ALK Technologies announced that the North American version of its CoPilot Live GPS navigation system has been approved for sale on the iPhone App Store and is available immediately for iPhone 3G and 3Gs. ALK says detailed street maps of the United States and Canada are stored on the phone, not downloaded each trip, so there’s no need for extra hardware and no monthly fees.
Running in portrait or landscape display mode, CoPilot Live brings full-featured turn-by-turn navigation to iPhones, complete with automatic route calculation, easy-to-follow 3D map displays and clear turn-by-turn voice directions, according to ALK, and navigating to any destination is easy with CoPilot Live on an iPhone; simply enter a house number, street or one of millions of preloaded points of interest, and it immediately works out the best route to get there.
ALK says that iPhone users on the road will enjoy sophisticated guidance features previously only found in expensive standalone or in-car systems; Turn-after-Turn display shows your next turn and the one after, while variable map zoom automatically adjusts the map display depending on your speed. CoPilot also is designed to provide continuous guidance when you lose a GPS signal in a tunnel.
CoPilot Live also is designed to use an iPhone’s mobile Internet connection to bring additional real-time information to the driver; these “Live” services include a five-day weather forecast and a location-sharing feature called CoPilot LiveLink designed to allow users to check to location of friends onscreen or online. Real-time traffic information and gas prices also will be available shortly as an option.
“We are delighted that iPhone users in North America can now enjoy CoPilot Live v8’s full-featured and affordable navigation experience,” says Michael Kornhauser, vice president and managing director of Princeton, N.J.-based ALK Technologies’ CoPilot division.
