Hello everyone. Since I do have phones that use windows mobile and the symbian platforms, I did purchase way finder access
and Mobile Geo, which allows me to have GPS features on both operating systems. Since I have both, I thought I would post my
thoughts on both of them. Both are good products, but there are some differences which I will mention. First though, in
fairness, way finder access has been out for around a year, where as mobile geo was just released recently, and I'm sure both
will improve over time. Also, remember that these are only my views on each product. A feature that is important to one
person may not be to another. Fortunately, you can try each product before purchasing it. Also, currently Way Finder Access
only works on the Symbian operating system, where as Mobile Geo only works on Windows Mobile. So, the type of phone you have
will determine which product you will need to purchase, unless you choose to switch phones. Before I get in to the details and comparing of each product, let me say that I think both products provide the functionality
a blind person needs to explore their environment and navigate to a destination. There are advantages and disadvantages to
each which I will talk about, but when it's all said and done, I think both products are fairly even. Now let's compare some
aspects of each in more detail.First, the method of storing the maps is different for the two products. For Mobile Geo, you download the maps, and store
them on a memory card in your phone. This has advantages and disadvantages. You don't have to be in a coverage area for the
product to work. However, if you travel to another state for example, you must remember to load the maps for that state, or
hope that you will be able to access a computer once you arrive in order to do this. Way Finder Access on the other hand,
gets its map information from the internet as it needs it. The advantage here is that you don't have to worry about loading
new maps in to your phone when traveling since they will be downloaded when needed. Of course, if you should happen to be in
an area with no cell coverage, this won't work. For this reason, way finder access does allow you to load the maps in to your
phone the same way Mobile Geo does. That said, cell carriers have quite good coverage now a days, so while it's possible this
could be a problem, I would say it's highly unlikely. Also, since Access only works with Symbian phones, and Symbian phones
only work with GSM, in the United States you are limited to using either AT&T or T-Mobile. On the other hand, there are
Windows Mobile phones for GSM and CDMA carriers, so Mobile Geo supports more devices. Personally, I think GSM is a better way
to go for a few reasons. First, it's considered the global standard for cell phones, and is used throughout the world.
Second, your phone number is stored on a card, not in the phone itself. This allows you to switch phones by simply moving the
card to a different phone, and you are not limited to the phones that the carrier provides. In order to use Way Finder
Access, you do need a data plan, and I will talk more about that in the section on pricing for each product. One reason many blind people purchase a GPS product is to know more about their surroundings, such as intersections, and
businesses that are close by. I'm going to talk about intersections and points of interest separately because the comparisons
for both GPS products are different.Both products provide features to automatically announce what you are close to. Mobile geo provides the look around
announcements, and you can set what information you want to know about, such as street crossings and points of interest.
Access provides different views you can switch to, such as cross roads near by, places near by, and all near by which
combines both of these.In the case of Mobile Geo, if you have the look around announcements enabled, the software will announce the street you are
on when it starts, and will tell you what street you are approaching by telling you what street is ahead of you, or it may
indicate the approaching street is slightly to the left or slightly to the right. It also provides commands for obtaining
more details about intersections you are close to.Rather than indicating streets are on your left or right, way finder access tells you the direction of the closest
intersection. For example, it may indicate that an intersection is 200 feet north. Access also announces this as degrees, and
I do hope they add a feature to disable this, as not everyone is interested in the distance in degrees, feet and miles are
much more meaningful. While Access does not indicate if the crossing is ahead or behind you, it is still obvious for a couple
of reasons. First, if you use the "where am I" feature, access will tell you the city you are in, the street you are on, and
the direction you are traveling in. So, for example, if the software indicates you are walking north, and indicates an
intersection is north, north east, or north west, it's obvious you are approaching it. Also, Access has the ability to
automatically update the list of intersections based on a time interval that you set, and if the number of feet to an
intersection is decreasing, you are obviously approaching it. As far as I know, Mobile Geo does not provide a way to adjust
the time between updates for the look around announcements, it's hard coded at 30 seconds. Way finder access also provides a
command to obtain more information about the intersection. So again, for automatically announcing street crossings near by, I
believe both products are equal.Now let's look at how both products provide information about places that are close to you, also known as points of interest.
