Ever since the release of the iPhone/iPod Touch, users have been eagerly awaiting a viable Satellite Navigation software that, unlike the built in Google Maps application, includes Turn-by-Turn voice Navigation. Well, for some time now, the team over at xwaves have been working on, and constantly improving their xGPS software and there have been many public releases with none comparing to the latest one.

     In the last couple of days, the team announced that they had a fully working beta version (1.2) that supports Turn-By-Turn, and voice instructions to tell you when to turn, which currently only supports English.

     The previous version of xGPS was almost everything that iPhone users wanted, real-time GPS navigation. In an official statement released on the xwaves website, the team listed all the improvements and bug fixes since the last release;

• Bookmarks for saved directions now work correctly, so you can save all the bookmarks you want in an improved way.
• GPX logging now works correctly. Save GPX data into multiple logs. Logs will be saved per calculated trips, and now adds the proper end carriage.
• Current Location and Recompute Itinerary now work correctly. For those area’s where it didn’t work before, i.e USA, your location status now works. There is no more “you have to have a hard address” errors. Plot your destination and roll out.
• Wrong Way indicator can now be hidden, should you feel adventurous during your routing, or need to make an extra stop.
• Better stability in the Map Manager for the iPhone.
• Overall program stability and performance upgrades.

     Even with all the updates, improvements and fixes that have been included in this release, there have also, and probably most excitingly, been some expansion of the xGPS Program! What’s new to xGPS in this latest release?

•  Wireless transfer of your map files. No longer do you have to dig around in your iPhone directory to find your map file or put it in the right place. Simply download your maps from your computer and wirelessly push them to the xGPS program on your iPhone. It’s that easy!
• Google Terrain maps are now supported and added as another option for maps. All you hikers, bikers, and adventurers can benefit from this new feature.
• GPS information. Access your GPS’s latitude/longitude specs as well as altitude and speed of your unit, and send it via e-mail.
• English voice instructions are now supported. Now included is the ability to receive verbal commands on your next turn as you approach it.
• Night Mode for all you road warriors travelling across the country at all hours of the night. A new, easy view for the eyes when driving at night.
• Access your GPX traces on your computer using a normal web-browser using the wireless transfer feature.

     The xGPS Maps Manager has also been renamed to xGPS Manager, and with a new name comes new software. The manager has thus been completely rewritten from scratch and now includes these exciting new features;

•  Name your map sections and keep them organized. When downloading maps you can now name each region, allowing you to know what you downloaded, at what zoom levels and it’s size.
• Ability to download multiple zoom levels at a time now added.
• Keep drawn region outline when download of map is finished, should you want to download another zoom level or terrain maps of the same regions already downloaded.
• Google Terrain Maps is now supported.
• Wirelessly push and retrieve maps to and from your device.
• Manage and sync your GPX routes from your iPhone/computer and show them plotted on a map.

     As you can see, alot has gone into the next release of the xGPS iPhone Application. The planned release date for xGPS 1.2 is for the end of this month. iPod Touch users would need to use this software in conjunction with a GPS module and both iPhone and iPod touch would need an audio output cable either connected to the car sterio, or lighter port.

     The current version can be downloaded by adding their source - http://cydia.xwaves.net

     I was hoping to get sneak preview of the beta release, but the video below shows xGPS 1.2 in action.