Waze (for iPhone)

Could crowdsourced GPS navigation be the next big thing? Waze gives you voice-enabled GPS directions on your iOS, Android, BlackBerry (currently in beta), or Symbian-powered Nokia phone. Best of all, it's free. It's far from perfect, but if you're willing to trade some routing accuracy for features you can't find on other navigation apps, like real world travel times and up-to-the-minute, user-reported traffic jams, Waze is certainly worth checking out.

Crowdsourcing, Interface, and Routing
For this review, I tested Waze 3.1.1 on an Apple iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless. It's a 20.9MB download, and works on any iPhone or iPad with iOS 4.0 or later. Android owners already have free voice-enabled GPS navigation, and even the free Google Maps Navigation in Android lacks crowdsourced route data.

So here's how it works: Waze connects you to other drivers automatically (and anonymously) in the background. The app then pools data from everyone and channels it into more efficient, time-saving routing algorithms based on real world trip data from other users, not just what the map data infers. This is essentially what TomTom does with its long-standing IQ Routes feature, but we've never seen it on a free phone app before.

That said, crowdsourcing isn't a panacea, as the app's underlying routing algorithms need to be sound. It's here where Waze begins to fall flat. For example, I experienced some trouble with the start of a route on the east side in New York City. In order to go to central New Jersey, and unlike the Garmin n?vi 3590LMT ($399.99, 4 stars) I had on hand for comparison, Waze wanted to send me down the FDR, through Brooklyn, and through Staten Island, which, frankly, is completely insane. The ETA also jumped around numerous times, sometimes by as much as 30 or 40 minutes, until it finally settled in.

Once I got going and ignored the initial instructions, Waze figured out a better route by the time I had driven several avenues west across Manhattan. From there, it had no problem navigating me to my destination, although there were a few additional missteps. First, it stumbled on the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, and wanted me to drive around in what amounted to a near-circle instead of taking the immediately available entrance. And at the end of my trip, Waze claimed victory early and registered the route complete several blocks away from my actual destination address?even though it was part of a retirement community built in 2005.?

Navigation, ETA, and Audio
Waze isn't a particularly full featured as a navigation app, either. While en route, Waze doesn't display your current speed or the current road speed limit, and there's no 2D or 3D lane assistance. On the plus side, the colorful, animated traffic icons showing the current status and delay times looked sharp on the map on my iPhone 4.

Despite Waze's uncertainty in the beginning of trips with regard to ETA, it actually did a better job overall in testing than other navigation apps I've tested. You can tell it's crowdsourcing data, because it knows that even if a route is technically shorter, you could still end up taking just as long as the longer way on the highway, because of all the street lights. I watched several instances where Waze nailed the ETA in actuality, whereas the Garmin GPS guessed I'd arrive earlier, only to adjust itself as the trip went on to eventually match what Waze had said all along.?

There's also text-to-speech support, but it's not perfect. The voice prompt timing was a little less well tuned than the standalone Garmin n?vi 3590LMT, but I still had no problem following where Waze wanted me to go. While Waze read exit names correctly on the highway, it generally ommitted street names in favor of a basic "In 0.3 miles, take a right," followed by "take a right," which was disappointing. It doesn't tell you the name of the exit in advance, either. It will say, "In one mile, get ready to exit on the right," but won't say the actual exit name until when you're right on top of it, which is a little inconvenient.

On the plus side, voice prompts sounded full and warm, with just a touch of distortion (mainly from excessive limiting, in order to make the most of the iPhone 4's tiny speaker). I heard a few pronunciation gaffes, including "Geo Gia" for Georgia?although once I exited the highway, it got Georgia correct; apparently different modes use different pronunciation dictionaries.?

Incident Reporting, Lock Screen, and Conclusions
Tap the exclamation point on the bottom right, and it will pop up nine icons to report an accident, police activity, heavy traffic, and other road hazards. In landscape mode, it will only show six icons, though; you need to scroll to the right to see the other three. Still, this is where Waze really shines; the app popped up plenty of real-time traffic alerts during my various testing. And on one test route in particular, Waze popped up an alert that there was police activity coming up 400 feet ahead. And there was! There was a cop car at the side of the road with its lights on. Waze prompted me to either give it a thumbs up (meaning the report was correct), tell it that it was close but not exact, or tell it that there was in fact no cop present.

One other glitch: Waze didn't disable my iPhone's lock screen, the way TomTom, Magellan, and other navigation apps do. After a few minutes, the screen turned off while I was driving. When I pressed the power button to light up the screen again, it wanted me to enter my lock screen code. This is not good at 75 miles per hour. You can disable the iPhone's screen lock and re-enable it later, of course, but that's a clumsy thing to have to do each time you get in and out of the car.

Overall, Waze offers a fine, free GPS navigation solution, and with its heavy emphasis on crowdsourcing, it even offers some features that top brand names in navigation currently lack. On the other hand, its routing still needs plenty of work, and it could be more informative once on the road, both visually and audibly. The app has a bit of a revolutionary feel to it, thanks to its enthusiastic community of users, and thanks to the fact that it's free. If that appeals to you, by all means download Waze and give it a go. Otherwise, if you'd rather have a more accurate and traditional, albeit more costly, navigation experience, check out our Editors' Choice for GPS apps TomTom (for iPhone) ($59.99, 4 stars), or the also-solid Magellan RoadMate (for iPhone) ($59.99, 4 stars).

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