Friday, April 18, 2008

GPS On Iphone

By Charlie Reese

GPS On Iphone

Of course, you will expect your new iPhone to have a GPS, as most of the smartphones on the market do have one, and you can ask yourself why Apple didn't want to add this feature when designing the iPhone. You might think that it's actually a requirement for some cellphones to have a GPS, but you're quite mistaken. The only requirement is that it should be possible to locate you somehow, with the help of calling 911 for example, but a GPS in itself is not a requirement. And there's no use in meditating on Apple's possible reasons for not incorporating this otherwise quite essential featue of GPS on their iPhone.

How Can You Get GPS?

Before the original release of iPhone, a GPS was obviously expected by at least the close community following Apple's moves. As it was clear that iPhone had a bluetooth connectivity, one can fantasize about getting a GPS bluetooth receiver and connecting this to the iPhone, then getting the suitable GPS software, and all the problems will be solved. However, as it turned out, a GPS bluetooth receiver cannot be connected to the iPhone, moreover there is no suitable and working software. Apple products are not traditionally compatible with just any products. Without the additional lack of support from Apple for third party-application, solving the problem of GPS on an iPhone seemed to be and can still seem an insurmounatble problem.

Of course, there is GoogleMaps you can use to a limited extent only where you can find wireless internet, so obviously not everywhere.

Navizon GPS On Iphone

In 2007 September, Navizon eventually released a virtual GPS navigation system on iPhones, which, relies on Wi-fi and cellular tower triangulation, and is basically a peer to peer system in which users in possession of the software can contribute data. Although some assert that this kind of localization cannot be as accurate as a real GPS receiver, this is as good as it can get under such circumstances. Navizon also allows for an initial 15-day trial period, during which users can experiment with the software and if they find it useful they can get GPS for their iPhones for less than $25. The firmware version 1.1.1. update reportedly rendered the software useless. However, a new version was released, and users can also get a scaled down version of this iPhone GPS for free.

Apple is reportedly planning to include GPS in their second generation of iPhones to be released sometime in 2008, having realized that they should have incldued this in the first version as well or having designed a suitable software by now. By all means, we should just hope that the long-awaited 3G iPhones will really have GPS.

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