The type of information provided is similar to what is provided for intersections. That is, mobile geo will announce for
example that McDonalds is 200 feet ahead and slightly to the right, where as way finder access would say something like 200
feet north east, 38 degrees, Mcdonalds. So, if you used the where am I feature in access and it said you were heading north,
you would know that McDonalds was slightly on your right, since East is a quarter turn to the right, and north east is less
than a quarter turn. Both products provide a method for obtaining more information about a point of interest, such
as address, phone number etc. You can even automatically call the place if you wish. Way Finder Access does currently have an issue where it does not automatically announce every point of interest in it's
database. So, at this time, Mobile Geo will automatically announce more places as you pass them then Way Finder Access does.
Hopefully this is something that will be fixed soon. A good example of this is an ice cream place near where I live in Saint
Louis. In the places near by or all near by views, it is never announced even when passing it. However, if I do a search for
it by name, it is found and I can create a root to it. Both products allow you to set the categories of places you are
interested in hearing about. For now, when it comes to automatically announcing places close to you, I would give mobile geo
the advantage because it announces more places. If the issue I mentioned can be corrected, so all points of interest are
shown in the places and all near by views, I think they both would be about equal. Besides obtaining information about what is in your environment, the other main purpose for having a GPS system is to receive
directions for getting from one place to another. Both products provide this feature, and I will do some comparisons of these
features for you.First let's look at creating a root to a place that you are close to, which may have been announced by the look around
feature of Mobile Geo or in the places near by or all near by views of Way Finder Access. It is quite easy to create a root
here, on the Mobile Geo main screen, press enter on the point of interest which will give you more information about it such
as address and phone number. If you press enter again, you can choose to set it as your destination and whether to create a
vehicle or padestrian root. In way finder access, in the places near by or all near by views, move to the business you want
to create the root for, and press the left soft key to open the options menu. From here, you can choose to get more
information such as the address and phone number, or to navigate to the place, which creates the root. The type of root that
is created, vehicle or padestrian is determined by changing an option in the settings screen of the program. One thing I
would suggest for way finder access is that it would allow you to select vehicle or padestrian when creating the root rather
than having to go to the settings screen to do this. In Way Finder Access, there is also a setting to determine how a root is created, either for the least distance, or the fastest way. Usually, for a vehicle root, you want to choose the fastest way, and for a padestrian root, you will want to choose the least distance, but it's up to you in either case. Both products allow you to access other points of interest besides the
one that is closest to you. For mobile geo, doing a long press of the number 8 on the keypad will open a list of places that
are close to you along with their location from where you are. In Way Finder Access, there is no need to access a different
screen. If you are in the places near by view, the closest place is shown first, if you want to see others that are close by,
just arrow down. Both products will allow you to create a root to a point of interest using the methods described above. Now let's talk about creating a root to an address or place of business you may not be close to. Both products allow you to
do this, however, this is where I believe more work needs to be done in Mobile Geo to make this more user friendly. In
fairness, again, this is only the first release and I'm sure this will get better as the product evolves. The quickest way to
create a root is to do a long press of the number 2 on the keypad, then choose set destination. You now need to select a city
to use if a default city has not been set. You can choose a default city that will always be used which will allow you to
avoid this step. You then press the left soft key to go to the next screen where you enter the house number, not the street
yet. Press the left soft key again and type the street name. Press the left soft key once again and the program will search
for the street. If more than one is found, select the appropriate street from the list, and you can then choose what type of
root to create. Assuming your GPS receiver is connected, the root will then be created from your location to the destination. If you want to search for a place of business you must go to a different screen, the long press of number 2 only searches for
addresses. For this, press the left soft key for the functions menu, and choose search, then choose advanced search. Now
enter the minimum distance from your location and press the left soft key to go to the next screen, then enter the maximum
distance away from where you are that you want to search. Press the left soft key again, and choose the category of place you
are searching for. Press the left soft key again, and choose the subcategory if any, then press the left soft key once again.
