Our rating: 2.5 out of 5 Google Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
The Good
Although you eventually have to pay for some add-ons, the Wisepilot company gives you five days to play around with everything before the premium features are restricted. You receive recommendations for businesses and things to do around your area. The navigation is fast and responsive. You receive and can report speed traps, accidents, bad traffic and more.
The Bad
Although the company explains the five-day free trial in the app description, people don’t read this, so lots of folks get mad and feel deceived, thinking that the app is actually free for life. Wisepilot is quite terrible in terms of finding intersections and addresses. The app failed to locate my current location a few times, assuming I was in Colorado or Russia.
The Bottom Line
Wisepilot has promise, but it fails to impress me in the most important feature: Finding where you are and where you want to go. In Google Maps and Waze I type in a half-baked version of my destination and if figures it out for me. Wisepilot isn’t as intuitive. It’s nice as a travel recommendation app, and you receive some cool traffic updates, but the address finder hinders the sleek navigation features.
Finding Your Spot Stinks – 2 out of 10
The primary task I perform with most navigation apps is looking up an address and then using the GPS part to work my way over or maybe check how long it is going to take on bike, car or public transportation. Since it’s the most important part to me, I would assume that Wisepilot knocks it out of the park. Unfortunately, I found just the opposite. Upon installing the Wisepilot app it found my location within a few seconds. However, whenever I moved around and tried to restart the app it seemed to just grab a random spot in the world and go with it. I turned on Wisepilot once and it assumed I was in Colorado. A second time it said I was somewhere in Russia. It seems silly, but I couldn’t even fix the problem unless I completely killed the app and started from scratch. I know my GPS is working fine because when I open up Waze or Google Maps it finds my location just fine.
That isn’t the worst part of my frustrations during the Wisepilot app review for Android. I honestly could care a less if the app can’t find where I am. After all, I know where I am. But I need a navigation app to find addresses and locations for me. Wisepilot couldn’t do this either. Whenever I typed in a valid address in the Chicago area it gave me the below message. I didn’t know that an address could be too specific. Regardless, I tried five different times to locate addresses that I know exist in Chicago and none of them came up. I also tried the intersection feature in Wisepilot with no luck. Even if the app found my addresses, the interface is flawed. It forces you to seperate the address, city, state and country into different fields. This takes more time and clicking, as opposed to a single field like Google Maps.
Recommended Search Rocks – 9 out of 10
The Wisepilot app has some redeeming features that make it somewhat like Yelp, in that it provides recommendations about bars, restaurants and other businesses in your area. The only strange thing is that the first result always seems to come up as a Russian bar for me, if you take a look below.
When I did a search for bars in my area Wisepilot delivered instantaneously. It tells you how long it takes to get to the location and what route you have to take. The Wisepilot app also allows you to include additional stops in case you screwed up the original search.
Wisepilot gives you weather updates in the area, but I don’t plan on tapping into a navigation app for that. In my opinion, they should put more effort into figuring out where your location is. However the Wisepilot app does offer a nice area to instantly include your recent search in your contacts. This is for that late night pizza joint you constantly call.
If you travel for business, the Find Nearby section is quite helpful. I checked out TripAdvisor to see what hotels are around and even scanned the area to locate banks in case I needed cash at the bar.
Speedy Navigation With a Sleek Design – 8.5 out of 10
I’ll be honest. I don’t think the Wisepilot interface and design is as minimalistic and nice-looking as Google Maps, but Waze and Wisepilot and pretty much all navigation apps could learn something from Google Maps. For some reason these apps want to include every bell and whistle, when all people want is to get to their location. Overall, Wisepilot has some sleek design movements, and the navigation actually runs great if the app can find your destination. It helps that Wisepilot includes an area to search by intersections, places, contacts and current position.
Change your route metrics, to get somewhere by going the fastest way or the easiest way. I never really understood the difference between these options, and the app doesn’t give you much help either. Whenever I switch between Fastest, Easiest and Shortest, they all seem to come up with the same routes. It might be different in other areas though.
If you don’t like looking at a map all of the time then Wisepilot offers a route overview to look at turn by turn directions. I use this for when I’m planning trips and trying to understand the time it will take me to get somewhere.
When I’m driving and inside the navigation feature Wisepilot works seamlessly. I drove on the highway in Chicago and around the suburbs with no update problems. I always had enough information and time beforehand to make a turn or hit an exit.
A True Traffic Network – 9 out of 10
During my Wisepilot app review for Android I found that the Wisepilot app has a great network to send in traffic reports and problems with speeds and other things while you ride. Although Waze is the leader in the area, Wisepilot is a close second with its OpenStreetMap integration. Wisepilot includes a unique feature that lets you reduce your data consumption when travelling abroad. Unfortunately I couldn’t test this fully, but reviews seem positive.
Wisepilot gives you the options to receive warnings whenever a speed trap gets closer or when a cop car is down the road. Change these to visual or audio warnings.
The only way this system works is if people report problems. So if you see a problem with a speed limit or turn or something of the sort the Wisepilot app has buttons to report them. It makes me cringe to think that people are updating while driving, but hopefully people at least stop.
Support Straight From the App – 8 out of 10
App Permissions
There are plenty of terms and conditions to agree to when you start the Wisepilot app, causing concern for those you don’t like to give up personal information. Let me break down the ones that pose problems.
Wisepilot taps into your location services It may share your location It might also access your contacts It may use services on your phone that cost you money such as SMS
Overall this is nothing new from apps that give you GPS services. You can’t expect to find a GPS that doesn’t access your location, but I’m not entirely sure why a GPS app needs to tap into your personal information such as contacts.
What are Wisepilot Customer Saying?
“Deceptive Advertising! Should have believed the previous posts. This app is NOT free. The only thing free is a tiny map showing a route summary. You need to purchase to get the navigation “feature”.” “Awesome It let’s me find a location any time any where and even without WiFi networks and no problem or questions asked.” “You’ve 5 days to try for fee, after that you’ve to pay to continue using it. Please say ” trial version” not “free”.” “Best by far It might not work for everyone, different networks different continents and countries. But it works 100% perfect for me with no hustle at all.”
Conclusion
Let me know in the comments section below if you have any questions about this Wisepilot app review for Android. The Wisepilot app has quality features for finding cool stuff to do in the area, but compared to Google Maps, the address search stinks, and compared to Waze, the Wisepilot network falters.
