[talk-ph] Current state of GPS SatNav in the Philippines

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

>> 8. Other brands: Tomtom, Magellan, etc.: Using unknown maps, but there
>> are experimental OSM maps for Magellan.

Tomtom owns Tele Atlas, a map data company. And there are some satnav
apps that use Tele Atlas data. A prominent example is the Blackberry
Maps app. (Though Blackberry has decided to switch to Bing Maps for
new smartphones last month.)

I recently got the chance to play around with the Maps app of
Blackberry and it has detailed map data but only for Metro Manila. The
rest of the country is blank. And the data seems to be around 2009.
Surprisingly, the app uses Google Maps for search so you can find
relatively new establishments but only for coordinates.

Here's the 2009 Tele Atlas press release saying they added maps for
the Philippines (and other countries in Asia-Pacific):
http://corporate.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=418773

So, if you have a Tele Atlas-based satnav app/device, ditch it for
practically any of the other satnav solutions on the list I provided.
Only having an outdated map of Metro Manila is not nice at all.