Jacky Yong

I have always liked to use Garmin MobileXT on the Symbian on my previous Nokia 5800 XM. That Nokia was famous phone, right before iPhone was introduced and swept away the nation in a smartphone frenzy. It’s still a very good phone, although I only use it for the GPS feature, because iPhone don’t have a proper Garmin software designed for it.

Up until now, all the Garmin for iOS are incompetent. They need to turn on the data, and there is no option to update your own map (Malaysia has a one of the actively updated map, and they are free some more). But now Garmin has release the Map-On-Board version, so it’s definitely worth checking out. Finally I have found a compelling reason to justify the reason why I migrated to iOS!

Things that you will need:

1. the Garmin OnBoard app for iOS (it’s a blue icon with the word U.S.A. on it)
2. a jailbroken iPhone + iPhone cable
3. iFunbox
4. iFile
5. Malaysia’s map file (or any country of your choice)

I am not going to reveal where I downloaded the “Garmin OnBoard No Map” app, you will just need to Google it yourself. * ahem ahem *

The first thing you need of course is to install Garmin OnBoard into your jailbroken iDevice. I assume you know how to do it yourself, and thus have at least some basic knowledge of jailbreaking, lest you know what I am talking about here. I specifically mentioned “No Map” here because the Garmin OnBoard full map contains the full map of USA, which is a staggering 1.8 GB in size!

Next using iFunbox, copy your map (which has the extension .img) file to //var/mobile/Applications/[USA]/Library/sdcard/Garmin/. If you cannot located the application “USA”, sort the apps by date.

(Note that [USA] is denoted by some random numbers in some file viewer. More on that later.) You might also want to copy the .img file to //var/mobile/Applications/[USA]/Garmin-nav.app/storage-usa/.System

Copy your voice files (extension .vpm) to //var/mobile/Applications/[USA]/garmin-nav.app/storage-usa/Voice

Edit: Here is the link to some voice files online. http://www.gps-data-team.com/pda-gps-navigation/topic/2258.html

If you cannot locate “garmin-nav.app”, that’s because it is shown as “USA” in iFunbox. How intuitive is that? * duhhhh *

If you have custom POI’s, you can also copy them to //var/mobile/Applications/[USA]/garmin-nav.app/storage-usa/POI, though to be honest, I have never used custom POI’s before.

Skip this step if you actually paid USD50 for this app; You will need to bypass the authentication to the Garmin server, so go to /etc/ and locate the file “hosts”. Modify it to add these two lines:

127.0.0.1       www.garmin.com
127.0.0.1       gold.garmin.com

Next you will need to use iFile. The trick is trying to locate the application number and match it against the iFile, because as I mentioned earlier, even though iFunbox shows the name “USA”, it is actually shown as some random numbers in iFile. Just double-click the app in iFunbox and note the numbers shown at the title bar.

In iFile, locate all the files that you have just copied, and set these ownership and permissions:

Ownership:
Owner: mobile; Group: mobile

Access Permissions:
User: Read, Write, Execute
Group: Read, Execute
World: Read, Execute

If you cannot see certain folders in iFiles (such as .System), make sure that you “show hidden files” in the iFiles options. Also, if you not be able to hear sounds, set the same permissions to all the other voice files as well.

And that’s it! Go outside and enjoy!

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