ALK Copilot Live 7 sat-nav software

ALK’s Copilot Live was supplied on a 2GB card, making installation on our test phone (a Nokia N95) easy.

After installation you need to enter a registration key and you’re away. The main menu makes it simple to find locations and plan a trip and there’s seamless cross-border routing, too.

If the points on a trip don’t have to be visited in a particular order, you can visit them via the most efficient route – a neat trick rarely found outside desktop route-planning software.

Some thought has obviously gone into how the program will be used on a phone – most menus and the lists of results from searches have number labels for every option.

There’s a good range of POIs (points of interest), shown clearly on the map, and safety-camera updates are included. For traffic information via the net, however, you’ll have to pay a subscription – though Windows Mobile versions do also support TMC (Traffic Message Channel) receivers.

There’s a good range of options and you can choose what’s displayed on the info bar at the bottom of the screen. You can plan trips on your PC as well as play back tracks on the phone. There are also tracking options, which can be useful for businesses with multiple cars to manage.

However, when out driving the guidance wasn’t clear, especially at gyratory systems, with poor lane information and, on our test phone at least, disjointed spoken instructions. The display was clear, though, with speed limit, safety-camera information and road names all clearly shown.

The advanced features will be useful to some but at this price we would have liked better guidance at complicated junctions – something promised for version eight.