Customer Reviews

TomTom Car Kit for iPhone (compatible with iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I was very hesitant about purchasing this mount for two reasons:

1. I have the Navigon software, not the TomTom application.
2. Everyone says you mount falls into portrait mode when you hit a bump.

Regardless, I bought one because I found it for $119 at the Apple Store. I can say it works flawlessly with the Navigon software. The bad reviews the device is getting are from the fact that the mount will fall into portrait mode when you hit a bump. This is not really accurate. You don't notice it at first but you can slide the mount up and down which fully prevents that from happening. The people who gave the device bad reviews probably didn't realize this. When you take the mount out of the box it's all the way extended and will fall into portrait mode very easily unless you slide it to the right a bit so the weight is balanced. Once you do that it will stay in the correct position regarldess of how bumpy the road is.

One other thing I really liked about this mount is the fact that I didn't have to take my iPhone out of the case to use it. I highly recommend this mount. It is compact, well built and gets great reception. The speaker is also loud and clear. The design of the suction cup is excellent as well, it's got a dial on it that lets you really crank it down so it won't come off the window regardless of the humidity or temperature. Great device.

This item is very nice and easy way to keep and charge your iphone in the car, especially if you have downloaded/bought and are using a navigation app such as tomtom or navigon because these tend to suck your battery dry in a matter of minutes.

This item works with all other nav apps and it enhances the GPS signal by a LOT. This is especially helpful in cities when the iPhones GPS chip can't find a good signal because of the tall buildings. The chip also allows the app to be much more accurate at where you are exactly to give better and quicker directions (for turning at specific points, etc).

The items comes with a suction cup and a flat sticky pad. The sticky pad works with the suction cup where you can mount on your dashboard or where ever else if you don't like your phone on the windshield; and its discrete also, when the item isn't suctioned onto it, the pad doesn't really look like anything so a thief won't be tipped off to what might be hidden in the car.

The items speaker also is nice and clear, giving good and loud directions that are much more clear then the iphones speaker.

But with a good there are always flaws. I believe the suction cup is much too small, and doesn't give enough suction. It has screw action thats supposed to tighten/secure it after you suction the cup, however theres not much room for it to do that. It could have been the way I suctioned, but it fell twice on me. Other times it was difficult to get off the windshield so it could be just me.

The rotating landscape to portrait view is very flimsy. It just about stays when you put in landscape, however if you hit a bump it will fall to portrait view. Lucky for me I would rather see in portrait, however for others this is a nuisance, especially on the roads I travel (I live in PA, we are the pothole capital of the USA).
*EDIT* I just played around with it and to counter the flimsiness tomtom made the holder able to SLIDE up and down on the arm. This also helps for when you need to place the suction cup somewhere and you need to rotate it or flip it.

The volume control is also in a very inconvenient place once the phone is docked, making it very difficult to change the speaker volume, especially when you are on the road.

In addition to the volume control being very inconvient, there is NO volume control in regards to the music coming from the set itself. Let me explain...if you have the set synced to your phone (using the bluetooth, thats the only way the car kit will work with the GPS and music) and you plug your jack into the tomtom car kit jack, there is NO way to change the output volume, and let me tell you it is HORRIBLE. The output volume is way too loud. I actually use the iPhone's headphone jack instead of the Tomtoms because it really is that bad.

Another downside is that you must take off any and all coverings on your iphone, otherwise it will not fit into the holder. The holder does hold the iphone securely, however it is annoying to take off my cover, put in holder, take out of holder, put cover back on. Maybe i'm just lazy, but this was a design flaw from day 1 when they unvield the unit.

All in all I like it and recommend it; I would love to compare the Magellan one that is coming out too. Too bad these babys sell for over a hundred dollars...


*EDIT*
This will also fit the iPhone 4, HOWEVER, you need to place something on the bottom where the charger is to make it "swivel" back to turn the unit on. I actually believe it holds the iPhone 4 a lot more snugly then the iPhone 3G or 3Gs, and I counteract this little issue by placing a quarter at the bottom, to make the pressure swivel work (the iPhone 3G and 3Gs had a curved back, and was a little larger which was what turned the switch on when you placed the iPhone in it. The iPhone 4 has a flat back and is a little smaller, hence this issue)

I finally got my hands on one of these and my only complaint is how long it took.

