Download and Installation |
To download the NavXS Client, go to
http://navxs.com/download/index.aspx,
and select the platform and edition that corresponds to your handset.
Follow the instructions given there for how to install the client on your
phone / pda.
|
Running the Application |
 To run the NavXS
Client, locate the directory where you installed the application. You
should find the NavXS client, represented by an icon like the one to the
left.
When you have successfully launched the application, you
will first see a screen displaying the NavXS logo and some credits and
copyright information (Figure 01).
See the Maps Section for
more on 3rd party copyrights.
Press
on the softkey mapped to the command "Continue" to move on to the really
interesting parts. |
Figure 01: The
NavXS Client Startup Screen.
|
Security Settings |
The application will by default try to
determine your position at startup (this can be disabled, see the My Location
section below). Depending on your phone's security settings you may be
prompted to grant the NavXS Client access to use "Location Based
Services", similarly to the dialogue shown in Figure 02. Grant this access
if your phone has a built-in or external GPS receiver and want to use the
NavXS Client to determine your current position. In a similar way, you
might be prompted to grant access to the internet when logging on to the
NavXS Service or downloading maps, and to grant access to the file system
if you have enabled local caching of map tiles. See the Map section below.)
If these security messages are displayed frequently, you can
change the security settings of the NavXS Client to only these messages
once at startup (usually this can be found in the "Options" menu before
starting a Java application).
Note: The Basic Edition and JSR-75
Edition do not support accessing Location Based Services, and will thus
not display any security dialogues this regarding. The Basic Edition does
also not support file access, making internet access the only security
item for this edition. |
Figure 02: Java
Security Setting Dialogue. |
Screens and menus |
Having granted the security rights you find
appropriate, you should see the screen shown in Figure 03. This is the
main screen, showing the current status of the NavXS Client. The field
marked "Location Service" displays the current location status. This may
be "Acquiring Sats...", "Available", "Tmp. Unavailable", "Out of Service"
or "Not Installed" (the latter only for Basic and JSR-75 editions). See
the My
Location section below for details of location status.
The
field marked "Exchange Service" displays the current state of the
Navigation Exchange Service. This will typically be Offline or
Online Depending on whether you have logged in to the service or
not (see the My Account
section below).
Finally, the fields marked "Latitude" and
"Longitude" shows your phone's current location or 0.0 if not known.
The NavXS Client has three main parts: My Location,
My Account and Map, each with their own Settings
sub-screen. These can be accessed by pressing the softkey mapped to "Menu"
(on some phones "Options") and selecting the corresponding item in the
pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 02. (The 4th item in this menu opens up a
simple "About" screen, showing information about the application Edition,
Version and Platform etc.) Navigating between these three program parts,
and their respective settings screen is always done using menus like this,
plus a softkey marked "Back" for returning to the previously displayed
screen. |
Figure 03: The
application status page.
Figure 04: The application main menu.
|
My Location |
The My Location screen displays the
current locational status. The Availability field displays an
indication of the availability of the location service:
- Acquiring Sats...: This indicates that the location service
is initializing, trying to acquire signals from GPS satellites.
Depending on your receiver, and how long ago you used it, this may take
several minutes. For more information about how GPS works, Garmin
provides a quick summary here.
- Available: This indicates that the location service is
working properly.
- Tmp Unavailable: This indicates that the location service
cannot find any signals, or has lost contact with the GPS satellites.
This typically occur when indoors or in a city street surrounded by tall
buildings.
- Disabled: This indicates that the location service has been
manually disabled (see My Location Settings below).
- Not Installed: This is only availability message you will see
in the Basic and JSR-75 clients, which do not support location based
services.
The rest of the field displays the details of the most
recently obtained location data. |
Figure 05: The My
Location Status Screen.
|
Pressing the softkey mapped to the command
"Settings" will take you to the Location Settings screen, shown in Figure
06. Here, the check-box named Location Service determines whether
or not the Location Service shall be started. Checking this box will start
the location service when pressing the softkey mapped to the command
"Back". If still checked when the program exits, the location service will
start automatically the next time the NavXS Client is launched. In
general: All settings for all program parts are stored when exiting the
program, and restored the next time it is launched.
In the
selection labeled Power Settings, the desired power usage can be
specified. High power setting will generally yield more accurate data,
while low power setting might save some battery time. NOTE: This may or
may not have an effect, depending on your telephone and the way it
implements the location services (e.g. GPS hardware / software)
In
the check-list labeled Optional Outputs, optional output settings
can be specified. Requiring altitude, speed and course may result in your
telephone spending a bit more effort obtaining location data. The
check-box labeled "Allow Cost" pertains to using Assisted GPS (A-GPS) as
location method. When this box is checked, and if your telephone supports
this method, data transmitted over the mobile phone network will be used
to assist the GPS receiver in obtaining location data, and may thus lead
to additional network costs. NOTE: de-selecting this has no effect on the
exchange of navigation data and download of maps, which will still use the
network to transmit data, possibly resulting in additional costs.
