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iPhone next gen dreams - GPS and phone

Chip NoVaMac

Chip NoVaMac

macrumors G3
Original poster
Dec 25, 2003
8,888
31
Northern Virginia
Have had my iPhone from Day 2, and love it... it is everything that I wanted out of my Treo 650 and more!

Recently I have been finding myself wanting/needing a GPS unit for my car. A buddy of mine was going out of country for a couple of weeks so he loaned me his new Garmin nuvi 760. Only been using it a couple of days so far, but like the basics so far.

in playing with the Bluetooth on the Garmin with the iPhone I was struck by the idea of the perfect convergence product - an iPhone that was both a phone and a complete GPS unit.

The Garmin nuvi 760 allows for connecting to the contact list on the iPhone for calls only.. Was thinking that it would be great to use an address in that contact to map a trip to that address.

The more I use the iPhone, I can see Apple expanding the iPhone/iTouch family to make it the one appliance that we need to carry...
 
1. If the next gen iPhone isn't 3g, its toast. Goodnight! 4g will set the new standard so Apple ought to be looking ahead now they have the time to do it. Sort this 'battery' thing out if youre concerned and go figure

2. GPS, not like the lame Nokia N95 GPS, which doesnt actually work, heck if theres a cloud above your head it loses its signal (you dont hear about that on the N95 fanboy forums eh!) A proper GPS chipset that WORKS!

3. Open it up for development....apps, games, the works..
 
I don't mind so much the lack of incorporated GPS. It keeps the costs down and spares the battery any unnecessary hardship.

What might be preferable is the ability to link via Bluetooth to a puck GPS. This would give those people who need it the option to buy one without driving the price of the phone up. If Apple doesn't want to provide an aftermarket solution themselves there are several manufacturers that sell these, along with software, that would be great to link to the iPhone.

I'm also disappointed with the incomplete integration with OS X at present. It's well integrated with iTunes and iPhoto, but it needs more hooks into the OS. One example of this is the inability to use Address Book to dial out or send SMS, features that have been available for years with less advanced phones.

Also lacking is the surprising inability to capture live movies, something that might be resolved via a software patch.

Definitely Apple needs to get 3G on to this device ASAP. I'd like to see a forward facing camera for live video chats via the iChat architecture.
 
I thought you could send SMS from the address book in leopard.

Edit: Alas you cant, but you can from iChat if you have your iChat names matched up with that of address book it makes it easier.
 
G4R2 said:
I don't mind so much the lack of incorporated GPS. It keeps the costs down and spares the battery any unnecessary hardship.

What might be preferable is the ability to link via Bluetooth to a puck GPS. This would give those people who need it the option to buy one without driving the price of the phone up. If Apple doesn't want to provide an aftermarket solution themselves there are several manufacturers that sell these, along with software, that would be great to link to the iPhone.
Click to expand...

What I was thinking of was iPhone Navigator - a unit that combines a GPS unit like the Garmin nuvi 700 series with the features of the iPhone. Yes it would be larger (hope not much larger than the Garmin nuvi). One less item to to carry around...

Plus I could only guess at the insanely great interface that Apple could come up with...

But pucking with a GPS unit would be great as long as it allowed looking at the address in the iPhone's contacts to be allowed to be set as a destination point.
 
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