Sprint GPS Service Review

I recently had the opportunity to test the Sprint GPS Navigation Service on a BlackBerry 8830 phone. It was truly amazing on its performance and all its features packed into the free software you can download from Sprint.

Here are some of the Sprint GPS Service highlights and how they performed.

Drive To (Navigation)

On this menu selection you can input a destination address or pull one up from recently saved addresses. You can also use their on line directory to pull up intersections, airports, and places of businesses.

After entering an address it took about 20 seconds for the route to download. There is also a cool feature where you can call a Sprint number and use voice command to enter the address and it will automatically download the route into your phone.

Navigation directions are presented to you on voice turn by turn instructions. Your route driving map can be displayed in either 2D or 3D which is a cool feature for this software.

If you miss a turn it will automatically re-calculate the route for you and load it into your phone. Upon testing this feature the recalculation was done in less than 30 seconds.

Besides voice turn-by-turn instructions, you can also get turn by turn instructions displayed in printed format on the phone.

Maps and Traffic

With the maps and traffic feature you can view a map of your current location or a destination by typing in an address or pulling it up from your favorites (address book).

Now for a real cool feature that you don't have in many portable GPS systems. You can get real time traffic reports. That's right you can get real traffic updates on your route you are traveling to and even get suggestions on an alternate route.

The Sprint GPS software will display the route from Point A to Point B and show where there is traffic congestion and even display the average mph speed of the traffic. The software displays the route and uses a map legend to show either minor, moderate, or serve traffic incidents. These legend icons are displayed along the route to show where the traffic conditions are.

This real time traffic is a cool feature that can save you valuable time before you even plan your trip. After planning your destination you can view traffic conditions before you start your trip and if necessary plan an alternate route.

There are many other features of Sprint's GPS Service and the few I talked about are the ones I found to be of great value.

So if you are deciding to buy a cell phone or change service providers, you may want to check this out. As always before changing cell phone providers make sure you are going to have good coverage by going to their website and looking at their coverage maps.