The Update Interval determines how frequently your phone
shall attempt to obtain location data. Using a several seconds or minutes
as update interval might save battery time, but won't be as much
fun ;-)
The Timeout value specifies how long time your
phone should try each time it attempts to obtain your location. Here a low
value might, save battery time... |
Figure 06: The My
Location Settings Screen.
|
My Account |
| The My Account Screen displays the status of
the Navigation Exchange Service. First time the NavXS Client is launched,
this screen will look like Figure 07. Note the gray circle with the label
No e-mail specified. In order to use the exchange service you have
to log in to the service. Before you can do this, you will have to edit
the account settings. This can be done by pressing the softkey mapped to
the command "Settings". This will lead you to the Account Settings Screen.
|
Figure 07: The My
Account Screen.
|
On the Account Settings Screen (Figure 08),
you can enter an Login (e-mail) and password for logging on
to the Navigation Exchange Service. If you do not have an account yet, you
can sign up here.
On
the Account Settings Screen, you can also specify the Exchange
Interval. This is the interval at which the NavXS Client will contact
the NavXS Server, updating your current position and receiving the
position of your online contacts. NOTE: Your position will only be
visible to your contacts! See below how to add contacts.
When the
Auto Login check box is checked before exiting the application, you
will automatically be logged in to the exchange service the next time you
start the NavXS Client, using the most recently entered e-mail and
password. |
Figure 08: The
Account Settings Screen.
|
When the Account Settings has been properly
set, you can log in to the service by selecting the Login item in
the menu shown in Figure 07. (From the Account Settings Screen, press
"Back" and "Menu", or "Options" on some phones, to show this menu).
Once logged in, the My Account Screen will be updated to show all
your contacts. Online contacts will be assigned a nice green icon, as will
the currently logged-in user, while offline contacts will be assigned a
somewhat mor dull, grey icon. Should you have any messages waiting for
you, they will be shown under Messages.
NOTE: The NavXS
Client uses the internet to communicate with the Navigation Exchange
Server. Unless your telephone supports WLAN, it will connect to the
internet using GPRS or UMTS. This might add to your telephone bill.
Many telephone companies exploit their customers by charging ridiculous
prices for internet access, unless you order an additional "Data Pack" to
your subscription. Make sure you have a "Data Pack" before using the
Navigation Exchange Service! for an additional monthly charge of 5-10€/$ a
month you should get all the internet access you need. Contact your mobile
phone provider if you are unsure about this. |
Figure 09: Online
and Offline Contacts.
|
Via the second item in the My Account Menu,
shown in Figure 07, you can add contacts to your contact list. The Add
Contact Screen (Figure 10) provides a field User E-mail where you
can type the e-mail address of the contact you want to add. Press the
softkey mapped to "Search" to see if a user with this e-mail exits in the
exchange service database. (Future versions might provide a more flexible
search function, where you don't have to know the e-mail address in
advance.)
The matching users (if any) will be listed in the
check-list labeled Matching Users. To add the found user(s) to your
contact list, press the softkey mapped to the "Finish" command. The
selected user(s) will appear in your contact list with a special symbol
signifying that the contact request is waiting to be accepted, as shown in
Figure 11.
The user that you have requested will receive a
notification like the one shown in Figure 12 (if he or she is not
currently online, the notification will be shown next time he or she logs
in). You will not be able to see the location of the requested user
until he/she has accepted your add-contact request. The user you have
requested can choose to reject the request. In this case you will receive
a short message informing you about this, and the pending contact shown in
Figure 11 will disappear from your contact list. |
Figure 10: Adding
Contacts.
Figure 11:
Pending Contacts.
Figure 12:
Receiving a Contact Request.
|
Via the fourth item in the My Account Menu you
get to the Compose Message Screen (Figure 13). In the Recipients
check-list you can select one or more of your contacts as recipients for a
simple text message. In the Text field you can type the message
content using your numeric keys just as you would writing a SMS.
