Obviously there’s a lot of negativity associated with the new maps on iOS 6 and your experience with it will vary greatly depending on where you are located. However I thought I’d just chime in that at least where I am located I’ve had nothing but excellent results when it comes to turn-by-turn directions.

I’ve been a Navigon man since the iPhone4 and have been very happy with it and it will most likely have a place on my iPhone for some time to come. I’ve had the opportunity to use Apple’s turn by turn directions 3 times since I received my iPhone 5 all in varied locations. One right in the city of Boston. One in a very rural part of Western MA and one in the suburbs of Boston.

Each time the directions were spot on. The actual interface is very minimalistic and probably the slickest GPS interface I’ve used, phone and standalone units inclusive. The animation is very smooth and fluid and the text very large and crisp and easy to read. The voiceover was very easy to understand and easily turned off in Settings. I also noticed that using the built in navigation in iOS 6 as opposed to a third party app significantly reduces the drain on the battery. If I were to use Navigon I would almost always be plugged in. With the built in navigation I hardly noticed any significant battery drain.

I’m sure I will at some point need to revert back to Navigon but for now I’ll keep using Apple’s. I will admit I do miss traffic alerts which I subscribed to in Navigon so I look forward to seeing when Apple is able to implement that feature.

I hope at least some people in more mature mapped regions are having similar experience and that it will continue to spread as Apple fine tunes the map data on their end. We’ll see…