Anybody Own An iPhone or Palm Pre? GPS questions.

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Permalink Reply by DonRay A.K.A. Zesty on June 19, 2009 at 9:45pm

The GPS on the iPhone helped us out a bit on our bike trip to the Indiana dunes las month. I certainly use mine enough to give it a solid recommendation. It helps me save time on the daily when looking for addresses by number or business name.

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Permalink Reply by Jakob on June 20, 2009 at 8:32am

The iPhone GPS is good, spot on for location and helps to keep your bearings straight. Maping directions has been fairly good- occasionally the start point is off from my actual location but so far never enough to be of any real concern.

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Permalink Reply by S on June 20, 2009 at 9:27am

The problem with smartphones is that they need a fast connection to display maps. So if you're in an area where the cell network isn't so good you won't be able to get a map of the area. That being said I haven't had too much problems with my iPhone 3g. The battery life when using gps is a bit short though.

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Permalink Reply by Joe TV on June 20, 2009 at 1:03pm

Is it accurate to say that these phones are not true GPS and rely on a good 3G network (which gets spotty away from metro areas, no?) for their mapping programs, or am I wrong? My ancient Nokia is about ready to give up the ghost and my eyes have been wandering too.

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Permalink Reply by S on June 20, 2009 at 2:43pm

Joe TV said:

Is it accurate to say that these phones are not true GPS and rely on a good 3G network (which gets spotty away from metro areas, no?) for their mapping programs, or am I wrong? My ancient Nokia is about ready to give up the ghost and my eyes have been wandering too.

Most of them don't have maps stored on the phone and use google maps to display your location and directions. If the phone can't connect to the server, your location shows up in the middle of a bunch of grey squares. The new gps app from tomtom or another gps app may include maps though, I haven't played with those. FYI, I've run into situations where the 3G or EDGE network was not up to snuff and had issues scrolling or zooming in on my location or the surroundings.

If you need maps and directions in the countryside or on a trail in the woods, I'd get a dedicated gps unit. The battery life is better and you can swap out batteries as needed.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Bedno on June 20, 2009 at 8:44pm

Haven't tried the walking directions much, and GPS has been a block or more off downtown. But I actually found my way out literally fairly lost hiking in some woods, using the iPhone's satellite view to find a needed river crossing. Though far off any labeled road, fortunately there was 3G signal.

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Permalink Reply by Smash on June 21, 2009 at 1:43pm

My experience has been similar to that of others, but I use a different phone: the T-Mobile G1 (more commonly known as the "Google phone"). The GPS has been very good on it in my experience, though the map-downloading factor is of course still an issue as with the iPhone. That's definitely a big caveat though: if you're not in a 3G location using Google Maps can be a bit painful.

Google put out an app for the phone called "My Tracks" which uses GPS to track your location over the course of an activity (cycling being what I use it for, of course), then uploads it to Google Maps for other folks to check out. It records stats too, you can see them if you click the stop labeled "end" on the map.

You can see a map of a recent ride I did here:

http://tr.im/nRnU

The map also is a decent indicator of the GPS's accuracy: you can see it definitely bounces around a bit in the downtown areas at the beginning of the ride (I'm guessing tall buildings block the signal occasionally?) but as soon as I was out in the open it was dead-on. Battery life isn't much of an issue, that was a 3.5 hour ride and I still had at least 50% battery when I was done.

Sorry to throw another phone in the mix, but I love my phone and find that most people don't consider it because they don't even know it exists. So I'm a bit of an evangelist. :) Hope it helps!

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Permalink Reply by dav on June 21, 2009 at 2:57pm

I wonder if there's an app like the one you describe for the iPhone?

Smash said:

My experience has been similar to that of others, but I use a different phone: the T-Mobile G1 (more commonly known as the "Google phone"). The GPS has been very good on it in my experience, though the map-downloading factor is of course still an issue as with the iPhone. That's definitely a big caveat though: if you're not in a 3G location using Google Maps can be a bit painful.

Google put out an app for the phone called "My Tracks" which uses GPS to track your location over the course of an activity (cycling being what I use it for, of course), then uploads it to Google Maps for other folks to check out. It records stats too, you can see them if you click the stop labeled "end" on the map.

You can see a map of a recent ride I did here:

http://tr.im/nRnU

The map also is a decent indicator of the GPS's accuracy: you can see it definitely bounces around a bit in the downtown areas at the beginning of the ride (I'm guessing tall buildings block the signal occasionally?) but as soon as I was out in the open it was dead-on. Battery life isn't much of an issue, that was a 3.5 hour ride and I still had at least 50% battery when I was done.

Sorry to throw another phone in the mix, but I love my phone and find that most people don't consider it because they don't even know it exists. So I'm a bit of an evangelist. :) Hope it helps!

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Permalink Reply by Joe TV on June 21, 2009 at 3:25pm

dav said:

I wonder if there's an app like the one you describe for the iPhone?

Try this:
http://www.imapmy.com/

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