Google is really narrowing the distance between a smartphone and dedicated GPS devices. At first, it was the all might Droid that was rocking out some serious GPS navigation action. Just today, Engadget reported the arrival of such navigation available for all Anroid 1.6 handsets (yes, the old G1 is part of this). I updated both MyTouch3G as well as my G1, pretty cool indeed!
Its news like this that really excites me and makes me proud of being part of the mobile community. It turns out Verizon/Moto's upcoming Droid phone will be the first to feature Android 2.0 OS update which will provide a full on GPS navigation with 3D street view as you get closer to your destination. This is huge because telecoms usually like to offer turn by turn GPS as a feature but this one seems to be purely based on the smartphone's capabilities and data plan. These are the kind of warm and fuzzy feeling I used to get when learning about new iPhone features... could I be more certain that Android is going win the mobile war?
Or atleast the nuvifone email is here. I received this few minutes ago. The nuvifone G60 is available exclusively from AT&T and will be sold for $299 with a 2-yr contract and after a mail rebate. In short, the phone is a touchscreen GSM quad band, 3G and WiFi capable. Mr. Obvious will tell you it is a GPS phone famously dubbed after Garmin's popular nuvi GPS handheld.
Lately, I've been bitten by the Golf bug again. I was really into this sport years back when I lived in the Golden State. This time around, I am surprised to find how this sport has advanced with technology, especially with the gadget market. The biggest gadget for this market must be the GPS-based rangefinders. Lots of hardware makers offer a dedicated GPS units with preloaded course maps to help you determine the distance between your ball and the flag. Big GPS players such as Garmin even has a serious go at this market as well.
Head on over to laptop magazine's blog on a hands-on preview of a prototype unit of the upcoming Nuvifone by Garmin. From the first take, everything looks very promising with a very easy to use UI. Personally, I don't know how I feel about the Nuvifone, it always feel like more of a GPS than a phone... which makes me wonder how will other multimedia or communication services be like. But if this thing is founded on its rock-solid heritage, I can see this phone being one of the best phone+GPS solution.
The progress in smartphone technology has definitely improved the overall mobile experience; take my recent travel arrangements, for example.
We live in an exciting time right now, as we are at the cusp of an explosion of innovative smart phone technologies. Smart phones are finally smart, with less bugs and more functional operating systems as well as applications (or Widgets). But if you are about to buy a smartphone, what should you be looking for. The mobile experience will put some basic rules down for you to avoid any mistakes. Please take a look at our smart phone buyers guide below, 1st edition:
Email: Every smartphone will provide the basic functions of email either via the browser or through built-in mail program; however, non of which can perform like the way BlackBerry(s) do. Their reliability and ease of use trumps everything else. BlackBerry now comes with 3G, WiFi and GPS integrated which makes it a very appealing option for those in the market for a super email communicator. There are other communicators on the market designed to compete with BlackBerry; the Nokia E90 communicator is a great example, however it costs about twice as much and I would still argue it doesn’t really compete with the Push-Email integration BlackBerry offers not to mention it is quite big.
Camera: Again, almost every phone today will come with some sort of camera/camcorder function. The minimum standard is 2 megapixel. Some smartphones will go above that with a 5MP camera (ie. Nokia N95, LG Viewty, Sony K850i, LG KG920, etc.). I’ve seen phones go up to 7MP+ (ie. Samsung SCH-V770). Cameras are one of the most under-appreciated functions today because of all the buzz are around “3G”. Ironically it is probably the most functional feature. In a James Bond-like fashion, your camera phone can take snapshots of anything on the go, for research, for documentation and for those special moments in life that are priceless. I would recommend going with at least 3MP on any smartphone and the more manual control the phone offers, the better. I personally prefer to have a phone with a secondary camera on the front of the phone. Its designed for video conferencing if your network carrier supports that function.
Touchscreen: Since the beginning, touchscreen goes hand to hand with PDAs and Smartphones. It gives users an extra level of precise input to command the tiny screens. Some people can’t live without touchscreens. Personally, it took me a while to go from a Windows Mobile OS using touchscreen to Symbian S60 which uses only a D-pad to navigate the phone. The iPhone has one of the best touch screen I’ve ever seen. While we are on the topic of screens, VGA resolution (640x320) and SVGA resolution (800x600) are on the rise. They offer much finer pixel display than the tradition QVGA (320x240) which is popular on most of the phones today. I’ve already decided my next phone will have to be VGA or better, for higher productivity.
Mobile OS: There are currently four major mobile os at play: Windows Mobile, BlackBerry 4.6, Symbian S60 and Apple OS X Mobile. As mentioned by the features above, each OS kind of ties to the unique feature set and user experience. This is why I talk about OS last because going by the functions you want, for example, email, you’ll be forced to live with BlackBerry OS. The only thing to keep in mind is Windows Mobile and BlackBerry are more enterprise/wor- friendly. Whereas Symbian and OS X are more multimedia driven. Of course, both Symbian and Apple are going to work hard to make their OS more enterprise friendly in the upcoming months. Finally, there is the highly anticipated Google Android OS which should show up by end of 2008 on some handsets. It offers true open-source which yields a lot of promises to reshape the entire mobile industry.
I stumbled across two good looking smartphones in a magazine this afternoon, made by a company called Velocity Mobile. At first glance, given its design, Windows Mobile platform and feature-rich specification, I thought it may have been an HTC powered, rebranded effort. After a little digging, I am finding out that Velocity is a new company based in Seattle/London that designs smartphones and utilizes the manufacturing prowess of China with a top ODM partner in Taiwan known as Inventec.
