Windows Phone Thoughts: Pharos Traveler 525 GPS Part 2 - Ostia 7.5 Navigation Software

Introduction
In part 1 of this review, we took an indepth look at the hardware and operating system side of the very pocketable Traveler 525 from Pharos. Here, we’ll focus primarily on the GPS Navigation software provided, called Ostia. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the Traveler on an extensive tour of North America (or any other continent), but I was able to run it through its paces through two of Western Canada’s largest cities (Vancouver and Victoria) and on trips to skiing destinations (Whistler Mountain and Mount Washington). Typically, (according to friends of mine with GPS units) mapping in this area of the world, especially outside of the urban centres, is not all that great so it should be a good test of the accuracy of the maps provided by Pharos.

Installation
One of the nice features of the Traveler 525 package from Pharos is that the Ostia navigation software, and the maps for the client’s area come preloaded, so the unit is ready to use right out of the box. As a bit of a test (and because it was the easiest way to get rid of all the PIM data I had loaded on the unit from the previous test), I did a hard-reset and reloaded the Ostia software from the CD. As with most packages we see today, software installation proceeds from the desktop to the Pocket PC via the Activesync partnership. Ostia 7.5 requires approximately 2.5 Mb of memory, including both sets of voice prompts.

Fortunately, the map data was provided on a separate 512mb SD memory card, so I didn’t have to worry about locating and re-installing that as well.

Included in the installation is a Today screen plug-in, which is pre-configured to be displayed when you turn the unit on.


Figure 1: Ostia’s plug-in on the Today screen.