First lets take a look around what's in the box and what you may need to get things running. The Garmin Mobile XT does, of course, require a GPS receiver. You might be lucky enough to have a built-in GPS, however you can always get yourself a Bluetooth GPS to talk to the satellites up in space.

Here's a look at the contents and a brief introduction, by way of video. Apologies in advance for calling the handset the "MDA Vario" in this vid, it's actually the T-Mobile MDA Compact III..doah! :)

I am, like many people, a pretty frequent TomTom user. So it's with no surprise that I'll probably be comparing this software to TomTom. First up, the install is pretty quick and easy. I did have to uninstall some of my other software first though, as the Garmin Mobile XT software wanted to install about 6Mb of data on the phones memory. I didn't see a way to alter the installation path either, but it installed fine after that and started up.

Here's the first screen you'll see. It's a fairly simple affair - always key when you're about to start a journey. You've got the GPS signal strength, a help function (shown right) and then two huge "pokeable" buttons to get you moving quickly. There's a few ways to get you where you want to be, so let's show you.

This is the first screen - you can navigate to a variety of places, intersections and locations

Let's start with the type of navigation most people will want to use - address based navigation. Getting to a postcode or address is probably one of the most used functions of sat-nav software. I'm going to click on "Addresses" from the option above. This brings me to the screen below...

Ah - that's a little disappointing - especially when you consider that this is the GB and Ireland version of the software. Why should I need to enter the name of the country ? Can't I just hop into the postcode entry ? Sometimes, as shown above, it'll remember that you've previously chosen England, but a lot of the time it won't. Even worse, if I start typing in "England" it'll come up with countries like "Estonia".. countries that aren't included on this GB / Ireland version of the software.

After entering the country (grrrr) I'm met with another option - I can either search by city or spell the city / enter the postcode. 

Below we'll go through both options so you can see what happens depending on what you press. There's benefits to being able to search all cities or within cities, especially when you've only got part of an address or you've been given an address quickly over the phone.

This is all well and good, but you may not always need to get to addresses. Sometimes you may want to find a hotel or a bank in the local area. Instead of choosing "Addresses" from the main screen we'll instead choose "Food / Hotels". It's a little misleading as there's lots of other categories, including Shopping, Entertainment and Fuel to name just a few. Here's the full list..

It'll list stuff near to your location, so if I choose "Bank / ATM" (Cash Machines) I'll get a nice list of banks in my local area - great if you're short on cash..

I decided to do a quick video showing how this section can help you out when you're in a tight spot. I noticed here that, now and again, the GPS data seems to take longer than it should to be displayed.

What started to become clear here is that the setup and navigation settings are really flexible, but when I got going - when I started off on my journey to the petrol station - things started to go a little strange. The first thing I noticed is that there was a noticeable delay between GPS data being received and it appearing on the screen. An example came when I entered a round-about. The lovely Garmin Mobile XT voice stated, "in 200 metres enter the round-about". Ah... I already had. When I left the roundabout the voice stated "take second exit".. but, I already had. When driving I noticed that the scrolling 3D display seemed to get "stuck", which I really couldn't understand. There wasn't anything blocking the line-of-sight from the unit to the satellites, so it seemed a little weird.

Let's look again at those navigation options. On the first page we've covered navigating to "Addresses" and "Food, Hotels". You can also navigate to addresses in your Contacts list or My Locations. These are shown below. You can manage your locations through the settings option..

You also get to navigate to recent finds - excellent for those places you forgot to save into your "My Locations" bit. There's also the ability to search intersections. For British readers, that's roads and junctions. If you want to be totally hardcore you can enter the coordinates.

Once you've chosen where you want to go, there's a map and the chance to get the weather conditions - plus you can download the traffic information too. This is good if you've got quite a distance to cover and want to see what the weather is like at your destination.

Once you start your drive you're met with a 3D representation of the road and a nice lady telling you what to do. You can change this if you wish.

Your speed and heading is shown, plus you can access further screens - like the driving / trip time shown above - simply by hitting the soft keys. The 3D view will dim depending on the time, which is a nice touch. These are the day colours but it'll swap to dark blue colours in the evening. It's not just the 3D map view either - all the navigation menus will swap to darker colours so you won't get blinded when you're trying to navigate in the dark.

During your journey the map - as default - tends to zoom out when you're on a road that doesn't involve any changes in navigation for some time. This happens especially on motoways where you've got to drive long distances without deviation, and I found that it zoomed out to such a degree that you could actually see the next turn. On a 20 mile trip up the M6 this seemed a little strange to me, and it meant that I couldn't see up-coming junctions where I could, if I wanted, turn off if I wanted fuel or to divert slightly. Again, I'm comparing this to TomTom which zooms out just a little way but still shows you what roads are going past - even if you're on a fast motorway.

But then the problem was fixed. How? Well, the screen went off. For some reason, the Windows Mobile power saving options seem to kick in when you're on a long bit of road with no change in direction for some time. This is fixable by adjusting your power saving settings, but when you're merrily bombing up the motorway you may not glance at the device and there's a chance you can miss your turn-off.

In the settings option you can change pretty much everything about the program ...

If I click on the "Map" setting above I can turn off that pesky auto-zoom feature.

Within the Routing settings you can alter what vehicle you're in. It's set as Car / Motorcycle as default but there's navigation for vehicles like trucks (which I haven't tested, but I presume it'll avoid low bridges and small roads) and even bicycle or on foot! You can also tweak whether you'd like to get the fastest or the shortest route, plus you can alter what you'd like to avoid. For me I'll be putting a tick in the "Toll Roads" option. The M6 Toll is right around the corner from here and the toll booths will happily dive into my wallet and grab nearly £5 for travelling as little as a three miles up it.

It's set to avoid traffic as default, however you can turn it off if you don't mind getting stuck in jams! Plus, if you're in some huge 4x4 you can choose to drive over unpaved roads.

There's also loads of tools to play with. This is where you can manage your locations, contacts and tracks logs. Yes, track logs. Tucked away here is a neat little feature where you can record your trips. More on this shortly.

The Tools menu also reveals the "Where Am I?" option, which is always useful if you're ... completely lost, plus there's the ability to simulate routes and check the map.

Here's those track recording options alongside the data management options I mentioned earlier. Here's your chance to save your trip on your phone storage and then stick it on your PC later. Good for proving to your boss where you've been I guess :)

Conclusion

Garmin Mobile XT is a good bit of kit, don't get me wrong. The range of options and the navigation details are great. Little tweaks like the track logs, auto dimming screen and the ability to quickly find petrol stations, hotels and cash machines in your local area are all fab. However, I was a little disappointed with some of the default settings of the program - that auto-zoom does my head in and I couldn't seem to shake off the GPS lag at times. It could that I need to adjust the baud rate on my settings, but this program sets the GPS up automatically when it can, so I'm hoping it didn't get things wrong. There's also those few niggles with the country selection but, for just over £50 with free traffic updates, you've got to work this all into the equation.

No, it's not as good as TomTom, but it is cheaper and - for the money - Garmin Mobile XT isn't too bad.

Link - devicewire.co.uk