. Upon detecting the GPS, a voice announces that the GPS is now functioning.

The screen then switches over to navigator mode as shown by 2nd image above. If the GPS is switched off or non detected, it will switch over to the map mode (3rd image above). There are quite some difference in options/menu between the two screens. Most notable is the bottom menu is no longer available during navigation mode. In map mode, you can pan the map, whereas in Navigator mode you cannot. Any effort to pan the map will popup a menu as shown by rightmost image below. You are not able to mark any location as a POI during navigation.

In navigator mode (above 2nd image) you have to continuously tap the +/- icon to zoom in/out as there is no slider bar. This makes it extremely difficult to zoom. With the +/- icons you can only achieve so much and it is very tiring on the hands. The scale is also missing! The green car icon (represents your current GPS position) is too large and makes it difficult to pinpoint your GPS position. The GPS position marker also retains its size regardless of the zoom level! At a very minimum, the user should be given the option of selecting either a small or large car. These few features are really important and I wonder how it got left out at all.

You can zoom in or out in discrete steps, and if you leave the screen at that zoom level for approximately 10 seconds, the program will automatically zoom back to its default scale. Depending on how you view it, it may or may not be a good feature.

Although you can also save a track log of your journey, you do not have an option to nominate either the time interval nor the distance interval for such logs. However, you can replay your track log at a later time.

I believe they may be an oversight in the programming. With all the above satellites in view and my handheld GPS unit showing full 3D position, Mapking still says its trying to acquire a 3D position! Those with a built-in GPS receiver or using a mobile receiver with no display will keep wondering if there is something wrong with the hardware.

Also missing are the standard north up, track up views. Again an important feature missing in Mapking. However, as a consolation you can switch between 2D and 3D display during routing by toggling the double circular arrows.

By taping on the map (when GPS is active or in navigation mode) it will also bring up a menu screen as shown by the 1st image above. From there you can click on the red right arrow to get to the main and other menus.

When GPS is not active (map mode), tapping on the screen allows you to mark a POI or route to that location. You cannot mark a position as a POI while in navigation mode. This is not a good thing. In majority of cases we would probably be moving and would like to mark a POI as we pass interesting locations. In Mapking, you have to stop the GPS, goto map mode, mark the POI, reconnect the GPS and return to navigation. Your last recourse is to use the MOB (man overboard) it only marks the current GPS position and its the only thing you could do. The program does not allow you to select a nearby point for the MOB.

The menu is a little awkward to use - if you click on the red right arrow too fast and overshoot, there is no back button. You just have to go round one more time. The upwards pointing arrow will bring you back to the map screen or the navigation screen depending on where you came from. The design seems counter intuitive.

If you choose to go to the main menu from here (above 2nd image), the GPS is automatically disconnected. While at the main menu, selecting map menu will bring you back to the map mode and not the navigation mode. You have to reconnect the GPS again.

Summary

Mapking 2007 PPC generally have most of the features of a proper GPS navigation software. They have also implement some interesting and useful features not commonly found in other applications. However, in doing so, they inadvertently left out some important features such as track up and north up for the map display. The menu system is also a little confusing and needs some tidying up. This coupled with the random map scale changes can be annoying and at times frustrating to use.

I do not understand why the GPS has to be turned off in order to use some of the menu options such as route simulation - I suppose during simulation, the program can choose to ignore GPS signals without requiring turning off the GPS. Overall, there are quite a number of quirks that can be annoying to some users - eg. after a route simulation, you are unable to get back to the map displaying your current GPS position.

Ignoring the few quirks and bugs, this package is generally quite pleasant to use. In fact I found no major bugs with the software. Program startup is fast. Satellite acquisition is correspondingly fast. There is no other application that has such a wide collection of Asian maps. For Asean residents or frequently travelers to the Asean region, this is one of the better packages available in the market.

Michael
2007-11-02