Off Track
TeleNav Track’s primary turnoff is the fact that only about 75 phones currently support it, and about 50 support the most basic plan. TeleNav Track is currently available only on handsets from Sprint/Nextel and AT&T, and fewer than five AT&T phones support the service.

Earlier, I mentioned a technical difficulty. Occasionally, entering a building blocked the GPS signal transmission; afterward, the system had difficulty picking up the GPS signal again until I tried to access driving directions or queried the system for GPS information.

Also, my phone ran out of battery power on a Friday. I recharged it and clocked back into TeleNav track later that night, but TeleNav didn’t record any activities over the weekend. On Monday I called TeleNav because the service didn’t see me. The company said the problem is a “minor bug” with newer phones and suggested that I remove and reinstall the TeleNav app on my handset, which did the trick.

Because TeleNav Track constantly communicates with your handheld, the system eats up battery life. You can control how often the service sends and receives information to minimize the battery drain, but you may want to keep a charger handy. The GPS driving directions suck up even more power. The BlackBerry 8800’s battery typically lasts for two or three days of regular use, but I needed to recharge every day when using TeleNav Track and its GPS navigator.

Some features within TeleNav Track are accessible only to BlackBerry users. Among them are the abilities to disable tracking and to block users from exiting the application.

I also experienced some small irritations. Frustratingly, TeleNav Track can't override the BlackBerry's security timeout function, which blacks out the device's screen after a certain period of time. You can set the timeout function for as long as an hour, but then your device's screen remains lit an hour or until you lock it or holster it, even when not using TeleNav Track. If you use a password to secure your device, you need to keep entering it while driving to see the screen. The quality of the audible driving directions is very spotty, regardless of the volume level, which increases the need for visual directions. Plus, TeleNav Track’s Web interface can be accessed only with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser.