[GPSNavX]

Yes it is exciting to see NOAA ENCs based charts come to iPhone. Hopefully the Navimatics developer will turn Marine maps into something useful. On another positive note, Very soon iNavX will offer high quality world-wide chart and map coverage.

For those who can't access my review of Marine Maps in iTunes here it is..

For complete disclosure, I am the developer of iNavX Marine Navigation app which uses NOAA RNC raster marine charts (not maps).

Marine Maps is a very basic marine chart (not map) viewer. It is not a functioning chart plotter. I would not recommend using it for navigation, but it is handy to look at the NOAA ENC vector charts. A decent first start. Hopefully more functionality will be added soon making it useable for navigation.

- Very quick scrolling and zooming although scrolling is not animated based on drag acceleration
*
- App returns to last place looking before exiting
*
- A basic US chart is included
*
- No way to measure distance or bearing
*
- No way to create or navigate to a waypoint
*
- No indication of speed or course
*
- Detail coverage missing for many areas as NOAA ENC coverage is incomplete (not developers fault)
*
- The chart switches to a very low scale when scrolling and zooming making it difficult to know where you are looking
*
- Often times, the search keyboard and input field come up after zooming
*
- No way to update the charts straight from the FREE NOAA ENC website
*
- No chart version info
*
- While the chart rotation is interesting, it would be a nice way if there was a way to "lock" North Up
*
- Zoom out is limited to 1:5000,000
*
- Zoom in is limited to 1:5,000
*
- Soundings fixed in meters
*
- When tapping to get info, the list is sorted by largest to smallest item (area, line, point)
*
- Typical of ENCs often times, text overwrites other text
*
- Area borders not plotted using proper marine symbols
*
- What format is lat,lon entered in?
*
- Large download (33+ MB) size makes for very slow synching