CoPilot Live 8 sat-nav for phones with Android operating system

The sat-nav market has been shaken up by new apps for the Apple iPhone. But if you have a mobile with Google’s rival Android operating system, your navi options are limited.

Aiming to address this is the new CoPilot Live 8 software from ALK – so we booted up an HTC Magic smartphone and hit the road.

Downloading from the online Android Market – the equivalent of Apple’s app store – was quick and easy, and we were ready to go in minutes.

We put our phone in a dock for our drive from Farnborough, Hants, to nearby Fleet.

But we got the message ‘Determining Current Position’ – in other words, the phone had no idea where we were.

On an open road, it found our location, but when we tried to play music via our phone, we couldn’t adjust the volume at the same time as reading instructions.

There’s a five-second delay if you change views, too, so we missed our turn. Not a patch on the iPhone.

 * Contact: www.alk.eu.com

 * Problems? Trouble locking on to signal, route calculation took time.

 * So why buy? Good value, easy to download from Android Market