I am currently testing Sygic's Aura. So far I'm pretty impressed with the work they have done on making the app much more friendlier to use. The 3D navigation is very fluid and nicely implemented and a welcomed change over the Mobile Maps 2009 interface. It's also got some nice integration with some online services (have not tested). For malaysia currently only weather works. There's a traffic option as well but it's not available here as I think they are still working on it.

There's also some additions such as GPS strength indicators and the map integration to the compass, hence it changes views as you move. There's also option to select routing options based on whether you intend to walk or drive there.

POI wise, looks quite ok and pretty extensive. For some POI they have included info like phone numbers, etc.

GPS lock on is much faster compared to Mobile Maps 2009.

I will be taking it for a further test drive tomorrow. Will share my results here with you guys after the test.

Well, after a few days of using it, here's what I've got to say. I can't make a comparison with Papago as I did not use it heavily so I'm not in a position to say which is better than the other in terms of POI databases etc. I used mainly Tom Tom previously.

Based on my usage, lock on wise it's certainly fast and from the looks of it, it does seem to use A-GPS as it managed to locate me in various difficult conditions pretty quickly.

Usability wise, I'd say my experience on it has been very pleasant. The searching, and so far the POI database seems to be quite decent. At least most of the shops that are generally new in my area (appearing within the last 3 months) seem to be present. UI wise, I'd say is a really much more refined experience. Searching for locations, address and POI etc was quite intuitive.

Routing wise, I found it to be very good. Putting it through some difficult situations and intentional mis-driving, the re-routing calculation was done pretty quickly and instantly.

Stability and speed wise is good.

I have not had the opportunity to test most of the online features as they have been having some issues with their servers i presume, but the weather feature was acceptable. I'll comment more on this part of Sygic once they've sorted out the issues they had with their online services. In regards to the traffic, and whether it integrates with routing, I am not able to test that as traffic integration seems to be a work in progress. I can check with them if it does integrate traffic info as part of routing or is it just for display purposes. Planning to ask them as well how's the traffic info integration going on as I had a talk with them last year on this topic.

Like saturniq mentioned, it's really a personal choice as to which app we choose to use. My take on it overall? I like the app. Very much so I use it more than Tom Tom now mainly because it's really quite user friendly and intuitive and it's fast as well. Most importantly it fulfills my requirements. I'm hoping that when their online services bit comes back into action, there will be more to see, but overall it has certainly replaced Tom Tom as my usual GPS app. Wish I had it when I was in Singapore, the walk function would have been pretty handy there. Most of the time Tom Tom just made me go in circles just to get say to a MRT station.

Problem wise, they've got some bugs, e.g online services and their map engine, although quite well optimized needs some work as I've encountered some bugs during my test period.

Guess that's about it for now and hope that the points above have been useful:)

This post has been edited by perror: Apr 22 2010, 11:50 PM

It is not currently enabled. Probably a work in progress on their end. I'm not too sure about the subscription based model but that's something I'm gonna ask them as well. Will drop a note once they've gotten back to me:)