Like the famous HP, Navman was a garage start-up company however, it began in the very different location - Auckland, New Zealand. The company name was changed in the early 1990s to Navman which came from the name of one of the world’s first chart plotters.

Navman has obviously put considerable corporate experience into developing their new S Series car GPS navigators which have received some 500 individual improvements. The S30 was recently nominated for the Best Buy Gold Award by PC Advisor. The S30 has an attractive, smart look with a silver casing finish with generously curved edges, slim form factor (20mm) and a LCD touchscreen set in a thick black border.

The Navman S30 is the only one of the Navman S series not to come with a widescreen display. It has a 3.5 inch touch screen widescreen display with a 320 x 240 pixel resolution for navigating the attractive redesigned interface and menu system of the S series. Memory capacity is adequate rather than generous with 256MB internal Flash memory and 32MB SDRAM with a SD/MMC card slot for memory expansion. Up to 4.3 hours of power are available from the rechargeable, integrated Li-ION battery.

For easier inputting of text, addresses and postcodes, the Navman S30 comes with an interesting talking keypad feature. For improved night time display automatic display dimming is provided.

A sensible feature, common to other mobile devices, is the security password lockout. For personal security, Navman have included an SOS button which displays local emergency services and can also call the nearest one, if required, utilizing a Bluetooth connected mobile phone.

SiRF Star III GPS Chipset

The Navman S30’s GPS functionality is provided by a SiRF Star III chipset - a winner of PC Magazine’s Award for Technical Excellence. The SiRF Star III family was a breakthrough innovation GPS chip architecture offering faster fix times (acquiring its location), higher signal locking and tracking sensitivity and low power requirements

The SiRF Star III has position accuracy down to 2.0m, velocity accuracy of less than 0.01 m/s and hot and warm autonomous times to first fix (TTFF) of less than 1s and less than 35s respectively.

Safety Cameras and Mapping

Safety camera locations are available through the S series navigators and a free 12 month safety camera data trial is included. The S Series GPS navigators will intelligently warn of cameras based on direction of travel and your speed relative to the local limit at that location. The iUpData database allows motorists to enter details of any new or inaccurate safety camera locations.

The S30 is sold with only regional maps for the location/country sold in compared to the S70 and S90i which come with European maps covering 21 countries in Western and Central Europe, including major roads leading into Eastern Europe. The Navman S30 utilizes constantly updated Tele Atlas mapping information. Mapping inaccuracies can be forwarded to Navman using Navman’s iUpData service.

Navman’s S Series Promotional Video

NavDesk Software

The Navman S30 comes with NavDesk - a free software package including features such as:

• Activation and management of maps, safety camera subscriptions and PIN security
• Web interface to selected Navman sites
• Image search powered by Flickr, including an interface to the Navman NavPix Library
• NavAlbum to manage images both on your PC and your GPS navigator
• Custom POI management
• Voice file transfer
• Mileage reporter

Further Reading

Other car GPS navigators in the Navman S series and the premium S90i unit and the S50 and S70 which come without the camera of the S90i. A detailed feature comparison between the Navman S series car GPS navigators can be found below.

To compare the Navman S30 Car GPS Navigator features with other models in the series have a look at our feature comparison of Navman S series GPS models.

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Navman S70 and S50 Series Car GPS Navigator Specification

Technorati Tags: S Series car GPS navigators, Navman S30, SOS button, Bluetooth, Safety camera locations, iUpData, Navman’s iUpData service