Unlike an SMS There are no limits to how long the message text can
be. Also there are no fixed charges, but you may have to pay your network
provider for the data transfer. For example, sending 15000 messages of
1000 characters each month would accumulate approximately 30Mb of network
traffic, which typically would cost 10€ with an expensive mobile phone
provider... |
Figure 13:
Composing a Message.
|
| When someone sends you a message, it will be
listed on the My Account Screen under the Messages label, with the
newest message on top. To clear the message list, select Clear
Messages the menu. Note that all messages will be permanently
discarded when you exit the NavXS Client (we may change this if we find
any good reasons for doing so...) |
Figure 14:
Receiving a Message.
|
Maps |
The NavXS Client includes a digital map for
visualizing the location of the user and all his/her contacts. Note that
map tiles will be downloaded from the internet on-demand. As discussed in
the My Account section: Make sure you have a data subscription before
using the GPRS or UMTS to download tiles! While data is being loaded, a
small text will be displayed, indicating load progress (map tiles
remianing) and network usage since program start (Figure 15).
By pressing the softkey mapped to the
"Settings" command shown in Figure 15, a Map Settings screen will be
displayed. Here you can enter and modify several parameters to change the
appearance of the map.
The Zoom Level field provides means
for setting a zoom level directly (the zoom level can also be set
step-wise using your phones keys as discussed below). The zoom level
dictates the range of the map to be displayed. At zoom level 0 the entire
world will be displayed in one map tile. At zoom level 1 it takes four
tiles to show the entire world, at zoom level 2 sixteen tiles and so
forth. Currently zoom level 17 is the highest zoom level supported. The
current zoom level is always indicated in the upper right corner of the
display, as shown in Figure 10.
In the Map Center fields a
latitude and longitude value can be entered to quickly pan the map to a
specific location. Note that the in the JSR-179 and Full Edition, the map
will re-center on your current location once a new GPS position has been
obtained, unless you de-select the Auto Center option.
The
Size field specifies how many tiles should be visible at the same
time. Telephones with small displays can set this to 1x1 or 2x2 to reduce
unnecessary downloads of map tiles that lie outside the visible screen.
For a display of 240x320 pixels, such as the one used for this guide, 3x3
tiles has proven itself to be a good value.
With the Map
Provider list you can select from where your telephone should download
the map tiles. As there are slight differences in the appearances of the
maps from different providers, you can set this to match your preferences
:-)
The Map Type determines the type of map to be loaded.
Here you can switch between regular street maps and maps compiled from
satellite imagery. TIP: If you want to minimize network traffic, the
street tiles are generally smaller (in terms of bytes) than the satellite
tiles.
The Distance Unit setting determines whether
distances on the map are shown in meters/kilometers or feet/miles. Of
course, most sane people will want to keep their units metric, but those
with that imperial twist can always choose otherwise ;-)
When
checking the Local Tile Cache check-box, the NavXS Client will try
to store the downloaded tiles locally in your telephone's file system. The
next time a particular tile is needed, it will be restored from the file
system, rather than being downloaded from the internet. When enabling
this, make sure you have set the Tile Cache Root and Tile Cache Directory
appropriately.
The Tile Cache Root specifies which
partition in the file system to use.
The Tile Cache
Directory (optional) specifies a subdirectory on the selected root, on
the form "subdir1/subdir2/", in which the cached tiles shall be stored.
In addition to the Map Settings, the map can be controlled using
the phones numeric keys:
| Key |
Function |
| 0 |
Toggles contact info (see Figures 18 and 20). |
| 1 |
Zoom in. Indicator shows the zoom level and area covvered at
this zoom level. Apply selected zoom level with 5 or Joystick
Center. |
| 2 |
Pan up. |
| 3 |
Zoom out. |
| 4 |
Pan left. |
| 5 |
Apply zoom (in) and center map on pan position. New tiles loaded
if needed |
| 6 |
Pan right. |
| 7 |
No function yet... |
| 8 |
Pan down. |
| 9 |
No function yet... |
| # |
Quick Settings (see below) | Joystick Up: Pan
up.
Joystick Left: Pan left.
Joystick Down: Pan down.
Joystick
Right: Pan right.
Joystick Center: Apply zoom (in) and center map on
pan position.
C / Clear: Cancels the pan and zoom in. The map will
return to its center position and the zoom level will not change.
The map Quick Settings can be activated by pressing the
pound key (#). Here you can change the map provider, map type and select
on which of your contacts (or yourself) the map shal auto-center, without
having to open the map settings menu. The quick settings are a 2-level
menu. On the first menu (Figure 20), press 0 to get to the menu where you
can select the contact that shall be used as map center (Figure 21).
Similarly, by pressing 1 or 2 while the first quick-settings menu is
shown, you can select which map provider or map type to be activated. |
Figure 15: The
NavXS Digital Map.
Figure 16: The
Map Settings Screen (1/2).
Figure 17: The Map Settings Screen (2/2).
Figure 18:
Zooming and panning using the numeric keys.
Figure 19: Contact Info (e-mail).
Figure 20: Contact Info (Time of most recently known
location).
Figure 21: Map
Quick Settings.
Figure 22: Map
Quick Settings: Auto center on contact
|