Build your own premium Garmin nav, one in-app purchase at a time

Two of the issues that Garmin's Navigon app had when competing with other smartphone navigation apps were its high cost of entry and the double-edge sword of locally stored maps data. The nav giant addresses both shortcomings with the newly released Viago mobile navigation app.

Viago is available in the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store for the promotional price of just $0.99. (Later this summer, that price will jump to $1.99, which still isn't too bitter a pill to swallow.)

For that price, the app gives drivers spoken and graphic turn-by-turn GPS navigation with cloud-based maps provided by HERE (formerly Navteq) and routing powered by Garmin's excellent pathfinding algorithms. In app purchases allow Viago users to mix and match a variety of additional features to build the premium navigation app that meets their needs and their budget.

Low cost of entry

The initial appeal of Viago is that it offers simple navigation with a low cost of entry. Out of the box, so to speak, the $2 app gives the driver very accurate and constantly updated access to its HERE maps for routing. Visually, Viago renders the maps crisply and with a color scheme that is easy to understand. Without add-ons, the user has a choice between flat maps rendered from a top-down or slightly tilted 3D view.

The interface is sparse and distraction free. The driver is presented with just the map and little more; the rest of the controls for destination entry, search, settings, and more are hidden in a menu that slides out from the left side of the screen.

The routes chosen by Garmin's software were logical and matched well with my local knowledge of the San Francisco Bay Area where the testing took place. One feature that I liked was the inclusion of lane assist and Photoreal Junction Views, which give the driver a visual depiction of the upcoming turn and what lanes he or she should be in. This useful feature prevents a lot of last minute swerving to make an exit.

Build a premium app for a premium price

On its own, however, Viago doesn't really seem to offer much easily perceivable advantage over, say, Google Maps -- which is free and comes already installed on most Android smartphones. Which brings us to the, perhaps, the point of primary appeal of Garmin's app: premium add-ons.

The Viago interface features an icon for a "Shop" that allows the user to make in-app purchases of premium features for about $10 a pop.

The first feature in the list is called Maps to Go. For $9.99 per region, Maps to Go allows the user to navigate without using the phone's data connection by downloading map data (over Wi-Fi) to the phone's local memory. This seems counter to the earlier point about Viago's cloud-based navigation, but having the choice to pay for local map data and routing algorithms is a nice perk for those who plan on using their phone to navigate during an international vacation, where you may not have strong a data connection, or to ease the burden on a low data cap while navigating at home.

Six regions are available for purchase -- Australia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America, and Russia. Once purchased, users can select to only download relevant sub-regions to save storage space. For the North American region, the smallest sub-region that I was able to download was for the 1.5GB "Lower 49 States", so you'll want to download this one over WiFi. With additional files and the app itself, this easily pushes the Garmin Viago install over 2GB -- a significant chunk of most modern phones' 16GB of storage space. It would be nice to be able to specify even smaller sub-regions, say only the western United States or just California, to save even more valuable space.

The Maps to Go unlock is a one-time purchase per region -- not a bad price, especially considering that it includes regular map updates and retains access to the cloud-based maps for the regions you don't pay for.

Maps to Go is a prerequisite for most of the other premium features and must be installed before they can be unlocked and added. For example, Panorama View 3D adds contour data to locally stored maps, giving them a 3D look. Garmin Real Directions upgrades the turn-by-turn directions further, using landmarks, significant buildings and traffic lights -- rather than saying "turn right in 500 ft," Viago may say "turn right at the green church" or "...at the gas station." Safety Kit adds verbal alerts for exceeding the speed limit and enables the driver to choose between routing methods (fastest or shortest) when starting their trip. Finally, Mobile Alert Live adds community-reported alerts for speed cameras, if such a thing is legally allowed in your region.

There are a few options that can be downloaded without the Maps to Go. Most useful is Traffic Live, which adds real-time traffic data with automatic rerouting around congestion and jams. Less critical, but still very helpful, is the Sound & Buildings upgrade that adds 3D building data to the maps and adds text-to-speech street names like "turn left onto Broad Street" to the turn-by-turn.

Though it has a low entry price, premium options quickly drive the price of Viago up. Each these features adds $10 to the bottom line. Thankfully they are one-time purchases, not recurring subscriptions. Add all of the options and your $2.00 Viago app becomes a $70+ premium navigation brute, but I doubt that most users will feel the need to check all (or any) of the boxes.

A vanilla install of Viago performs quite well as a daily driver navigation app and while adding features adds value to Viago, not choosing to pay for the premiums them doesn't leave you with an incomplete app. Viago, for the most part, starts with a strong base and builds features on top.

It's a Garmin, but not a Nuvi

Though pricing isn't my biggest issue with the new Viago app, interface design is. I've repeatedly praised Garmin for the strong, icon-based user interface on its Nuvi and OEM navigation systems, but almost none of that good design is present here in Viago.

It feels like this app was designed to be used handheld rather than from the dashboard. Rather than large icons that are easy to see and hit, the controls, input fields, and virtual buttons are all almost too small to hit quickly when the phone is mounted to a windshield.

The Address input screen in the "Where To?" menu presents the driver with a batch of individual fields for house number, street name, city, and zip code rather than a single address input field. Interestingly, there is a universal search field for addresses and points of interest above the slide-out main menu where you can input a whole address in one go, but it doesn't exactly draw attention to itself. I totally missed the small gray on gray box for the vast majority of my time testing.

Garmin's own Nuvi navigators features excellent voice command that allows simple address input in one go. It'd be nice to see that feature present or available here. At the very least, a large and easy to tap microphone icon that uses Google or Apple's built-in voice input to fill Viago's universal search box would be a welcome addition.

On the other hand, I liked how the Viago app integrates with the contacts stored on the device, filtering and showing only those contacts that have addresses associated with them. However, the contacts page lacks a search box, which can be problematic for users with extremely long address books.

Also, I noticed that Viago doesn't seem integrate with the "Complete action using" functionality of Android. When I tapped on an address in the Chrome browser or my Calendar, I was presented with a dialog box to open that address in Google Maps, Google Earth, Waze, and Scout, but Viago was missing from the list of options. It's a seemingly small usability hurdle, but I don't think that users will want to go the extra mile to manually copy and paste addresses into the app.

Shows promise, needs polish

It's already a tough sell to get smartphone navigators to look past the defaults of Google and Apple Maps, but Garmin's Viago makes a pretty good case for itself thanks to its customizability. Users can add premium features, such as local maps for international travelers or premium traffic data for commuters, to build the app that fits their needs and their budget. The low $2 entry point is easy to approach and allows users to ease into the app before investing dough on adding traffic or maps for your European vacation.

However, I'd like to see Garmin polish the Viago interface to be more car friendly, since the car is where this app will see 99% of its use. It only need look as far as its own Nuvi navigators for inspiration.