Navigon iPhone GPS App - Wow, Where'd THIS come from?

So Navigon - yes, the same brand easily called Navi-GONE after they completely failed to make an impact on the US market with their oversized, super-slow GPS handheld units that their reps told dealers would "out sell Garmin 2 - 1" (Riiiiight) - resurfaces over here with an iPhone app, called MobileNavigator. It was available starting in late July and has earned a fair reputation out there even though most of the discussion has been about the TomTom iPhone GPS app. Now, Navigon has updated their app with some nice features; namely text-to-speech, iPod control and location sharing. This is a surprising revival of a brand I admittedly thought was long gone.

With the car kit already out, a decent interface, nice app response time thanks to the app being mostly stored right on the iPhone's internal storage and some enhanced navigational views this is a very strong app and one that TomTom surely has taken note of. TomTom is familiar with Navigon as both companies really grew up and honed their brands in Europe first, but now competition for the millions of iPhone users around the world is sure to heat up the competition between the two, once again.

HotHardware has a nice write-up on the new Navigon MobileNavigator updates.