Customer Reviews

Nokia 500 4.3-Inch Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

UPDATES:

I've updated the review dealing with the FM transmitter's signal quality as well as the clock being reset when using the bottom power switch and dialing from the unit when using BT speakerphone.

I recently purchased mine from another online vendor. This will be a long and fairly detailed review and in it I will clarify some issues that some people are having.

Powering up from standby works both under battery power mode or charging mode. All you need to do is hold down the top power button for about 2-3 seconds and let it go. To put it back into standby hold the top power button for the same amount of time. For everyday use, the top power button is very convenient and allows faster boot ups than using the bottom power switch which requires a pointed device to switch it on/off. Make note that if/when you use the BOTTOM power switch make sure you do not power off when the unit is in standby as it will reset the clock. Only power off when the unit is on and out of standby. This is only an issue with the BOTTOM power switch.

BT pairing only works on some phones not all phones...duh. There are different versions of BT as well as different BT profiles support so don't expect every phone to work with this Nokia 500. My LG CU500 pairs fine and the speaker phone works great, loud and clear. My contacts however would not upload since my phone does not support Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) so I have to initiate calls using my handset's phonebook. You could direct dial calls using the touchpad if you already know the phone number. You could also save 9 speedial numbers into the "favorites". When receiving calls I can answer using the Nokia via the touchscreen. The BT speaker phone can use the built-in speaker or your car stereo via the FM transmitter. It works great with my car stereo, reception is loud and clear. There is some static every now and then but that's common with all FM transmitters. The FM transmitter works well while in the cradle or held in your hand using battery power, however, when using the car adapter it is very sensitive to the orientation of the WIRE so you'll have to move the wire around to get the best reception. I suspect this is the reason why some owners have little success with getting good reception since they do not realize this.

The FM transmitter works with music and videos stored on your SD card as well as the navigation voices. I did have a problem with the FM transmitter turning itself off after 1 min of inactivity during voice navigation usage, but I found an easy solution and that is to have an audio track play in the background in repeat mode which keeps the FM transmitter continuously on. If you prefer not to hear music play in the background during voice navigation then just turn down the volume using the front hard volume buttons. You could actually turn down the music volume all the way and the FM transmitter will still stay on. You do not have to go through the trouble of making a silent audio track that I'd suggested prior to finding this out. The voice navigation volume is independent of the music volume so it doesn't get turned down along with the music.

Keep in mind the Nokia does have a built-in speaker so the voices can playback through that instead of the car stereo if you don't want to fiddle around with the FM transmitter. Also note that if you have music playing in the background, the music volume automatically gets reduced so you could hear the voice navigation instructions when it kicks in.

The Nokia only comes with a car charger, but it can also be charged while connected to your computer's USB port. That means any USB charger will work. USB standard output voltage is 5V. At home I use an old Motorola USB cellphone charger, it's rated 5V and 550mA. The Nokia car adapter is rated 5V and 1A. It takes longer to charge with my Motorola charger because the current is about half of Nokia's car charger. Slow charging is better anyway since there's little risk of overcharging if you forget to unplug the charger after the battery has been fully charged.

The memory card that came with my unit is an official Nokia brand 2GB SD card NOT microSD or miniSD. The card is made by Sandisk. It comes with folders already created for MP3, VIDEOS, and PICTURES as well as CITIES for the maps. I copied all the files and folders from the 2GB card onto my 16GB card and it works without a problem. Music and videos play as expected, however it seems the videos have to be below a certain resolution and framerate. If the video's resolution is too high the playback will be choppy. I have to play around with encoding different videos to see what the optimum resolution/framerate is, however I did notice the 4 product demo videos that are included on the Nokia SD card are of the following specs.

Audio - AAC, Stereo, 44.1 kHz
Video - MPEG4 480×276 15 FPS
Bitrate - 768 kbps

I will try and see if I can make a video that runs at 25 FPS since 15 FPS is not very good IMO. The unit is capable of playing WMV at 30 FPS but that depends on the resolution. If I can get videos to play at 25 FPS at the screen's native resolution of 480x276 then it would be perfect. This Nokia is running Window CE Core 5.0 OS.

Finally if you want your battery to last longer just turn down the brightness or leave it in energy save mode where the screen dims after 30 secs. Doing that will allow the unit to last a couple of hours without needing to be plugged in.

The windshield mount is very high quality/sturdy and made in Germany. The suction cup is not your standard mill. You have to operate the lever when mounting/dismounting which is a good thing because it creates a very strong and reliable suction.

As far as the navigation is concerned, from my own usage it seems to work well. This is my first PND and I'm very happy with its performance. The Text To Speech voice navigation feature works great announcing street names etc. The user interface might be kinda confusing at first but once you memorize where everything is and have everything setup it does the job pretty effectively. Yes there are probably better user interfaces from other products but when you consider what you're getting overall at this low price, there's not much here to complain about.

