Personal GPS in a Mobile Phone 151
i4u writes "NTT DoCoMo announced today that it will introduce it's first Global Positioning Service (GPS)-compatible handset F661i, at the end of April.
The GPS mobile phone enables users to determine their location at the touch of a button, and download location specific information via i-mode like graphical maps and other interesting information about the area.
This is not like the GPS functionality that the US Phone companies introduced so far. In the US the GPS coordinates are only used for emergencies and not yet for actually providing value to the user in other situations.
Users of the F661i can send their current location to other i-mode enabled phones. In addition, a memo function allows users to store location information, including map, telephone numbers and addresses.
The phone supports three applications of the GPS functionality:
1)The GPS enabled Phone can be tracked by via a service, useful for instance for parents to track their kids. See also the Wherify GPS Person Locator.
2)Submission of current location in case of emergency to pre-defined organizations, like police, fire departments etc. Similar to the GPS functionality available in the US.
3)The F661i also can be used by businesses to track their delivery trucks and more. Similar to Car GPS devices."
when you sleep, where do your fingers go... (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:5, Informative)
So what's to prevent phones right now from doing mapping? Couldn't someone write up a java applet or some other fuctionality that could do this on existing phones? The worst thing you should need is a minor firmware revision to allow java to access the GPS data.
I was going to ask this in an Ask Slashdot, but I guess I'll pose it here. Our phones have GPS on them today. Why don't we have mapping and positioning data accessible to us already?
Not new (Score:3, Informative)
Benefon.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.benefon.com/products/esc/index.htm
Of course from Finland, where the best mobile phones come from.
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:5, Informative)
NOT FIRST, not by a long shot.. try nearly 2y ago. (Score:3, Informative)
quick googling..:
**Benefon Debuts GPS-Enabled Dual-Band GSM Phones
By Mark Long -- e-inSITE, 7/30/2001**
http://www.e-insite.net/index.asp?layout=article&
Quite useful in Japan actually... (Score:2, Informative)
Everything is so dense that finding a friend can be a pain in the butt, believe me.
Ok ok, I hear all that privacy crap, but who cares? Unless you're some mafia top-dude, who gives a crap about where you are? What do you have to *hide* ?
Just think about kids being kidnaped or such things. I think the pros outweight the cons.
Garmin has a nice one (Score:3, Informative)
Garmin has a GPS Phone [garmin.com], and being a real GPS manufacturer, they have the software to go with it.
Better yet for an outdoors enthusiast that wants to communicate with their buddies, check out their Rhino. You can ping your friend, and their location shows up on your map.
Someone else said it, but I agree. The hardware capabilities are all there in these devices, it's just a matter of getting the software/UI to support it.
What about Nextel/Motorola? (Score:3, Informative)
US Carriers are just lazy (Score:2, Informative)
If you go into the Settings menu on any recent Sprint or Verizon phone, there's an option for "Location". If you turn it "off", it will tell you that your location is still broadcasted for 911 calls. If you turn it "on", your location is available to your carrier (Sprint or Verizon) at all times, and any other companies you have given permission to (via the service that doesn't exist yet).
The point is - the phone support is here. The network support is also implemented already - it's required by law for E-911. The only piece missing at this point are the "location servers" that tie in with the wireless web, which is where it actually becomes useful.
AT&T Wireless has actually launched this type of service, ("Find Friends" etc.,) but they're not using GPS technology, and they haven't implemented their equivalent yet. For now it only knows which tower you are near, which only gives it accuracy of a few miles (as opposed to 50 meters with GPS).
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2, Informative)
A raster based road map of the whole of Great Britain at 1:200,000 with a pixel size of 40 metres, in a 16 colour paletted image (you don't need more than 16 colours for maps) compressed using LZW (it's in GIF format) comes to just over 16MB. A raster street map of Greater London at 1:10,000 pixel size of 2.6 metres again in 16 colour paletted is a little under 60MB.
Now lets also check what a 128MB MMC card costs, a mear 35UKP or around $50. So that would leave me with some 52MB of memory for other maps. So I could add in a road map I have of France the Iberian penisula and Austria, and over view map of Europe, a nautical chart of the British Isles and still have about 20MB left on this 128MB MMC card for some raster topo maps of the UK.
If the phone could deal with SD memory cards they are available in 512MB size. That is enough to hold one quarter of Great Britain in the OS 1:50,000 Landranger maps with a 5m pixel size.
So as far as I can see all they need to do is provide a MMC/SD slot somewhere on the phone. They are barely bigger than a SIM card.
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:3, Informative)
The Motorola i58 and i88 (both available via Nextel) and be set to output NEMA data, then you just have to use that - a lot of programs read NEMA. Here is and article on how to feed that data to a TNC
http://www.dididahdahdidit.com/nexteltracker.ph
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:3, Informative)
So what's to prevent phones right now from doing mapping?
Nothing really - take a look at the Garmin NavTalk [garmin.com] for an example of a GSM phone that also provides mapping applications.
Couldn't someone write up a java applet or some other fuctionality that could do this on existing phones? The worst thing you should need is a minor firmware revision to allow java to access the GPS data.
The problem you're up against is the amount of memory required to store the map data, and also getting access to specialist map information. This is probably the constraint that prevents most phones from containing such functionality by default - adding memory increases the bill of materials, and consumers don't like that.
Of course, there is nothing to stop you using a wap/web browser on your phone and using a service like Multimap [multimap.com] to get your map data (although you'll need to be in coverage and pay for the GSM or GPRS call depending on how you want to get your data).
Old news! (Score:2, Informative)
GPS-enabled phones are nothing new. See these:
Nokia Communicator GPS module [nokia.com]
Benefon Esc! [benefon.com]
Re:when you sleep, where do your fingers go... (Score:2, Informative)