Apple stuns Macworld crowd with multi-function iPhone device - Page 7

Originally Posted by melgross

All actual GPS receivers use AGPS, which, by the way, can have 3 meter accuracy.

Which technology phones have, depends on the phone. I can't speak to each one.

Jobs mentioned GPS, that's all we can know now.

Maybe it isn't implimented as yet, so no more is being said right now.

As far as links go, just tap AGPS into Google.

Originally Posted by franksargent



I'm no expert, it's been almost 10 years since I've done any DGPS surveys (1cm accuracy), but I do know that at that time realtime kinematic GPS existed (10cm accuracy). All that is processed within the receiver itself, so those do not use an assistance server as required for AGPS. Plus I have Misrosoft's Streets and Trips 2007 with a GPS receiver, it needs line-of-sight, and it doesn't need AGPS.

Do you really know what all you are talking about? Really!

Originally Posted by pistolero

That is incorrect. Cell phone companies are NOT required at all to provide any unlocking codes at all. however any individual or company can provide/sell the locks and the cell phone companies cannot sue to prevent it.

Originally Posted by axc51

The iPhone cannot change the world if it's priced at ~$1k unlocked, or if you have to join crappy Cingular service to own it.

Originally Posted by melgross

Yes, I do, do you?

you could find out very easily what cellphones have, if you really wanted to.

But, if you don't, that's not my concern.

Originally Posted by franksargent



You said "All actual GPS receivers use AGPS" and I gave you 3 specific examples where AGPS wasn't used. So clearly you made an incorrect statement.

Now if you had said "All cell phones use AGPS" in that case you would be correct AFAIK.

And IMHO the FCC Phase II requirement of 50m-300m for E-911 accuracy is not very useful for navigation purposes.

Originally Posted by melgross

First of all, I'm assuming that by discussing the iPhone, we are discussing consumer devices. There have been others, mostly military that have had greater accuracy. But AGPS was invented primarily for boating use, but has since spread.

For non phone use it seems as though AGPS is being replaced by L2C.

Originally Posted by melgross

I'm sure he said it, and I'm sure that All USA cellphones have it.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

I reviewed the section where Steve demos Google maps and there was no mention of GPS.
If you are so sure give us the time stamp at which he mentions it in the keynote.

Also if it was a feature of the phone, you would definitely see it listed on the slides during the presentation or on the website. It is neither place.

I believe the phone may be able to tell the local zipcode by the phone tower it is using but does not have true GPS. I stand by my earlier prediction that it will be able to use bluetooth GPS receivers or one plugged into the dock connector.

Originally Posted by IHateRegistering

This is what Apple initially wanted to Newton to be.

Originally Posted by IHateRegistering

I'm suprised they did not show the Calendar and To Do functions. This is the Killer-app on my Treo. I'd be lost without it.

Originally Posted by IHateRegistering

Someone brought up lack of IR, so it cannot be used as a remote. At first I thought that was a pretty gay suggestion, but now I think if anyone could solve the problem of TOO MANY REMOTES, it's Apple.

Originally Posted by franksargent



I haven't seen the keynote video, but I looked at both Ars Technics and Macworld livefeeds, both mentioned GPS. BTW do you know where I can download the keynote video (for later viewing), the Apple website has only the VoIP feed and a link to iTunes for downloading, however the iTunes store states "The item you've requested is currently not available in the US store."

But I do believe you are correct, in that if the iPhone needs a GPS sensor for navigation purposes (and I believe it does for accuracy reasons), and the iPhone itself doesn't have an embedded GPS sensor with line-of-sight access to said GPS satellites (which I don't think it does from my casual viewing of the iPhone photos), then yes it will need an external device (GPS sensor). I would think the sensor would be fairly obvious, the one I have is ~0.75" square (for the sensor itself, not the housing).

But than again after looking at the sensor housing I have, it is encased in a pretty thick piece of plastic, so who knows it could be inside the iPhone. I would also add that with AGPS assistance, most of the EE stuff is offloaded to the cell network for processing, so in those cases, perhaps with line-of-sight GPS data, within cell phone range, you may get fairly accurate positioning for navigation purposes.

But basically it's TBD!

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

The keynote is only available for streaming.

The reference to Google Maps and Directions were misunderstood as GPS functionality.
You can get directions but you have to tell it where you are.
One thing I was surprised about was there was no speech functions demoed.
I hope it does text to speech for things like verbalizing directions.
I have a TomTom bluetooth GPS receiver that is the size of a very small cellphone and I hope I will be able to use it with the iPhone.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Megapixels don't make a good camera. I've never seen a case where more megapixels on a camera phone beyond that yielded better picture quality, except maybe for the cameras that happen to have an integrated phone.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

The keynote is only available for streaming.