TomTom really did not expect how popular these units would be and therefore have not done well with their production times.

Other than that its a great handsfree speakerphone (louder than the iphone speakerphone)

The GPS chip is much more accurate than the one included with the iPhone.

I love that I can play music through the TomTom app while receiving directions.

All in all this is a pretty good buy as I was in the need for a cradle, hands free, and hand held GPS unit!

I have owned the Tom Tom car kit for about 6 months, and have used it on my iphone 3G as well as my iphone 4. Here is my take on the device:

PROs:
Compact, secures well to the windshield or mounting disk
Charges the iphone 3G just fine and the iphone 4 (with a workaround)
Works fairly well acquiring satellites, but I haven't noticed any significant improvement over using the Tom Tom app without the mount

CONs:
MAJOR CON: The USB and line out connection ports are on the MOVEABLE part of the mount instead of on the stationary base! What this means is that when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape (or vice-versa or in-between), the cables rotate with it! To make matters worse, this means that if you try to route the cables to hide most of the slack, you need to leave enough extra visible slack to allow for free movement, thus making things look more cluttered. The cables can also bind when you rotate the device because they are moving with the device. WHY DIDN'T THEY PLACE THE LINE OUT AND USB PORTS ON THE BASE THAT STAYS STATIONARY ALL OF THE TIME?

When you slide the unit right & left (landscape) or up and down (portrait), the unit does not always stay secured where you set it. Yes, you can improve on this by sliding it all of the way to one end, but that is not always practical

The arm (stem) is too short. If you mount the unit on the dashboard using the disc, it is difficult to adjust it to a point where it will clear the dashboard when in portrait mode. This severely limits your choices in positioning the unit for convenient use in both portrait and landscape modes.

If you have an iphone 4, the unit will not work right out of the box because the iphone 4's thinner design prevents the unit from activating the switch in the unit. There is an easy workaround, however, which is to place some velcro or a "rubber feet" on the mount to compensate for the lack of thickness of the iphone 4

I noticed some ignition noise type of hum when using the unit, but this may be more an issue with my car than the Tom Tom mount (I am not sure at this point)

I have not tried the bluetooth function because I have a bluetooth stereo in my car, and it is more convenient to use by pairing the iphone to the car stereo (it allows ALL audio sources to pause during phone calls that way)

In a nutshell, the placement of the line out and USB connections would prevent me from buying this again.

-- Please scroll down for an update with my experiment with iPhone 4 --

I've had this well over a month now and it's been working really well. There are enough positive comments out there about it so instead of repeating what others said, I would like to comment on one thing that many negative comments are focused on:

- The phone rotating itself into portrait mode from landscape mode when you hit a bump

It is NOT TRUE if positioned correctly. Let me explain below.

The cradle portion of the device that rotates also slides and this allows to locate the pivot point of the cradle to be at the center of the phone in the landscape/horizontal mode preventing the problem described above. If you simply rotate it to the landscape mode without sliding it, it will locate the pivot point at the end of the phone and this makes it very easy for the phone to rotate down to the portrait mode.

I hope this review will prevent people from thinking that this device is defective based on others experiencing difficulties with the landscape mode.

I will get my iPhone 4 in a few weeks to I will update this review then.

-- iPhone 4 update --

I got my iPhone last week and I tried it with the cradle. In short, it does work with a tweak but there is a catch:

Problem - The cradle has a connector that rotates forward to make the docking easier but this mechanism gets in a way with making it work for iPhone 4. The phone is too thin leaving the rotating connector still tilted forward when you insert the phone in place. This prevents the connector from getting inserted deep into the device to secure a proper contact.

Solution - After a analyzing the problem, I came up with a simple solution. I taped a quarter (yes, a 25 cents coin) to the said connector so that the clearance between the phone and the back of the rotating connector piece is tight. I taped it so that the connector still rotates and that the quarter (conductive!) does not touch the actual connector.