Ever wonder how accurate your iPhone's faux GPS function (from firmware 1.4 update) in Google Maps "My Location" would hold up against a real GPS receiver? Better yet, how does it stack up against another smartphone with integrated GPS like the Nokia N95? I wanted to find out for myself so I took both devices out for a shoot out.
Nokia N95 - I had the internet connection defaulted to turn off, relying purely on the integrated GPS. In an open space, I can normally get a good fix on the satellites within 2 minutes. This afternoon, however, I cannot even get connected; its possible that the buildings are too tall on my street which blocked partial satellite signals. I sampled it in the same three locations as mentioned above (courtyard, both sides of 23rd Street) and I can't rely on the integrated GPS alone to pick up my location. So I activated Nokia Maps to go online via AT&T 3G network which engaged the Assisted-GPS function (ie. using data network to help getting a location fix assisting integrated GPS receiver). Within 30 seconds, I got a fix. It showed me as if I were on the other side of 23rd Street. See the 3rd image for exact location test results.
I got a chance to test out Nokia's Location Tagger application from its Beta Labs. This app can be used in conjunction with compatible phone's GPS and camera to record the geographic location (longitude/Latitude) for each picture taken from Eseries and Nseries phones like the E90, N95 and N82. According to Nokia, this should work with all Symbian S60 3rd edition phones w/ integrated GPS or external bluetooth GPS. Geo-Tagging will be an important meta-data for photography in the future; and currently, smartphones with integrated GPS is a convenient way to start such implementation. I foresee future point-n-shoots and DSLRs to come equip with some form of Geo-Tagging feature.
After taking each shot, the application will tell you that it has been tagged. If you upload your 'geo-tagged' images to an application like PicasaWeb, Google Earth or Flickr, it will show you the location each picture has been taken from automatically. Please find a couple screenshots of PicasaWeb Google Maps integration using a picture I took this morning.
Mitsuwa Supermarket, a popular Japanese Market Chain, this one is in Edgewater, NJ.
Engadget reports a story that the Garmin Nuvifone may end up costing you $500 through AT&T with a 2-year contract. In my opinion, this will make Garmin Nuvifone lose its competitive edge. Considering that there are plenty of phones available with GPS; this phone really does not offer much beyond whats already available. Its largest pull is the fact that Garmin has built a reputation on ease of use GPS and a loyal fan base. At $500, however, people will likely think twice as the sticker is in the premium phone range. If they would cleverly position this device at $200-300 range, it would give the market a good run for its money. Just my humble opinion.
A while ago, I wrote an entry about Sprint Mogul's (aka HTC Mogul) delayed in delivering its GPS functionality. Shortly after that, Sprint released a firmware which allows all of their Mogul users the ability to navigate via TeleNav.
I ran across this bad boy yesterday at a local shopping mall in Jakarta. The i-mate Ultimate 9502 is a slider-based windows mobile 6 smartphone with a very impressive spec sheet. I am just going to jump right into the main course for you: quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) and WORLD WIDE Tri-Band 3.5G (HSDPA 850/1900/2100) w/ an astounding VGA 640x480 resolution over a 2.8" screen. I almost forgot to mention integrated GPS.
After showing off my N95-3 GPS function with the maps of Indonesia and Taiwan pre-installed on my MicroSDHC 4GB to my relatives in Asia (one with a N95-1 and the other with E90), they asked for my help to set it up for them. As I recalled, the process was fairly simple. I remembered downloading Nokia Map Loader software and within half an hour, I was able to get all the regional maps I wanted.
Prior to my Asia trip, I downloaded Nokia Maps of Taiwan and Indonesia (including Bali) to test out the GPS functionality on my Nokia N95-3. With the maps installed onto a 4GB MicroSDHC card, I can rely on the GPS without having to connect to a foreign network and avoid costly data fees.
AAA today announced the availability of AAA Mobile, a cell phone GPS navigation service, on select BlackBerry smartphones.
My friend John picked up a brand new Mogul (aka PPC6800, XV6800, HTC-P4000) back in July of 2007 from Sprint. This was the perfect phone for him. WM6 Professional, 3G EV-DO Data, WiFi, 163MB usable memory (more than twice of many standard HTC/Smartphones out there at the time) and GPS… well, atleast at the time of purchase, he was told soon, a firmware will be available to enable the onboard GPS.
(Update: 3/10/2008 - As Dieter has commented, a release was made available today. According to Engadget, they aren't sure if the GPS option made it in, but according to BuzzAboutWireless forum, GPS is now supported along with the EVDO Rev A. speed improvment. Sprint confirmed GPS is now supported.
AT&T Tilt
, one of the most competent phones out there is now $49 after rebate on Amazon.com. Here is a phone that will stack up against the N95 at 1/10th the cost. With US 3G support, GPS-integrated, WM6, Wi-Fi and more, I am shocked at this amazing value. Of course, two year contract is required, but this phone will easily eBay for $300 giving you the fund to buy something fancier if you should decide. (Unlock it first for its full potential!)
Has hell frozen over? First we hear rumors about Nokia in talks with Microsoft regarding Windows Mobile. Now I am seeing pictures of the gorgeous Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 which is going to run on Windows Mobile OS. As reported by a couple of sources, this ultra-premium sexy looking phone will debut in second half of 2008. This phone is so feature-rich and supports every band-width known to man. The most amazing feature is the 3" VGA (800x600) resolution. Things will be more interesting with this phone in the market.