The reference to Google Maps and Directions were misunderstood as GPS functionality.
You can get directions but you have to tell it where you are.
One thing I was surprised about was there was no speech functions demoed.
I hope it does text to speech for things like verbalizing directions.
I have a TomTom bluetooth GPS receiver that is the size of a very small cellphone and I hope I will be able to use it with the iPhone.

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

Also it occurs to me that if there is a GoogleMaps app on iPhone then we might see Apple doing a full scale GoogleMaps.app or GoogleEarth.app for Leopard.

Originally Posted by melgross

It's preferences. The Nokia certainly isn't worth more in my eyes.

Originally Posted by melgross

2 MP in a phone camera is plenty. I've seen higher rez pics from them, and they are bad.

Phones don't make good cameras.

The lens on a phone is really terrible. Thast limits the worth of the sensor right there. The processing is very poor as well.

It's good for a snapshot, or an emergency, but no more.

I believe Samsung announced an 8 MP phone. what a waste!

Originally Posted by Johnny Mozzarella

I reviewed the section where Steve demos Google maps and there was no mention of GPS.
If you are so sure give us the time stamp at which he mentions it in the keynote.

Also if it was a feature of the phone, you would definitely see it listed on the slides during the presentation or on the website. It is neither place.

I believe the phone may be able to tell the local zipcode by the phone tower it is using but does not have true GPS. I stand by my earlier prediction that it will be able to use bluetooth GPS receivers or one plugged into the dock connector.

Originally Posted by franksargent



I'm no expert, it's been almost 10 years since I've done any DGPS surveys (1cm accuracy), but I do know that at that time realtime kinematic GPS existed (10cm accuracy). All that is processed within the receiver itself, so those do not use an assistance server as required for AGPS. Plus I have Misrosoft's Streets and Trips 2007 with a GPS receiver, it needs line-of-sight, and it doesn't need AGPS.

Do you really know what all you are talking about? Really!

Originally Posted by aegisdesign

I agree. The 8800 is sold a s premium fashion item though rather than on features. It's jewel like in construction. I'd not be surprised if Apple tries to push the iPhone at the same customers, not just the business people/geeks that have so far been happy with ugly things like current smartphones, none of which are vaguely fashionable.



Here's Cabel Sasser's review of the SE K790a (it's the K800i in Europe with a couple more features) as counter evidence.

http://www.cabel.name/2006/11/review...son-k790a.html

Sure, it's no SLR but from Cabel's pictures it's clear it's perfectly fine for most people's snaps and damned handy to have on you all the time. The p990i I had also had a camera good enough that I'd have used it most of the time instead of my trusty Olympus. I hope Apple's 2mp camera is a good 2mp camera. It doesn't have to be SLR great, but good enough for web use would do me.

Samsung generally just throws megapixel specs at people hoping they're dumb enough to miss out that it's the glass that generally makes a good camera.

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

DGPS ("Differential GPS") requires a fixed base station with exact knowledge of its true position, listening for the GPS signal.

It processes the signal, computes the "difference" between the GPS position and the true position, and emits a second radio signal (MSK modulation, if you must know) telling all supported equipment in the vicinity the correction factor to apply to the GPS signal to improve precision.

Originally Posted by solipsism

7) It;s on the back and it just screams Apple. I wonder how much Cingluar fought (and failed) at getting their name/logo on the phone?

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Cingular's name is on the upper left corner of the display bezel.

The "GPS" probably isn't GPS. As I think Aegis said, it's probably a triangulation system. It's required for emergency service use and phone often have some way to allow non-emergency apps. I have an older phone that has this, but no software to use it. I leave it turned off, it supposedly has a way for the emergency crews to turn it on. Off is best because it takes more power when on.

Originally Posted by alexapple

People here seem to think that an iPod is coming with all the funcionality of the iPhone iPod. They are (almost certainly) wrong. The reason for this is simple - this phone packs a *lot* of processing/graphical punch to pack all these features in with full multitasking. Even Cover Flow needs a lot of power (try it out on an old G4). An iPod that could do all the non-phone stuff would still need to be really expensive, pretty much as expensive as the iPhone - hence we just get the iPhone.

Furthermore, it is the logical extension of the iPod growth. It started off simple but they have slowly been adding functionality to it. Why have a telephone, and an iPod, and a PDA (as I do at the moment)? It makes no sense because once you get the hardware meaty enough it might as well as do all the things together...