Result - I have been using the cradle almost everyday this way and it's been working perfectly. Compared to the iPhone 3G which was very spotty, slow and inaccurate, GPS is accurate almost within a few feet! The Tomtom software launches really quickly and also the in-app google search works really quickly. In short, it works better than my stand alone Tomtom GPS.

Problem - Now, I took it for a long drive this weekend with my family in a hot day with an outside temperature exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (close to 40 degrees Celsius) and I soon realized that the whole thing overheated after an hour or so and the iPhone shut down when that happened. My friend told me that iPhone 4 tended to overheat more easily but I have not confirmed that. My fix was to mount the cradle on the side window to avoid the direct sun light. Of course this isn't an ideal position from a cable management perspective but it was surprisingly useful in this location until I wanted to roll down the window. As long as I avoided the direct sunlight, it was no problem. Now, driving for 30 min in a direct sunlight did not cause any problem during my commutes last week so I guess it was a combination of a very high temperature and a long trip.

I tested all the functions including the free Tomtom cradle app and they all worked fine. The free app did identify my iPhone as "iPhone 4.01".

This is a good product if you don't want to get a GPS navigation in your car. HOWEVER-the few times I have used it, it has overheated my iPhone. It was during daylight hours and usually happened after 20-30 minutes of use. It would shut itself off. Then, I had to take it down and let my phone cool off (very inconvenient when you are driving). So, basically-for short trips during the day-it is good. Probably work better for long distances at night, where it won't overheat. I LOVE the Tom Tom Kit application for my iPhone-just not the hardware...

Had this car kit for a week. Iphone 3GS worked great with 3.xx version of the software.
Not using TomTom navigation app, using CoPilot for now.
I could make hand-free phone calls, listen to music etc.
I am not convinced that CoPilot app is using the TomTom car kit GPS antenna.
It seems just as accurate and drifted around just like when using the iPhone gps antenna.

Upgraded my iPhone 3GS to iOS 4 and now the microphone does not work on some apps.
No microphone on hands free phone, holding down the Home button brings up voice command and that also does not work.
Google search microphone works though.
Apple store could not fix it, hard, cold resets and reboot etc.
Deleting bluetooth, on phone and car kit, no help.
Called TomTom support and was told the iphone car kit is not even supposed to work without the TomTom navigation software!!
It clearly worked before so TomTom are saying this was not the intention.
You need the software. It was not worth arguing about.
Back it goes for a refund.

It was a nice well built unit and held the phone well.
I would have considered looking for a case that other people say do work.
Even with CoPilot on a car charger it got hot, this was no different.

It also does not work on iPhone 4. Various threads out there.

I have had this for a while and its very nice. Too expensive of course, but it folds up very small and is easily installed and works well. However, it doesn't work with the iPhone 4. The phone isn't thick enough to push a little hinged plate back and as a result it doesn't get a charge and will rapidly run out of batteries while you're using your Nav (I use Navigon, works fine with that) even though you have the cigarette lighter plugged in. In theory, Tom Tom offers a free adapter to fix this issue, some little plastic thing you stick on your existing adapter to fix this, but getting one of those has proven impossible. I ordered it, didn't get it. Opened a case. They didn't send it, closed the case. Opened another case. They didn't send it. Not sure how this will ever turn out. This is for a 60-cent piece of plastic mind you. Not sure what would happen if I actually had to have the unit repaired or something that would cost them real money. Ridiculous level of support.

My problem with this product is that when the audio out is connected to the car aux jack, there is a high frequency buzz. My theory is that the power connector is located too close to the output jack and that this is a design issue. (I could be wrong) I have tried this on 3 cars with regular and super shielded output cables and I get the same results. To bad, as I really liked this in all other aspects. I must be able to play Pandora music or listen to my books through my car audio system without hearing this constant buzz however.
Lets see if my replacement unit has the same problem.

I ordered this dock to hold my iphone 3GS and also provide increased gps accuracy while using my tom-tom app. It does both of these things extremely well. It keeps the phone charged and holds it in place securely on my dash. I love that it rotates so I can leave it in portrait mode when not using the tom-tom app. So far I am completely pleased with this purchase and I would recommend this dock for use with gps apps on the iPhone.