iPhone idea

fooey

Not sure if this has been discussed or not.



Was thinking today how it would be awesome that if Apple make an iPhone it had gps on it.

Then a feature so you can text someone else your current location.



Sometimes its so frustrating trying to explain to someone ( by text or phone ) where you are. Maybe it could show the coordinates and they could look them up if they had a phone with GPS, or if not it could show a little map or something?

electric monk

We've talked about that here.



The consensus is that yes, some form of location services (GPS or otherwise) would be welcome to awesome - depending on who you listen to.

mrtotes

I don't think these phone will actually have Global Positioning System (although that would be very cool) but rather I suspect that it will calculate your position by triangulating signal strength from the mobile phone cells. Whilst this is a similar technology to GPS; difference in accuracy and possible uses are going to be major talking points.

elron

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrtotes


I don't think these phone will actually have Global Positioning System (although that would be very cool) but rather I suspect that it will calculate your position by triangulating signal strength from the mobile phone cells. Whilst this is a similar technology to GPS; difference in accuracy and possible uses are going to be major talking points.

Why not? There's an iteration of the Razr that has GPS. If Moto can fit GPS and enough processing power to calculate directions into a Razr, Apple should be able to do it too.



I understand the limitations of GPS (i.e., it doesn't work indoors), but I really don't think that's a major issue.

qball

Apple's ability to incorporate GPS is a function of who they choose for their baseband within the phone. If Apple is going to have a CDMA-based phone, the baseband will be made by Qualcomm who has GPS functionality integrated into the baseband.



If the iPhone is built for GSM, then it will require a separate GPS solution which will take up some board space. I suspect a GSM-based solution would probably first use triangulation (as mentioned above) with full GPS coming later.



To use the RAZR example, the CDMA-based RAZR includes GPS (from Qualcomm) while the GSM one doesn't. It could be the same here.

esteban

Like this?:

http://www.helio.com/#services_gps

Obviously not impossible, or incredibly cost-prohibitive at $225 no contract.

qball

Remember that Helio's service runs on Sprint's network and thus is CDMA. GPS is much easier and cheaper to do on a CDMA phone right now than GSM. If a CDMA-based iPhone is made, then GPS will likely be available very early.