by jtrosky » Sat Jul 02, 2016 11:47 am
Here are some of the reasons that I finally decided to switch to Primo (it's been a while, so I'm sure I'm forgetting some):
- Graphically, it just looks nicer. I personally never liked the Dimka skins - I always thought that they made the screen look too cluttered and not very "professional" looking. I know that I'm in the minority here as most people love them. I like clean-looking GPS screens - my favorite iGo 8 skin was the Kikker skin - nice, clean interface. For Primo, my favorite skin is the "Decent" skin - again, nice clean interface. The Dimka skins also seem to really slow iGO down, both in startup and in general while using the app. They try to add too much, in my opinion. Sure, you can disable most things, but if you're going to do that, why bother having them to begin with. I prefer only adding things that I'm going to use, which is where the UX add-ons come into play with Primo....
- The "UX" add-ons for Primo are really cool. Basically, it's an easy way for developers to write add-ons to Primo. Most of the functions you see in skins are also available separately as a UX plugin. I only use a few myself, since the Decent skin provides most of what I need. The UX plugins that I personally use are:
- "External Programs"
- "MapChanger"
- "RoutePlanningMethod"
- "QuickUserProfile"
- "OverviewNorthUp"
- Dynamic Volume
- quite a few TTS-related enancements (toll both TTS alerts, speed-limit increasing TTS alerts, ETA TTS alerts, CarSize, Quick Detour TTS alerts, etc.
- I also like the way that Primo gives you an icon while on the highway to easily see how far the next few exits are and what restaurants, gas stations and auto-repair facilities are available at the next few exits. This is all done with a little button that appears on the main map screen. VERY nice feature.
- Primo also has a lot of other little enhancements - such as when speeding, it can actually say what the speed limit is (iGo8 would just say you're speeding, but not actually say what the speed limit is).
- Primo uses Loquendo 7 (instead of Loquendo 6), which offers some enhancements. It also supports both Loquendo and Nuance TTS engines. For US English, I have 7 different TTS voices available.
- Primo also shows you the nice green overhead signs for exits on the highway and really nice graphical screens of common intersections on the highway (I can't remember what the "official" name is for these right now!).
The downsides to Primo 2.4 are that the screen updates are not as smooth as iGo8 - the screen updates in small "chunks" instead of the faster, smoother screen updates with iGo8. However, since you're not normally watching the GPS screen constantly while driving, the things I mentioned above are more important in "real life". iGo8 also had better "view" customization options from the app interface (zoom levels, tilt levels, etc). With Primo, if you don't like the standard zoom and tilt levels it offers, you have to adjust via sys.txt, which is a pain.
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