TomTom has enhanced its GPS app for the iPhone to offer a few new tricks that should help make it earn its keep at such a heady App Store price point. The new version 1.3 TomTom app throws in a bunch of updates to make the app experience more iPhone smart, like new pinch and zoom map adjustments, and along with a new Local Search feature powered by Google you should be feeling a lot more value for your $99.99.
Version 1.3 adds music fading to reduce volume while a turn-by-turn instruction is read out for extra clarity, pinch-and-zoom for quickly adjusting your view of the map, auto day/night mode switching based on local sunrise/sunset information, and a ‘save locations’ feature to send address info from other iPhone apps into your TomTom app.
To date, Google’s Local Search capabilities have best served North Americans, but over the past twelve months the Australian data has started to flesh out nicely, so this could be a very useful extra search feature and is only going to become more useful — and a definite strength of using a data-enabled device over a less intelligent traditional GPS solution.
It’s available now through the iPhone App Store, and is a free update for current users.