To test the four devices, I chose the same address on all four, and blindly followed directions. The address was inside a small colony in the older part of Bangalore. This was chosen due to the possibility of multiple paths to the address, and the possibility of the devices getting confused by the multiple small alleys around the address.

Starting off with the C230 from SatGuide, I made the mistake of choosing "Shortest Route", instead of "Quickest Route". This meant that device mapped a route that was as straight as possible, through some of the narrowest roads in Bangalore. A car would never have been able to navigate these routes, but a motorbike managed. To be fair to the device, the default setting is 'Quickest Route', and a route mapped with that does keep you to the major roads. However, this little mistake made it clear that major cities in India are very thoroughly mapped. No matter which tiny lane I was in, the device knew where it was, and gave crisp instructions for the next turn.

Route recalculation was pretty snappy as well. The battery life isn't very good, however. Though charged fully before leaving, the battery was down to 10 percent by the time I returned, forty-five minutes later. This means that the device is mostly unusable without the included car charger. The touch screen isn't the most accurate, and there's some amount of random stabbing at the screen that comes into play. At Rs. 16,000, this is a pretty cheap device though, and the maps are quite accurate, so the hardware issues aren't a deal-breaker. This price includes two free updates for the maps, subsequent to which you can buy four more updates for Rs. 2,180. SatGuide say they update the maps every three to four months.

After this, I mapped a route with the iNav Connect application on the Blackberry Bold. The route that it followed was quite straightforward, and the verbal instructions were quite prompt. However, the software interface is slightly confusing--there's no "Start Navigation" button, for example. I had some trouble figuring out exactly how to start the route. It's not very intuitive, and the documentation does not have a comprehensive step-by-step guide. It says, "When both a start and destination have been set, a route will be calculated and you are ready to start navigating!" In practice though, after the route had been calculated, the voice navigation would not start immediately.

Also, I noticed that the software did not seem to automatically recalculate a route, despite having that option enabled in the settings. Software issues aside, the map was accurate with proper points of information. It constantly downloads data, so an unlimited data plan is a good idea if you don't want to see your phone bills increasing manifold. The advantage of this method is that the maps are always updated, since it gets the latest data from the Internet.