Finally Sygic Mobile Maps 9 was released officially today via the Sygic e-shop for €79.99 for the complete Europe version. It is a fairly hefty download at just under 2GB and my real world download on a 7Mb ADSL showed a download in just over 1 hour on the main opening day. Before I get stuck in with a full review later in the week I thought I would post up a quick first look.

The initial install was fairly quick with a Windows based installer allowing me to install which maps and voices I wanted - no need to install all 2GB when all I need is the UK at just over 200MB. It also revealed the maps supplied with SMM9 are nearly 12 months old, being dated 2008.10 -  a shame more up to date maps haven't been supplied so far. Also no need for voices in language I can not speak wasting space on my SD card. Once copied over though I found I needed to run an installer that had been placed on the root of the SD card using a file explorer. Nothing was automatic (to be honest I do not know if Android supports autorun from an SD card) and the manual supplied in the installation package (which also includes the installers for Windows Mobile and Symbian) had no mention of Android. I guessed at the setup apk called SetupAndroid.apk - more because it appeared in the root of the SD card after the Windows installer had completed.

Running the application gives a setup and running interface that looks and operates in a very similar fashion to the ones in all other version of Sygic Mobile Maps/McGuider. In fact anyone who knows how to use one of the other versions would be able to pick up the new Android version very quickly. One annoyance (that was fixed in McGuider 2009 but also appears in the iPhone release) is that everytime you start the application you appear to get a warning about operating sat nav devices whilst driving.

I also tested adding custom POI files and these work as expected. I was able to install the latest speed camera database from PocketGPSWorld with custom alert sounds without any problems at all.

So far my quick testing has been very positive with no real 'deal-breakers' found and only a couple of minor niggles.

Over the next couple of days I will be putting Sygic Mobile Maps through its paces and plan to have a more comprehensive review up by the weekend.