You can now enter the name of the place you are looking for, or just leave this blank if you want to see all places in the
category you have chosen. Press the left soft key one more time and the program will now conduct the search. When the list
appears, you can select the item you want, and create a root using the method I have already described. The way all of this is done in Way Finder Access, at least in my opinion is far easier and less cluttered. In Way Finder
Access, arrow to search and select it. You can now type either the name of a business or a complete address, no need for two
different screens. While Access does provide a place to enter a city or zip code, and a state, if you leave these blank and
your GPS is connected, it assumes that you want to search in the city where you are based on the information from the GPS. I
don't know how many miles it does for the search, at least 100 I think, which could produce quite a few results if you search
for a common place such as McDonalds for instance. If you want to limit your search to a category, press the left soft key to
open the options menu, and choose select category. Also, if you just want to search for a category around where you are such
as a resturaunt, leave the field blank where you would enter the address or business name, and choose select category from
the options menu. Press the left soft key to open the options menu, and select search. Assuming a match is found, the search
results list appears. Select the result that matches what you want, and the root is created based again on how you have this
set in the settings screen. At this point, I think it is much faster and easier to do a search for a point of interest or
address in Way Finder Access. Both of these are done from one screen, an address can be entered all at once, and there is no
need to set default cities or choose the city you want each time. If the city, zip code and
state are not entered, Access assumes, rightly so, that you want the search to take place in the area where you are. You only
need to fill in these fields if perhaps you are going on a long vehicle trip. Hopefully, in Mobile Geo, this process will
become less cluttered in the future. The one suggestion I would have for Way Finder Access in this area is to allow you to
limit the search to a certain number of miles or kilometers in case you want to make your search in a certain distance range. Ok, we have looked at searching for an address or business, now what about root creation, instructions to guide you, and
handling a situation where you may go off track. When it comes to creating the root, by far, Way Finder Access is faster.
There is really no comparison here. On any of my Symbian phones, after selecting the item from the results screen, the root
is created in a very short time, at most 5 seconds. This is because the root creation is not actually done by the phone
itself. What happens is, a request is sent through the internet to the way finder server. The server actually creates the
root, then sends it to your phone. Obviously this could be a problem if you were trying to create a root in an area where
cell coverage is not available, but again, with the coverage carriers have now, this is highly unlikely. Also, once your
phone has the root, even if you were to lose the coverage for some reason, you would still continue to receive instructions
for this root. The only time you may have a problem is if you were to go off of your root, and that particular spot had no
coverage. In that case, the program would not be able to create a new root from where you were, but again, the chance of
having no coverage at that point is very slim.For Mobile Geo, at least on the phone I am using, it takes quite a bit longer to create a root, usually around 20 to 30
seconds. I am using an HTC Mteor with 128 MB of memory, about 40 MB free, with the maps on a memory card. The processor is a
300 MHZ processor, which is fast for a Mobile Phone. It's running Windows Mobile 5, and there are no firmware updates for it,
so I'm assuming the firmware is current. Also, when calculating a few roots, the connection to the receiver was lost, so I
needed to reconnect and then recreate the root. I'm not sure if this is actually a Mobile Geo problem, or a problem with
Windows Mobile itself, but it is something to be aware of, and I don't think it's the receiver, since it has happened with a
few different ones that I have.Once the root has been created, you will begin to receive instructions as you travel. Mobile Geo provides two methods for
following the root, you can have it only announce the points that require you to make a turn or do something else such as
exit the highway, or it can announce every point in the root. My suggestion is to only have it announce points where you must
do something, having every way point announced, at least for me, is far too much information run together, especially while
on a highway. Granted, some of the highways we have around here have long names on the map, so I don't know if this would
always be the case. Even when set to only mention the way points where you must do something, some times this still is too
verbose and runs together. For one thing, a setting should be provided to not mention the way point number in the root, also,
especially on a highway, the program repeats the instruction to continue ahead on the highway several times. In the roots I
tested the program with, the person doing the driving already knew where to go, but if this wasn't the case, it could be
difficult for the user to sort out the information given in each instruction and then relay it appropriately to the driver.
