Category: Handheld

Not one but two iPhone NOAA raster charting apps debuted last week, and I had had a little Beta time with each.  EarthNC for iPhone costs $25 and incorporates some fresh thinking and a lot of the resources EarthNC has long been developing for its Google Map & Earth overlay products, like EarthNC Online.  They’ve turned all NOAA RNCs into tiles that download automatically to your phone as you pan and zoom, or you can batch download an area as illustrated in the screen at upper right.  The left screen is busy looking, I know, but note how you can disappear each of those data and icon strips with the little red arrow.  Note too how EarthNC is doing waypoint navigation and tracking, fairly elaborate tracking as shown on the middle screen.  But that’s not all…

Pardon me if I use an entry on the improving state of marine iPhone apps to illustrate my concerns about NOAA’s local chart screw ups, but it works.  Navimatics Charts&Tides 3.6.2 was the first charting program of any sort I’ve seen that includes NOAA’s first 1:20,000 ENC for Camden Harbor, but it will be confusing fog bound visitors soon!  Those semi-invented channel buoys that I first saw on the raster chart are worse here, given equal graphic weight with real navigation aids, more precise looking wrong locations, and all without the “Priv aids” label that might help a navigator sort things out…

Navigation on iPad is a hot subject, as discussed here recently (and, mind you, Navionics has now joined the iPad possibilities).  So I’m pleased to publish the following excerpt from a review by Tom MacNeil, a long time beta tester for the GPSNavX/ MacENC/iNavX family of charting programs.  To say that he’s enthusiastic about how developer Rich Ray’s software runs on an iPad is an understatement!  Tom has been sailing and messing with boat technology for thirty years, and currently runs an marine electronics and electrical shop somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.  Warning:  If you read the following, you may soon find yourself at the Apple Store typing in your credit card number…

While it’s been disappointing to learn that carrying around two smart phones does not make a guy extra smart, I am incredibly happy about owning that Verizon Droid Incredible at left.  It’s not a phone I’d recommend to everyone — and Android marine apps certainly aren’t much yet — but given what I want from it, and where I live, the Incredible makes that iPhone 3GS seem feeble and limited.  I feel like I just got out of Apple/AT&T jail, and I’m shaking my head because I liked it in there!  Let’s begin with the built-in GPS and motion sensors…