2 Responses to “TomTom Car Kit for iPhone - GPS receiver module for Apple iPhone”

1. Padgett says:

   March 4, 2010 at 3:24 am

   I finally got my hands on one of these and my only complaint is how long it took.

   TomTom really did not expect how popular these units would be and therefore have not done well with their production times.

   Other than that its a great handsfree speakerphone (louder than the iphone speakerphone)

   The GPS chip is much more accurate than the one included with the iPhone.

   I love that I can play music through the TomTom app while receiving directions.

   All in all this is a pretty good buy as I was in the need for a cradle, hands free, and hand held GPS unit!
2. Michal says:

   March 4, 2010 at 6:23 am

   This item is very nice and easy way to keep and charge your iphone in the car, especially if you have downloaded/bought and are using a navigation app such as tomtom or navigon because these tend to suck your battery dry in a matter of minutes.

   This item works with all other nav apps and it enhances the GPS signal by a LOT. This is especially helpful in cities when the iPhones GPS chip can’t find a good signal because of the tall buildings. The chip also allows the app to be much more accurate at where you are exactly to give better and quicker directions (for turning at specific points, etc).

   The items comes with a suction cup and a flat sticky pad. The sticky pad works with the suction cup where you can mount on your dashboard or where ever else if you don’t like your phone on the windshield; and its discrete also, when the item isn’t suctioned onto it, the pad doesn’t really look like anything so a thief won’t be tipped off to what might be hidden in the car.

   The items speaker also is nice and clear, giving good and loud directions that are much more clear then the iphones speaker.

   But with a good there are always flaws. I believe the suction cup is much too small, and doesn’t give enough suction. It has screw action thats supposed to tighten/secure it after you suction the cup, however theres not much room for it to do that. It could have been the way I suctioned, but it fell twice on me. Other times it was difficult to get off the windshield so it could be just me.

   The rotating landscape to portrait view is very flimsy. It just about stays when you put in landscape, however if you hit a bump it will fall to portrait view. Lucky for me I would rather see in portrait, however for others this is a nuisance, especially on the roads I travel (I live in PA, we are the pothole capital of the USA).
   *EDIT* I just played around with it and to counter the flimsiness tomtom made the holder able to SLIDE up and down on the arm. This also helps for when you need to place the suction cup somewhere and you need to rotate it or flip it.

   The volume control is also in a very inconvenient place once the phone is docked, making it very difficult to change the speaker volume, especially when you are on the road.

   Another downside is that you must take off any and all coverings on your iphone, otherwise it will not fit into the holder. The holder does hold the iphone securely, however it is annoying to take off my cover, put in holder, take out of holder, put cover back on. Maybe i’m just lazy, but this was a design flaw from day 1 when they unvield the unit.

   All in all I like it and recommend it; I would love to compare the Magellan one that is coming out too. Too bad these babys sell for over a hundred dollars…

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