This wasn't as much of a problem on streets, since the instruction would simply say something like, turn right and go south
on first street. Also, while on a highway, I needed to turn off the look around announcements because between that and the
instructions, it's way too much speech. Again, some of this could be the way the highways are named here, but it's definitely
something to be aware of. Also, while you can always check the distance to your next turn, this is not automatically
announced until there is only 0.4 miles to that turn. That may not always be enough time for the driver to prepare for the
turn, this should probably either be a user setting or at least be increased to one mile for the first automatic message. Way Finder Access takes a bit of a different approach for the instructions. If you create a vehicle root, the guide view
shows the distance to the next turn and what street to turn on or exit the highway to. This can be read with your screen
reader. A female voice provides the actual instructions. However, when instructing you to turn, she does not say the street
names, this may or may not be important, but you can always find out what the street is by using your screen reader to read
the guide view. Typical things she will say include "In a quarter of a mile, turn left," and "turn left here." She will also
tell you when to exit a highway, and to keep left or keep right if getting in a certain lane is important. She will also tell
you when you have reached the destination, or if you go off track. Though she doesn't say the street names, none of the
drivers I have been with have problems following the instructions, and remember that you can always find out the name of the
street to turn on by reading the guide tab. Way Finder Access also provides a turn instruction much earlier so the driver can
prepare for the turn. THe first prompt comes when the turn is in 2 miles. The next is 1 mile, then a half a mile, a quarter
of a mile, 500 feet, and finally the turn left or turn right here prompt. If that is too many prompts, you can decrease this
so only the last few are given.When you create a padestrian root in Access, by default, the female voice is muted, and your screen reader, either talks or
mobile speak provides the instructions. For these roots, the street names are spoken. For example, you might hear "Walk 500
feet then turn right in to First Street. Of course, you are also told exactly when to turn at the appropriate times. While
the direction of travel is not given in the instructions, you can always use the where am I feature by pressing 8 on the
keypad, which will tell you the street you are on and your direction of travel. In a padestrian root, the screen reader will
also tell you when you reach your destination or if you go off track. I haven't tested Mobile Geo yet with a padestrian root,
hoping to do that next week, however I have had no problems getting to places using the instructions in a Padestrian root in
Way Finder Access. To summarize this section, I think both products provide good instructions to get you where you need to
go. I think Mobile Geo needs more options for eliminating some of the speech in the instructions, particularly the way point
number in the root. Perhaps Way Finder Access could include the direction of travel in the instructions for Padestrian roots
in a future release.What about the ability to know what you are close to while on a root? Both products allow you to monitor the streets and
places you are passing while on a root. In the case of Mobile Geo, the look around feature works while on a root, so streets
and places will be announced along with the instructions. Depending on the root you are taking though, this may produce too much speech, especially if you are dealing with long names, but the feature is available if you wish. In Way finder Access, you have a few options available. The program provides a feature called "Around you. This view is most
useful while on a padestrian root. It provides instructions for the root, as well as announcing a point of interest or
intersection as you pass it. By default, the female voice is muted for padestrian roots, but you can override this in
settings and bring her back. If you do this, you can then switch to the other views such as places near by, or cross roads
near by, and they will read and update as usual. In that case, your screen reader will read those views, telling you what you
are passing, and the female voice will give you the turn instructions. The one thing you will lose though if you use this
approach is having the name of the street you will be turning on announced. Other than that, it works fine. If you need to
know the streets you are turning on, and also want to know what you are passing, the "around you" view is a better choice. In
short, I think both products are equal here. Both will allow you to monitor your environment while still providing
instructions for a root.Both products have a feature that will recalculate the root if you miss a turn or otherwise diviate from the root. However,
though I had this enabled when testing it with Mobile Geo, for some reason, it did not work at all. To explain what happened,
I need to tell you a little about my street. There is an exit to my street from the highway, the only thing is, when getting
off the highway on to my street, you will be on the wrong side. Both Mobile Geo and Way Finder Access must realize this,
because both products include a turn somewhere in the root to go around the block, thus putting you on the correct side of
the street. However, many times, those who are familiar with this area will simply stay on the street all the way, then make
a u turn at the destination. Neither product includes instructions for making a u turn like this, and that's probably a good
thing since this can be unsafe. So, using Mobile Geo, we got off the highway, and it wanted us to turn on to another street
in order to circle the block. The person I was with has driven this way countless times and always just continues to my
place, then does the u turn to get on the correct side of the street. So, rather than following Geo's instruction, we
remained straight. Though the option to automatically reroot was enabled, Mobile Geo never recalculated the root, or even
indicated that we had reached the destination when we pulled in. When checking the next turn, it was still indicating the
turn we passed and that it was a couple miles behind us. I'm not sure what happened here, I will test this again next week on
the bus to work, since the root the bus takes is not the most direct way to that destination. But, at least for the root I
tested Mobile Geo with, it failed the reroot test completely.Way Finder Access on the other hand handles this situation without problems. It has never failed to reroot, at least for me.
