Here's an update on this no name Chinese nav system. I had this weekend to play with it as I went to Tucson. I resolved most of the issues, which I'll get into below (along with some pictures to show you guys the system).
It's hard for me to give a definite thumbs up/thumbs down on this thing because this is my first DVD Nav system in one of my vehicles. I'm an old hand with handheld GPSs for hiking (and using them in a vehicle), and using my cell phone as a navigator but not an in-dash unit. I'm come to conclude that the nav system was most definitely helpful in Tucson as far as anticipating upcoming streets, etc, but I never needed to really use it to find a particular address. Maybe that will change, but for now I'm not so much concerned with how 'good' the navigation function is compared with brand name units.
Ok....on to it. Reference the above numbers as far as the issue.
1)Engrish - I noticed that after I set up my phone to auto-connect with bluetooth that I never saw that particular message or any other typos. I think that an 'Engrish' option for the voice guidance would be awesome: “Take care- road being born ahead. No go or truck become very angry”
2)The manual – Can't change this. The manual still sucks. I was able to work around it with playing around in the menus.
3) & 4) Bluetooth and steering wheel controls – MOSTLY fixed. Track forward and track back work, along with volume up and volume down. I learned to NOT push the voice command button or the Sync starts talking (which doesn't do anything). Also the phone button doesn't do anything. There is a menu in the nav system for assigning steering wheel controls, so with some more experimentation I hope to assign all of the rest to their original functions (except sync I guess). The bluetooth music still won't appear in the music section, but since I default it to the navigation map it doesn't bug me.
5)DVD player still normal. It has an input channel for a TV tuner as well. I haven't received anything but static in it so far with the analog tuner, so perhaps a digital tuner will get me some random tv channels.
6)Music while navigating – Fixed. I can play bluetooth music or music stored on the system.
7)Searching for addresses – Fixed (well, more like I figured out that I was doing it wrong)
As a summary of what you can do with the system to customize it, I'll tell you guys what I have done so far.
It comes with a 4GB MicroSD memory card, where it stores the maps/skins/etc. I copied it all to a 32 GB MicroSD card of mine and added a few gigs of music and some photos (for the wallpaper). I'm still experimenting with what video formats work for video files so I can add DVD quality movies to the memory card
I've looked up skins and themes to download online and found a number of websites (some free and some paysites), so it looks like this thing is fully customizable. Also I believe that I can replace the navigation program with any other that it compatible with Windows CE.
I'm going to try to post some pictures below of it installed and some of the screens.
