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."
Oh, please, let me (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Oh, please, let me (Score:1)
Having a GPS on your mobile phone will only give your position (with the slight error applied to commercial GPS's) to anybody with access to the data of mobile phone companies.
and yeah, ive been reading alot of alt.conspiracy, so what ?
Re:US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge (Score:1)
Anyway
Hmmm, no thanks (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm, no thanks (Score:1)
Just the kind of opportunity for torture I been waiting for!
So, when the driver crashes (Score:3, Funny)
This all sounds well and good... (Score:1)
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:1)
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:1, Troll)
1) NEWSFLASH - the authorities can already track you by your mobile phone when you make a call. It is trivial for them to locate you to the nearest cell, and if necessary it is possible for them to be more accurate by triangulating from several receivers. Furthermore, with directional antennas it is possible, using just two receivers to pinpoint you quite accurately. These ideas have been used by the military for years.
2) I know this is the age old coun
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:2)
Unless you are doing something wrong, why does it matter that people can track you?
Because there are lots of things that aren't wrong, but are illegal.
Why privacy matters. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because there are things which aren't illegal, but not the government's business. Suppose I'm married but carrying on a homosexual affair with my neighbor. Then suppose I'm an activist of some sort (pick your favorite cause for the sake of argument.)
What sort of temptation would this knowledge of my personal life present to someone in the government to whom I was causing trouble? I'm doing nothing illegal, but by finding out something that could be embarassing to me, they can abuse their power to gain extra-legal power over me, by threating to blackmail me.
For anyone who thinks this is an overly paranoid scenario over what the government would do, read about the information collected about civil rights activists in the 60's.
Re:Why privacy matters. (Score:1)
"Unless you are doing something wrong..." (Score:2)
'
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:2)
You make the fatal assumption that what you consider to be wrong is in line with what the government thinks is wrong. Do you trust their judgment that much, especially after some of the ridiculous pieces of legislation that have been passed in recent years?
Re:This all sounds well and good... (Score:1)
A small business that employs people who go out in the field....Think of this scenario..Small business ABC inc has three employees out in the field servicing TVs. A New Customer calls the ABC inc office and wants urgent service. Which service technician would you send here? If your employees had GPS phones, you could use software that automatically tracks them and tells you which technician is closest to the new customer.
This may be a contrived example, but you get the idea
The
when you sleep, where do your fingers go... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:when you sleep, where do your fingers go... (Score:2, Informative)
thanks but no thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
If the user of the phone cannot turn the tracking features off, they're just handing "big brother" another tool to track them with.
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:1)
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:2)
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:2)
Tim
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:1)
Sorry, doesn't work that way. Mobile telephones don't work anywhere remote enough to have mountains. Most of scotland you can only get coverage at the very peaks, and although snowdonia and lakes are slightly better, there'll still not be a signal anywhere that you might need mountain rescue (i.e. in a gully or on a scramble)
Re:thanks but no thanks (Score:2)
If a kid didn't want to be tracked? Easy to get around. But if a person did want you to find them, this is a nice feature.
I fly hot air balloons. Now I use amateur radio to send my location. This would be much more convenient for people tracking me.
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?
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:1)
Because then the phone would have to store the map in its memory. These maps are huge and would take lots of memory, which cell phone companies thus far are not willing to put in for cost purposes.
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 th
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:1)
Now lets also check what a 128MB MMC card costs, a mear 35UKP or around $50.
Adding $50 to the bill of materials for a phone is *huge*.
So as far as I can see all they need to do is provide a MMC/SD slot somewhere on the phone.
Some phones already support MMC cards. The problem is more one of marketing. If you go through the effort of adding mapping support to the handset, you want to be sure that people buying the phone can and will use it - otherwise you've just increased the price of the phone
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2)
On a related funny note: my Audiovox phone has a GPS receiver, which only finds your location when you call 911. In the instruction manual, where it explains all the deep-nested menu choices, there's one which displays the location last transmitted to 911. However, there was an insert in the manual saying that the option is no longer there.
