CyberNav – Android 2.2 Tablet GPS Navigator with 7 Inch Touchscreen

First Look
The first question that comes to my mind: What is this product? Is it a GPS navigation device with additional PDA features or an Android tablet with built-in GPS receiver? After a few minutes you can realize, the answer is simple: As you want! You can use it in your car as a navigator, when you arrive to the destination just detach from the car mount and you are ready to read news, check mails, browse the internet and look for sightseeing, attractions in the town you arrived. You can use it every day as a media player, PDA, ebook reader, etc.

CyberNav – Android 2.2 Tablet GPS Navigator with 7 Inch Touchscreen (WiFi, 4GB, FM Transmitter)

The design and build quality is nice, feels a massive device at the same time it’s slim and handy. The ports and slots are located on the side; the power button is at the upper left corner. It has only one hardware button like the other portable GPS navigators. There are no dedicated “Android buttons” however all functions are easily accessible. The common Android buttons are on the top notification bar. If it’s not visible when an app runs on full screen, a short press to the power button will show the top bar. On the back you can see the speaker, the reset button and there is tiny hole for the microphone.

Accessories
Car mounting kit
Car charger
Wall charger
USB cable
Earphone
CD

The car mounting quality is good, the suction cup sticks on to the windshield strong, doesn’t rattle or moves during drive.The earphone quality is not bad, better than other Chinese tablets’ or cheap cellphones’ earphones.

The USB cable is used to connect it to a computer to transfer files (apps, music, and videos) and charges the device at the same time.The user manual on the CD is surprisingly good and detailed. It’s much better than similar GPS navigator’s or entry level Android tablets’ user manual.

How does it perform?
The startup time is average; it’s about 40-50 seconds. The Android 2.2 operating system works well. Advantage of Android 2.2 vs 2.1, 1.6 and older versions is the overall performance, memory management, flash support and certainly supports more apps. By default you get 5 home screens. Basically the user interface is optimized for use in a car. The icons and the notification bar size are a bit larger than on other Android tablets. It makes easier to navigate in the menu and access most frequent used apps. There are 4 shortcuts on the home screen, these are: Navigation, Music, FM transmitter and Settings. If you prefer other customizable launchers, feel free to download apps like ADW, Launcher pro, Go Launcher and change the user interface style as you want. The Android buttons are not hardware buttons; they are located on the notification bar (these are: Home, Menu, Back and volume control). The power control widget is built-in to the notification menu area, so you can always reach it with one click. Just pull down the notification bar to turn ON or OFF the WIFI, FM transmitter, GPS and adjust the screen brightness.

It’s also a mobile entertainment system. Fill the internal 4GB memory and the SD card with movies and songs, and then enjoy it on the 7” screen. Thanks to the FM transmitter function the sound output can be streamed to the existing car stereo system for better user experience. It’s a smart and cost effective solution to upgrade your car stereo features.

Hardware
CPU: ARM11 1GHz
RAM: 256MB DDR2
Internal memory: 4 GB (3.28GB +700MB )
GPS chip: SiRF Star IV

The overall performance is good. Sliding the app drawer it lags a bit and some complex apps may run slow. It’s not a gaming pad, however Angry Birds run smooth! The video playback is also fine, no skips lags or audio sync problems.

GPS
The GPS receiver finds satellites in 1-2 minutes. The time for the first fix depends on external conditions too, but generally it’s fast. If the GPS doesn’t fix for a longer time, you can reset the receiver using the preinstalled GPS info app.

Screen
The 7” resistive touchscreen is clearly visible, the image quality is good. The resolution is 800×480. The screen is visible at daylight too in the car. Like other similar devices, under direct sunlight the screen is less visible, it’s normal. With some position adjustment and with higher backlight settings you can increase the visibility. The touchscreen responds correctly, for more accurate operation using fingernails or stylus is recommended (mostly for web browsing).

Battery
The battery life is up to 2.5 – 3 hours for navigating. As using a tablet it could be longer. It depends on the enabled functions. In the car in most cases the device is connected to the charger, so the battery life for navigation is completely not relevant. The charging time is approximately 4hours charging from a PC may be longer.

Connections
WIFI
FM transmitter
3.5mm earphone port
USB slave port (charging port)
microSD slot up to 32GB
speaker
microphone

WIFI works correctly, it’s stable. It was tested with 802.11b/g networks with WEP and WPA2 encryption and also on open networks. It doesn’t produce connection problems like the PC06 and similar tablets.

The FM-transmitter converts the audio output of the GPS device into an FM radio signal, which can then be picked up by appliances such as car stereo or portable radios.
If the FM transmitter is enabled the built-in speaker turns off. The charger cable must be connected before turning on the FM transmitter function. The charger cable is used as an antenna.

The device has one USB slave port. It’s used for connecting it to a computer, and for charging. There’s no dedicated charging port. USB host port is not present, unfortunately it’s not possible to connect a USB flash drive or 3G USB modem.

Apps
The device comes with the essential basic apps. Generally these are: Browser, Email/Gmail, Gallery, Calculator, Contacts, Navigation related apps, Sound player and recorder, video player apps, Market, etc.

The media player apps are different from the original Google’s video and sound player apps. They are handling the most multimedia file types. The user interface is user friendly. The playback is smooth, and responds quickly.

Unlike the GPS software for WinCE, the apps for Android are not available separately. They are usually paid apps and only available through the Market. In most cases, the only option to download legally the software is to use another genuine Android device, download the app from the Market, using a backup tool save the apk file to the memory card and this way transfer it to the CybreNav. (in this case may also come up licensing issue). We did not receive this kind of complaints so far, but I don’t know how we can handle it. Basically Chinavasion is not responsible for the software, however in this case the installation is a bit difficult.

From other sources I get the followings GPS apps: Sygic, Navitel, Ndrive, Navigon, Copilot. All of them can be installed successfully, and run on the device. (With Sygic for some reason the virtual keyboard did not appear on the screen at the first time, 2nd reinstall of the app solved the issue, maybe an updated version is available, but I could not test it). Please note that because of the missing maps and components I could not test all features of all the mentioned GPS apps. Generally speaking I can confirm that they are compatible with the unit.