Originally Posted by thrang

I don't think you're right here. The iPhone is phantastic, and I agree the merging of many devices into one is nirvana, but the day after the keynote, I'm left to wonder where is the "real" widescreen video iPod?, with 80GB or more of storage? 8 GB is paltry, and the concept of the iPod is you can take all (or most of it) with you, and play what you want when you want to. Having to carefully preselect which music, TV shows, or movies you can fit onto the iPhone is really not a forward step. Clearly, given Apple's strategy as becoming a dominant player in media distribution, having a portable device that can store your library in its entirety, or near to it, is a given.

But the iPhone is not meant to be the next iPod; it's called iPhone for a reason. And overall, it provides FAR more storage, capabilities, and elegance than competitive smartphones, so it wins big in that comparison. But how many iPod w/Video owners here feel oddly out of sorts with this announcement? Buying one as your primary device would be an upgrade and downgrade at the same time. There is still plenty of room in the product line for new dedicated iPods. And remember, many people can't or won't buy an iPhone because cost, complexity, carrier, current agreements, lack of need, etc.

I'm sure Apple recognizes this, but for multiple reasons, are deciding to wait until later this year to introduce a real video ipod. I would imagine overall cost, battery life, slow-to-jump-on-board movide studios, and spreading out launches to avoid overlap are some of the reasons, along with the fact that AppleTV is not released and in homes yet. So, as much as I'd like a real video iPod today, all these factors seem to say a fall/winter release.

A video iPod could look nearly identical to this iPod in form and functionality - remove the battery-sapping cellular technology and add the battery-sapping HD technology, and you'll probably have similar performance.

Down the road, when battery technology improves, higher capacity flash modules become cheaper, and overall costs diminish due to economies of scale, an all-in-one as the ONLY tehcnology MAY occur, but why would Apple be so domineering of customer's desires? They're making a TON of money with MANY different iPods now. That paradigm won't change anytime soon.

Originally Posted by franksargent



Yes of course, been there done that, about 40 times in fact, but that was 10 years ago. Don't know how it's done now, but back then it required alot of post-processing and quality control. Especially if you were tracking something over 20-30 miles, say large ships in channels, say in the Panama Canal, say during the 1997 el Nino, and needed 6-DOF motions (minimum of 3 receivers on the moving body), and needed cm level accuracy (X, Y, and especially Z) from all three receivers.

But the point was that these are direct line-of-sight GPS techniques, they don't use AGPS (i. e. a combination of known cell tower coordinates (GPS coordinates) and RF triangulation + an assistant server to do the heavy lifting (calculate the cell phones position to 50m-300m (+/-))). So if the iPhone only uses AGPS don't expect it to save your ass if your lost in the woods somewhere without access to a cell phone network.

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

Okay, we're obviously just stuck on terminology here.

In my understanding, cell-tower based triangulation doesn't necessarily have anything to do with GPS, in the strictest sense of the word.

The phone doesn't do anything except emit the same RF signals as always; position triangulation happens at the service provider's base station, based on the different ping-times reported to by the various towers which are receiving the phone's signal. It can only yield a unique position if at least 3 different towers are in range to receive the phone's signal.

The cell towers themselves *might* use GPS to identify their own coordinates back to the service provider. But I've never seen a cell tower move around -- its coordinates are fixed. So GPS may not come into the picture at all.

A phone that is truly using AGPS would actually receive the GPS satellite's signal using an antenna attached to (or inside) the handset itself, and uses outside help to decode that information.

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

Okay, we're obviously just stuck on terminology here.

In my understanding, cell-tower based triangulation doesn't necessarily have anything to do with GPS, in the strictest sense of the word.

The phone doesn't do anything except emit the same RF signals as always; position triangulation happens at the service provider's base station, based on the different ping-times reported to by the various towers which are receiving the phone's signal. It can only yield a unique position if at least 3 different towers are in range to receive the phone's signal.

The cell towers themselves *might* use GPS to identify their own coordinates back to the service provider. But I've never seen a cell tower move around -- its coordinates are fixed. So GPS may not come into the picture at all.

A phone that is truly using AGPS would actually receive the GPS satellite's signal using an antenna attached to (or inside) the handset itself, and uses outside help (such as an initial guess of the user's approximate position, or data about the satellites that are in line-of-sight in this part of the world right now, or estimates of the satellite signals' doppler shifts, or the current atomic clock time, or offers to "do the math for you") to decode that information. If we're out-of-range and cannot communicate with that outside helper, we're still just as screwed when we're lost in the forest.

