TomTom will sell its car kit [1] - a complement to its iPhone app - for $119.95 in the United States, £99.99 in the UK, and €99.99 in Europe. The car kit will ship in October 2009. The iPhone software is not included; TomTom offers several apps [2], each for a different part of the world.

In what appears to be new information, the car kit will work with every model of iPhone, including the original 2.5G (EDGE) model that lacks an internal GPS radio. That means that TomTom is embedding its own GPS chip and antenna into the car kit, which is good news.

In my testing of the TomTom app on an iPhone 3GS over several hundred miles in the Pacific Northwest recently, GPS lock-on time, signal quality, and refresh intervals were the weakest elements in using TomTom's turn-by-turn navigation, and Adam noticed similar problems with the AT&T Navigator GPS app (see "Comparing Two Early iPhone GPS Navigation Apps [3]," 2009-09-25).

The iPhone plugs into TomTom's dock via its dock connector. The dock, which uses a suction cup to attach to the windshield, includes a microphone and speaker as well as a USB port for charging (via an included power adapter) and an audio output jack.

[1]: http://investors.tomtom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=411360
[2]: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=326055452
[3]: http://db.tidbits.com/article/10600

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