For the little money that I paid for my unit, it's a great deal. It does what it's supposed to do with a nice big bright 4.3" widescreen and includes BT speaker phone capability and FM transmitter. The unit also supports many different audio and video formats. It also plays uncompressed lossless WAV files even though it doesn't list that file format in the official specs. The unit is very high quality and feels solid. The built-in nonreplaceable battery isn't a big deal because this will be mainly used in the car not carried around in my pocket. Regardless the battery will likely last a few years when used strictly as a portable which is the same as any iPod or iPhone. In a few years PNDs with the same features as this Nokia will be dirt cheap anyway so when my battery dies I could just buy a newer better unit and still be able to use the old unit in the car plugged into the cigarette lighter socket if I so choose.

I purchased this gps from another vendor for $99.99. Great price for the features, which include 4.3" screen, Text to speech, Blue Tooth, and FM transmitter. For the price, you just can't beat this. There are two short falls for this. One, is the way in which you enter the address. If comparing to a garmin, this gps requires more information. Here's the thing. If you're entering an address for a rural area. You have the option of entering a zip code. You dont' need to. But you may find out that it cannot find the street name for the give city you'v entered. So, you have the option of going back and entering a zip code. But really, how many people will know the zip code of an area other than their own home address. But, once you enter the zip code for a rural area, it then breaks down the zip into a smaller area per zip. So in my case, when looking for my home address, I needed to konw the township of the zip code that I was interested in. Now really, who would know that? This is the biggest flaw for this device. I don't see this as an issue for a city zip, but the rural areas, yes. Once it's found the address, no problem this thing works great. One last issue. There is the ability to zoom out on the map. But there is a bug in the firmware in that if you hit the zoom button too fast, it will zoom all the way out to the world view of the map. Then you cannot get back to your local view unless you end your navigation, and then start over. This is not a problem, you just end the current navigation, then start again and you can choose recently found and then you're done. But it it an annoyance. For those that found the FM to be a problem, I think the issue is that it uses the dc power cord for part of the antenna. I noticed that if I used the FM just from battery power, there was static and not a very good connection. But if I had the GPS plugged into the power, it was great. No problem. And for those that could not get the gps to download contacts from their phone, you must konw that it will only download contacts that are stored in the phones internal memory. If you have your contacts saved to the sim card, they will not down load. So bottom line, I would give this a 5 star, if it were not for the address entery, which is really the basic funtion that a gps should be able to do, and do well. Hope this review has helped some people decide on their purchase of this gps. One last note. In all honesty, it would appear that Nokia has entered this gps into the North American market as an afterthought. The reason I say this is that the bugs that I have listed, are a very easy and quick firmware update. If Nokia was serious about this product in the US, then the bugs I've listed in this review, would be a simple firware update. But I don't get the feelling that Nokia is concerned about us in the US.

Used it for 3 days. Hard to enter address to navigate to. Once that is accomplished, navigation itself is acceptable. I think I will keep it.

Pros:
Bluetooth Speakerphone
Media Players
GPS Pretty accurate
Fast route recalculation

Cons:
My Mio 320 work better with TTS (this cant even say Lakeside correctly!)
TMC is either not working or im not in Washington DC(which I am)
FM Transmitter sucks

Skip it.
I bought a Garmin, a mio 310, and a TOMTOM 720.
Try this. Map out IKEA or Department of Motor Vehicles.
Only the Garmin or Mio have them listed.
I bought a nokia because I thought the POI database was updated. They are not. There is no way to update the POI database. I'm going back to Garmin. Mio has such a bad algorythm. and TOMTOM has the same issue with the POI database. I have an old Alpine navigation unit in my car and it still has more poi locations then ANY of these 3 units I have purchased. Too bad the new gps they have had such bad reviews.
The Nokia doesn't even have a qwerty keyboard. They bought Navteq and they didn't even get all the poi's? Thats bad.

There was no product registration paperwork. The RF Modulator doesn't work near as well as a $12 one from Radio Shack. If the engine is off and the GPS is by the antenna, you can hear the music if the volume is as high as it goes. It wwould not let me put in 14th Ave in Fargo, ND. It woud make it 1412th Ave as soon as I put in the 14. The guidance voice could hardly be heard if in traffic, when the there was no radio or talking.

So far very happy with the product for me it was a steal compared to everything else with the same features. Would definitely recommend!