It doesn't take much thinking to figure out what w
The main problem is... (Score:2)
The amount of data that has to be dealt with is just enough so that most consumer phones don't have enough CPU to perform the calculation. (This will change soon, already people are wondering if the pseudoranges on the upcoming Kyocera 7135 PalmOS phone will be somehow accessible to developers of applications on the Palm side of the phone.)
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:2)
What more, according to my i58sr's manual, Java applications can access data from the GPS. My i58 can even be set to either a)always, b)never, or c)pop up a "yes/no" to allow Java programs to read the GPS location. So yeah, we've already got mapping capability here-- it's just not "standard quipment".
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2)
Check out the midlet I wrote for i88s (Score:2)
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:1)
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2)
That's a rather ignorant statement, since 3 of the 5 major cell carriers here in the US use GSM...
I wouldn't call them "major" (Score:2)
"major" being defined as "Actually covers 100% of the most densely populated state in the country" - That state being New Jersey.
AT&T used to be in this category, but their GSM network has nothing on their old D-AMPS (The TDMA variant they used) network coverage-wise.
Every other carrier can only pull off 50-66% coverage.
BTW, that one lone carrier that covers all of New Jersey and is the only one that provides service more than two miles
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:1)
Although I haven't specifically tried to use these features (what can I say -- I'm cheap! =-P ), it does seem to be able to disable the full GPS functionality (it's supposed to prompt you if you wish to send your location) or allow e911 service only.
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2, Interesting)
There are many cell phones currently on the market which have what is called Assisted GPS. As another posted mentioned, Assisted GPS cell phones merely take measurments of the signal stre
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:1)
Re:Lots of phones already have GPS (Score:2)
To one of the child posts: maybe my phone gets its GPS coordinates and sends them t
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 specia
Old phones might function somewhat like GPS too (Score:2, Interesting)
There was an article in the news here (Israel) a few months ago that said cellular phones already can be used as tracking devices, as long as the battery is in (even if they are turned off). Of course, this can only be used by the cellular networks themselves. (And, I guess, police investigations.)
I guess the only way to be immune to the government spying powers is to be Amish or something. Or do they have that covered as well?
Re:Old phones might function somewhat like GPS too (Score:1, Funny)
The CIA has all their cows, horses and butter churns wired. The Amish are subversive, leftist commies and terrorists because they keep to themselves in their secretive communities, pay with cash (or chickens) to hide their nefarious purchases from John Ashcroft, and avoid technology that can track their movements. They obviously have something to hide. When will the governme
Not new (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not new (Score:2)
This is one of the failings of Slashdot; basic background information tends to be completely left out of "news" stories like this.
BTW, note that for mapping applications you also want a compass in your phone. GPS doesn't give you orientation information (AFIK--at least it didn't in the Au phones) and thus you otherwise won't see your maps oriented correctly. (A
Orientation info (or lack thereof) (Score:2)
Benefon.. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.benefon.com/products/esc/index.htm
Of course from Finland, where the best mobile phones come from.
Damn (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Damn (Score:1)
Solution: leave your phone at work and then get it to forward calls to your secondary cell phone.
Great, now if only there were a standard... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope there's a shakeout in the industry some day. Having investigated developing applications for these devices, I've always been disappointed in that either you need to sign up for some really expensive licenses, use Java (J2ME) which doesn't offer anywhere near the phone's true potential, or you have to deal with a new platform for each phone you come across, even across a single manufacturer's line.
One day this will stop sucking. Until then...
unlike in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't figure this out. I first saw this feature in a phone over a year ago, and it seems common now. So all the manufacturers have gone to the expense of adding GPS to their phones, yet they don't even include a simple "what are my coordinates" feature in the UI. What are they waiting for?
Re:unlike in the US (Score:1)
Re:unlike in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
The new thing presented in this article is about additional services to be provided (either for a fee or as an incentive to switch). For phones with GPS this is not that special, but for phones without it, access to network bassed positioning services might be pre
Just FYI (Score:2)
Qualcomm no longer makes handsets. Their former handset division is now owned by Kyocera. (In fact, many of the first Kyocera phones bore Qualcomm markings in places, as they began their design phase at Qualcomm.)
Re:unlike in the US (Score:1)
Not complete GPS (Score:2)
Specifically, the phone doesn't have enough CPU to obtain a location fix on its own. All AGPS (Assiste GPS) location processing is done by the towers.