I took the exact same trip home the evening of Thanksgiving, and when Access said to turn, we didn't. We continued straight,
and as expected the Way Finder female voice gave us the friendly message that we were off track. It rerooted, and after the u
turn, as we pulled up to my apartment, told us we had reached the destination. I have tested Way Finder Access in other
situations like this as well, some times the person I am with will choose to go a different way perhaps to avoid a long
traffic light. Access has never failed to reroot at those times. I will do more testing with Mobile Geo next week with the
reroot feature, I'm hoping that this was just an isolated case, otherwise this is a serious bug. Well, we have looked at creating and following roots in real time, what about exploring everything virtually? Is it possible
to have a look at other places to find out what interesting businesses or streets are in those areas? The answer is yes for
both products. It is also possible to create a root, then have a detailed look at the root without actually walking or
driving around. In Mobile Geo, you can press 7 on the phone keypad, and this will switch you to virtual mode. From here, you
can move up down left and right to explore everything on the map. If you switched to virtual mode while connected to a GPS
receiver, your virtual position will start where the GPS says you are, unless you have set a virtual position manually. In
the case of Way Finder Access, you can go to the map view, and move around, and your screen reader will announce the streets
you land on. If you want to explore an area other than where you are, you can set a virtual position just as you can with
Mobile Geo. To do this in Access, first select disconnect from GPS from the options menu. Now go to the search screen, and
enter an address or point of interest that you want to use as your virtual position. In this case, you will need to enter
information such as city or zip code and state. Now press the left soft key and choose search from the options menu. Select
the result you want, then open the options menu again and choose use as position. Way Finder Access will now pretend you are
at this location, you can explore the map, or use the different views to find out what is around this area. This also works
in Mobile Geo. That is, you can enter an address or find a place on the map, and tell Geo to treat this as your virtual
position. From here, you can do a long press of 8, and the points of interest will be provided relative to this position.