Originally Posted by franksargent



Now granted, given that all cell phones have a GPS receiver AND direct line-of-sight to the GPS satellites (i. e. not indoors or blocked somehow), then I'd expect this to work quite well for GPS level accurate navigation purposes.

Originally Posted by thrang

I don't think you're right here. The iPhone is phantastic, and I agree the merging of many devices into one is nirvana, but the day after the keynote, I'm left to wonder where is the "real" widescreen video iPod?, with 80GB or more of storage? 8 GB is paltry, and the concept of the iPod is you can take all (or most of it) with you, and play what you want when you want to. Having to carefully preselect which music, TV shows, or movies you can fit onto the iPhone is really not a forward step. Clearly, given Apple's strategy as becoming a dominant player in media distribution, having a portable device that can store your library in its entirety, or near to it, is a given.

But the iPhone is not meant to be the next iPod; it's called iPhone for a reason. And overall, it provides FAR more storage, capabilities, and elegance than competitive smartphones, so it wins big in that comparison. But how many iPod w/Video owners here feel oddly out of sorts with this announcement? Buying one as your primary device would be an upgrade and downgrade at the same time. There is still plenty of room in the product line for new dedicated iPods. And remember, many people can't or won't buy an iPhone because cost, complexity, carrier, current agreements, lack of need, etc.

I'm sure Apple recognizes this, but for multiple reasons, are deciding to wait until later this year to introduce a real video ipod. I would imagine overall cost, battery life, slow-to-jump-on-board movide studios, and spreading out launches to avoid overlap are some of the reasons, along with the fact that AppleTV is not released and in homes yet. So, as much as I'd like a real video iPod today, all these factors seem to say a fall/winter release.

A video iPod could look nearly identical to this iPod in form and functionality - remove the battery-sapping cellular technology and add the battery-sapping HD technology, and you'll probably have similar performance.

Down the road, when battery technology improves, higher capacity flash modules become cheaper, and overall costs diminish due to economies of scale, an all-in-one as the ONLY tehcnology MAY occur, but why would Apple be so domineering of customer's desires? They're making a TON of money with MANY different iPods now. That paradigm won't change anytime soon.

Originally Posted by backtomac

I think people that want to be able to store ALL of their content on iPods are going to be disappointed. I think the future of these ultra mobile devices is flash storage as it is less power hungry and frankly holds up better to the constant jostling that the devices are going to be subjected to on a daily basis.

Originally Posted by lfmorrison

I certainly wouldn't want to make the assertion that all phones have a GPS receiver. I don't know that for a fact.

My impression is that most phone providers are actually using tower triangulation to provide for the E-911 requirements. My assertion is that those technologies specifically do NOT use AGPS from the handset's perspective.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Surely your argument is blown completely out of the water by the fact that there are already HDD-based iPods, they just don't have widescreen touch-sensitive displays.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Surely your argument is blown completely out of the water by the fact that there are already HDD-based iPods, they just don't have widescreen touch-sensitive displays.

It seems logical enough to me to introduce a top-of-the-line iPod Video above (i.e. in addition to and more expensive than) the current 5.5g iPod, with touch-sensitive widescreen and at least 80 GB storage. However, we still don't know the cost of the Cingular contract and how much that is subsidising the phone. It may be that an unsubsidised iPod Video would be prohibitively expensive.

Also, 1.8" 80 GB HDDs are more expensive than 8 GB flash, but it could be that the additional cost of an 80 GB HDD over 8 GB flash is offset (or more) by not having any cellular chips in the "pure" iPod.

Originally Posted by backtomac

I don't think so. If you look carefully I said the FUTURE is flash. HDDs are power hungry and in my experience don't perform well as a mobile device.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

It's clearly not impossible but I'm just saying that an 80GB HDD phone would be an inch thick. A widescreen HDD iPod is more likely.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

My guess is that even if you drop all the radio hardware, it could still be 5mm thicker than the current $350 model and cost more.

Originally Posted by JeffDM

It's clearly not impossible but I'm just saying that an 80GB HDD phone would be an inch thick. A widescreen HDD iPod is more likely. My guess is that even if you drop all the radio hardware, it could still be 5mm thicker than the current $350 model and cost more.

Whether we agree with it or not, Apple tends to make the thinnest devices, and seems to be willing to forgo functionality to get there.

Originally Posted by franksargent



OK, gotcha, sorry for the confusion, AGPS is Assisted-GPS, offloads GPS calculations to server, OK. Therefore must have direct line-of-sight to function correctly.

But again, that just reaffirms my guess as to one reason SJ didn't use actual GPS data, he was inside, the signal was blocked.