Summary: Many people complain about this GPS for little glitches it has, but if you forget the idea "you get what you pay for" for a moment and stop finding its flaws, it's really good GPS for the price. Decent map data, Free Traffic info, nice Blue-tooth functionality and maps of multiple countries are enough to make this GPS worth more than its price, let aside other tons of features that might have glitches because its the first of its kind from Nokia. First thing you would want to do to utilize this GPS fully, is to get an 8GB SDHC card (2GB card that comes with it has only 700MB remaining), so that you can install maps of more countries, MP3 songs and MP4 videos (and may be more software applications!).

Detailed Review:
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This GPS has tons of features for the price. If you get it within $150 its totally worth it. It is not the perfect GPS, but surely an innovative product from Nokia to enter the GPS market.

It has decent map data and navigation software. Sometimes it's slow to acquire satellite signal. Once locked it works as a charm. Inside my apartment it doesn't lock at all, it did once when I started it for the first time, but have had no luck catching any satellite signal inside my apartment since then :(. Sometimes it might re-route you in a stupid way but its a stupid computer after all, no human. I'm sure all other GPS also do that occasionally. Like most of the expensive GPS you have Text-to-speech (TTS), mediocre Points-of-Interest (POI) database, pedestrian mode, you can browse the map interactively instead of navigating the route, you can save a location (its co-ordinates) without entering its address if you had to come back to that location, it even has TMC for traffic. Most of the people have overseen this feature TMC in their reviews. I see all bars in TMC signal and tells me "No congestion reported" when I view traffic information, but haven't used it long enough to tell weather it really shows you congestion and re-routes you. Free traffic without any subscription is a steal for such a cheap price. Other brands have Traffic only in models costing more than $300. Like that wasn't enough they threw in free maps of major countries of the whole world. Yes!, that's right the software CD that comes with it has maps of many European countries and also some asian countries (including India where I am from :)). Some brands don't even give you Canada or Maxico maps, how cheap of them.

Because Nokia originally made this GPS for Europe I think they have re-packaged those units manufactured for Europe to sell in the U.S. So you might not find exact content of package that they list on Nokia website. Instead of miniSD and an adapter you get regular SD card with U.S. maps pre-installed and you don't get the carrying pouch!, ouch!, hehe not really, its not a big deal. I was shocked a bit at first when I saw these differences from contents of package because I thought the reseller gave me a re-manufactured product. But then I found from other reviews that this is how it is sent by Nokia. It is still good for the price even if it were a re-manufactured unit :). Also for the same reason that these were meant to be sold in Europe originally, there is no U.S. product support webpage on nokiausa.com (They do have a support page on their U.K. website). That said, they do have an auto-update software in the CD that came with it. I am not sure if the auto-update software only updates the firmware or it also updates the Map data. I wouldn't be surprised if it also updated the Map data as well because Nokia owns Navteq now. Even if they don't have map updates (which I assumed when I bought this GPS) I can still use it for few years until it gets outdated (pre-installed maps are dated Feb 2008) then throw it away because Garmin, Magellean and TomTom charge 100 bucks or more for map updates while this GPS itself was 100 bucks :). (Yeah, I prepare for all downsides while buying something like this, unlike those who don't research about the product before buying and later on complain "They don't have map updates!". Well do you know if Garmin has map updates for a particular model and how much it costs?)

FM transmitter, I think purposefully, has weak signal to keep you within legal range. So you might have static depending on the channel and where you place the GPS, you might have to find a sweet-spot in your car for optimal FM reception. I think it's best to use audio out and connect to car's aux-in.

I haven't used blue-tooth feature yet which most of the people comment is one of the best feature of this product. It plays mp3 songs fine, video playing is a little hassle, it only plays Quicktime MP4 format videos. So you have to re-encode your videos in Quicktime MP4 format. I wish it played DivX instead.

One of the reviewers says its hackable >:), I searched on google and he is right. You can unlock it to get to Windows CE desktop and install softwares like MS Word. I haven't tried this yet, but the first thing I would like to install is DivX decoder!

I followed the instruction on the internet to use this one, not the manual! It works out OK for me even though I would love to have it my way a bit more. Igo8 does not work very well with TTS. It took me a long time to figure out the TTS. If you plan to use the device as is, I doubt if you like it. I did not spend much time to configure the original GPS software from Nokia, so it is not fair to say anything, but most people I have read the reviews from, they hate it.
Bottom line: good hardware, good screen size. If you know how to mock with it, it would be a great PDA with GPS receiver.

I order that product barnd new online , and i found product was in used condition, the box was torn out, well i return that product very next day hoping that they will send me back my money as one of thier representative told me that they will not charge any fee except for shipping.I kept calling them about my refund their costumer care is poor,i called them thousands of time but they were really uncoperative, I got refund after 1 month and they charged 20% restocking fees. so please review more before ordering from ANTONLINE,
I HAD REALLY BAD EXPERIENCE WITH ANTONLINE

THANKS