With both products, when you are done traveling in the virtual world, it's quite easy to warp yourself back to where you are
in reality. In Mobile Geo, just press 7 on the keypad again, and at an amazing warp speed, your position is transported back
to where you are, as indicated by the GPS. In Way Finder Access, from the main screen, press the left soft key for the
options menu, and choose connect to GPS. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, the virtual world will fade away, and the
software will once again indicate where you are in the real world.Whether you create a root from a virtual starting position or from your GPS position, it is possible with both products to
have a good look at the root without actually driving or walking it. In Mobile Geo, pressing 6 on the phone keypad will tell
you the next turn you will need to take. If you press 6 again within 6 seconds, the next turn will be given. You can continue
doing this to see all of the turning points in the root. If you would rather see the root point by point, just do a long
press of number 6. You can now cursor through each point and take as much time as you want in order to familiarize yourself
with the root.Way Finder Access also provides two different ways to study a root. Once a root is created, you can go to the itinerary view,
and arrow through each step of the root. This will indicate all turns, as well as entering and exiting highways. One item
that can be a bit confusing here, for each step of the root, two distance numbers are given, and some times the speech runs
these together. The first distance given is how far to travel before the next turn or exit, and the second number is the
distance traveled for the entire root.The other feature Access provides allows you to play the root. That is, the program pretends you are actually
driving or walking, and gives all of the prompts acordingly. To do this, press the left soft key for the options menu, choose
root, and select play. There are also options to speed up or slow down how fast the root is traveled. If you have some
useable vision, there is a setting you can enable to always show your position on the map. This could also be useful for your
driver as it will allow them to actually view the entire root on the map beforehand. If a root is playing, and the option to
show the position on the map is enabled, you can go to the map view, and the map will actually move as if you are driving or walking the root. Though I do not have enough vision to see the map, I have been told that the quality of the map that is displayed is quite good. So in summary, I think both products provide a good way to enter the virtual travel world, and study roots without actually driving or walking them. What about getting a GPS status? That is, finding out how good the signal is from the satellites? Both products will do this,
but I think Mobile Geo does this far better. By pressing 0 on the phone keypad, Geo will tell you how many satellites you are
tracking, as well as the signal quality, such as fair, good, or WAZ which is the best quality. It will also indicate how
accurately your receiver is able to determine your position in feet. So, if it indicates 10 or 12 feet, you are getting a
much more accurate reading than something like 30 feet.In Way Finder Access, you can press 2 on the phone keypad, and this will take you to a screen with several items that you can
arrow through such as your direction, speed, latitude, etc. One of the items here is the GPS status, but it only tells you a
percentage, such as 100 percent, 66 percent, etc. Obviously, 100 percent is the best, but I really do think that Way Finder
Access should provide the status information that Mobile Geo does, as it is much more informative. The last area I want to cover is the price of each product. Since each product only works on one platform, you will need to
purchase the appropriate product for that platform. Also, prices can change, so the prices I'm mentioning here are not set in
stone. I'm going to assume that you already have a phone and screen reader, so these prices are just for the GPS
functionality. At this time, Mobile Geo is $845 for the United States map coverage, and Way Finder Access is $280. Also, if your phone does not have a built in GPS receiver, an external one is between $50 and $80. On the
surface, it looks like Way Finder Access is quite a bit cheaper, but there is a bit more to it. Remember that with Way Finder
Access, you need a data plan. You can choose to pay for data as you use it, although depending on how much data you download,
this can add up. The prices I'm going to give you here are for the unlimited plans for the two GSM carriers in the United
States. For AT&T, the media net plan is what you would need, and that is $15 a month. For t-mobile, it's $19.99 a month, So, if you are with AT&T, and purchase Way Finder Access and the data plan, after two years, you will have spent $640. That's still less than the initial cost of Mobile Geo. For T-mobile, the
price for Access and two years of the data plan would be $759.76, a bit closer to Geo's price, but still a bit less. The only
way I could see the cost of Way Finder Access passing Mobile Geo's price is if there is no charge to upgrade the software and
the maps for a few years, and that may or may not happen. So, at this point at least, Mobile Geo has a higher price. Well everyone, we have arrived at our destination, the end of this review. Thank you for taking the time to read this review
and comparison, I do hope you have found it to be of value. I have tried my best to compare the two GPS systems for mobile
phones, and point out their advantages and disadvantages. I believe both products do a good job of making GPS accessible for
blind people, and as time goes on, I hope both products will continue to get better. I do think we should extend our thanks
to all of these companies for working to make this technology accessible. I was actually in an electronics store earlier
today, and all of the mainstream GPS systems they had used touch screens. There is currently no way a blind person would be
able to use one of these. Yet, thanks to the folks at Way Finder, Sendero and Code Factory, we are able to utilize this
technology and get the same benefits from it that sighted people do. For that, I know myself and many other blind people say
thank you!If you have any other questions or comments about this review, feel free to email me, my address is n0oxy@xxxxxxxxxxxx Again, thanks for reading, and happy traveling!
