Buying factory navigation systems have always been a difficult proposal. Not only are they expensive, but the offerings are usually one-generation behind most aftermarket offerings. Moreover auto manufacturers do not update their offerings once the car is sold, leaving most owners with an older built-in system that doesn’t keep up with the latest navigation offerings (such has turn-by-turn instructions, overhead maps, etc.).

This are slowly beginning to change. Nissan just refreshed the Versa and Sentra sedans and included navigation as a $400 USD option. That’s a great price! Hopefully more manufacturers will be charging a fair value for navigation systems. Canadian pricing wasn’t available yet.

Pioneer has release version 2.0 of the firmware in their AVIC-F series of headunits (F90BT, F900BT, F700BT). The new firmware is available here and has the following improvements as documented by the AVIC forums:

1. 1. Boot time is a lot faster, its tolerable now. I am so used to waiting the original time it comes up and im like wowa, nice. 30 seconds exactly to music from ipod and screen. 72 seconds from bootup till vr update complete. 102 Seconds from boot for Bluetooth connection and loading complete.
   
2. The screens respond as fast as you touch them there is no lag now, great improved.
   
3. The blue boxes are now gone from the idle no route input map screen. Amazing what a difference this makes in the viewable area. The destination ins deleted now once arrived.
   
4. The screen bright max before is what 7 is now, at 10 its almost blinding! However this isn’t in effect until the unit completes boot up, you suddenly see when it reads the settings the screen comes up much brighter all of a sudden.
5. The contact screen is useful now! It lists them by mobile/office/home now.

The new iPhone 3G is coming to Rogers on July 11th along with the rest of Apple’s launch partners. This was announced in the following press release by Apple.

As predicted, it’s coming with HSDPA fast mobile data service as well as GPS. Pricing was not announced.

Update: Gizmodo did a great article on what was not upgraded in the iPhone 3G. Here is their list:

• A 32GB model
• A better camera
• More RAM
• MMS
• A2DP Bluetooth for stereo streaming
• A camera on the front for videoconferencing
• Video capabilities
• Turn-by-turn navigation (will come with a 3rd party app, I’m sure)
• The ability to copy and paste