The advantage: It costs MUCH less to implement, since the phone doesn't need all that extra CPU.
Disadvantage: No user-accessible location fix.
Re:unlike in the US (Score:1)
Useful purpose (Score:4, Funny)
Let's hear it for technology!
Next on Ask Slashdot:
Where are the tools to fight the eventual demise of our liberty?
Saved! (Score:4, Insightful)
Feature Use (Score:2)
Re:Feature Use (Score:1)
Or your car. That'd be an interesting use. Who needs LoJack?
Drug dealer IQ tester (Score:4, Funny)
Why can't the use the cell (network) information? (Score:2)
I don't know with what precision, but I wonder how much precision you really need for the applications they want to provide...
Oh, I've heard about this. (Score:2)
Although for most of the older population, nothing spells c-o-o-l then sending the GPS coordinates their house, a picture of "fluffy" the cat, paging the only guy on the planet with a pager, and then using those cool notepads to painfully punch in a memo to take their medication latter.
But hey when the damn thing rings at least it could be a cool tune like, "Cr
Re:Oh, I've heard about this. (Score:2)
As far a a PDA goes, no thanks, but then again, I don't know any phone numbers anymore, they are all in my phone. I guess it would suck for me if it broke though
Lots of people say that they don't like the idea
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&
How about.... (Score:1)
similar that you yourself put in your key fob
with your carkeys, in your wallet, surgically
implant in your pets, girlfriend, etc. I think
this would be a very fast growing and neato
market.
And the down side... (Score:3, Funny)
I suppose when your enemy is trying to figure out where you are so they can drop bombs and grenades on you, it's best not to have a beacon broadcasting your GPS location!
Emergency GPS (Score:1)
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 ou
Another Use (Score:2, Interesting)
Like it or not, it's the law (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Like it or not, it's the law (Score:1)
This is bunk... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
iDEN anyone? (Score:1)
Hey, mine's broken! (Score:2, Insightful)
Misinformation? (Score:2)
Um, Nextel has been allowing Java applications access to GPS information for over a year now in the United States.
Garmin has had one for awhile (Score:1)
that is pretty sweet - and right when I just bought my own GPS thing.
pretty cool (Score:1)
Nothing particularly useful - but fun to me.
I think this phone would make that easier for me - but since I just got a GPS (it is still in the mail on the way here), it makes it hard for me to justify getting this phone - plus I'm not even sure the phone would work for me where I live now and where I'm moving.
Old news. (Score:1)
What about Nextel/Motorola? (Score:3, Informative)
ringggg - oh hello, honey... (Score:3, Funny)
No I won't be home for dinner...
whats that? What am I doing at your sisters house?
ummmm - must be Russian GPS jamming equipment - damn phone - I guess I'll have to take it in for service.
I love you too...
Great, so does it work inside? (Score:2, Insightful)
simon
No more calling in sick anymore (Score:1, Funny)
No thanks, I still value my privacy... (Score:2)
Have fun. (Score:2)
New phones are required to have GPS capability as part of E911 so that your location can be pinpointed by 911 operators.
Note: According to a few other posters, transmission of GPS information can be disabled for non-911 calls if the user desires.
Re:Have fun. (Score:2)
CDMA phones have some limited GPS capability (Score:1)
On the other hand, if you need coordinates to give you such a rough idea of where you are, you are probably out of range of the Sprint network. =)
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 ha
My Christmas Shopping just became easier... (Score:2)
This is old news..... (Score:1)
Do a google search [google.com] for more info.
The application I'd like to see. (Score:3, Funny)
That way my co-workers could actually end up eating lunch at the same restaurant.
gps in a phone is old (Score:2)
granted, my phone won't do all the shiny interactive stuff that this otehr one will, but it isn't new technology and to me not newsworthy.
Why do I need GPS?? (Score:3, Funny)
What about WiFi? (Score:1)
A couple of suggestions:
1. Some kind of A-GPS c
Old news! (Score:2, Informative)
GPS-enabled phones are nothing new. See these:
Nokia Communicator GPS module [nokia.com]
Benefon Esc! [benefon.com]