Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mobile Google Maps to Offer GPS-Like Positioning

First, adding capability like this with a software-only update is pretty cool. Definitely counts as a freebie if we'll be getting it for free.

Second, it may not have much use in Manhattan. But what about the suburbs where most of us live? Many interstate off-ramps are miles apart, not blocks apart. If you can get 10 block fidelity in these areas, it is useful. Maybe I want to know if I accidentally passed exit 20, and I haven't seen a sign or another exit in 15 minutes.

Anyway, sounds like it will be free and I don't have to use it if it doesn't work for me. Therefore, I'll happily take it!
 
so far this is incredibly accurate on my BlackBerry Pearl (white T-Mobile one, not the 8130/8120 w/ actual GPS).

it's off by less than 100' here in my office

i will test it more on the bus ride home, but so far i'm very impressed :D
 
installed and working on my T-Mobile BB Pearl, but fidelity seems poor so far. Then again, my T-Mobile signal is weak here. Will test on the drive home, but seems to work great so far.

It's even showing realtime traffic status.... awesome.
 
Works on my Verizon Blackberry 8830. Yeah, the one with a GPS in it that they facking disabled! (God I hate Verizon)

I am in my apartment right now, in the city, and it found me about 5 blocks off. Thats pretty damned impressive!
 
I can't tell you how many times I've pulled up Google Maps while using EDGE, and had to painfully drag the map around to find my current approximate location, so that I can then search for whatever I'm looking for.

So I can see a use for this, even in it's worst case scenario.

And Navizon was worthless to me. I never once was in a location that it could locate.
 
OMG! Its 10-year old technology! Maybe older, but I worked on UI for this in 2000 or so, before the carrier I worked for had GPS in anything.

Cell - A couple miles
Sector - 800 yards
Triangulation - at least 200 yards, often much better

GPS telemetry is already in /lots/ of devices (its not "in a few years"). Why not the iPhone, I cannot imagine. Similarly, I cannot imagine why this could not have been implemented at launch time for the iPhone. Doesn't need to be all new technology google only has access to. I don't get it.
 
Less histrionics, please

anubis said:
I can't believe this thing has gotten 28 positive and 0 negative ratings so far. Did you even read the summery? It can locate you to within 10 CITY BLOCKS! For most places that can be over half a mile off. For navigating around a city, it's completely and utterly useless. What good is navigation if it thinks you're 10 streets away from the one you're actually on? You probably won't see this on the iPhone for another 6 months at least, if it even comes at all.
Click to expand...

I would hazard to guess the accuracy is related to the density of cell phone towers. Ten city blocks (I'm guessing they mean 10 (city blocks)^2) in rural areas would be quite adequate to figure out where you are on a map. If you're in the city, you can always look at a street sign to dial in your coordinates, if there is some doubt.
 
Bluetooth GPS?

How about simply adding support to the iPhone for getting position information from Bluetooth GPS modules? Who says that the GPS has to be built-in to the phone? I'd be ecstatic if I could just keep a BT GPS unit in my car and have the iPhone google maps use it.
 
Works decent on my BB Curve 8320, altho it does show me about 1/4mi away across the river from where I live. :)
 
anubis said:
February would be the earliest time, if it even comes at all.

The verizon phone I got 5 years ago had GPS in it. Your iPhone was "officially behind the times" 5 years ago.
Click to expand...

I assume that the Navizon application will be available for unhacked phones come February.
 
so i can get slightly less lost?

yeah, 10 city blocks makes this just about useless as actual GPS.

"here in the future we can give you really vague directions from the large area where you might be to somewhere else, kinda"

not exactly flying cars here, people.
 
Clive At Five said:
Interesting... Yeah, can't Google just query your IP and put your dot on the map? T'would make it easy for "from here" / "To here" directions...

-Clive
Click to expand...

If they are pulling this IP from your wireless, chances are it will be a 192.168.x.x o4 a 10.X IP. Which will give squat for a location.

If they are pulling the IP you get from your EDGE connection, its not going to be accurate. Its going to be where that IP was allocated. Last time I looked into this, the IP I acquired from ATT was "Allocated" in New York, or someplace up north. I live in Dallas TX. Now thats a big jump, forget 10 blocks. ;)

The best solution with the tools we have on the iPhone, would be to triangulate via cell towers, signal strength, movement of you from tower to tower, etc. its not as accurate as GPS, but will be much better than IP address allocation location.

Assuming your wifi connection gives you the IP of 192.168.0.31 (DHCP acquired IP from my wireless AP):

>whois 192.168.0.31

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

Ya, thats not gonna work.

Assuming you get an IP from ATT 10.120.125.238 (IP I acquired from turning off wifi, and checking mail on iPhone via ATT's EDGE service):

>whois 10.120.125.238

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

Ya, still not gonna work.

Your gonna need to do this via towers, and their lat|long, the signal strength, and the other towers your phone can see.

See what I mean?
 
WildCowboy said:
10 city blocks is a pretty big error bar when you're trying to get directions to something in a city...but it's better than nothing.
Click to expand...

I would not use this even if you paid me to do so. 10 City block is to much of an error margin. U would rather see google implement better GPS support in Google maps/mobile. With an 75 Dollars investment I can buy a GPS puck for my BB and get True GPS using G maps on the BB why cant they o this for the Iphone?
 
pcorajr said:
I would not use this even if you paid me to do so. 10 City block is to much of an error margin. U would rather see google implement better GPS support in Google maps/mobile. With an 75 Dollars investment I can buy a GPS puck for my BB and get True GPS using G maps on the BB why cant they o this for the Iphone?
Click to expand...

I can use Navizon, then search for a restaurant and it finds he ones closest to me...
 
sananda said:
many cell towers on the moors?
Click to expand...

Yup. 3 big ones including Winter Hill. It's the only place I get a full signal on my phone.

They build masts up there as the hills overlook the large towns and cities.
 
muskratboy said:
yeah, 10 city blocks makes this just about useless as actual GPS.

"here in the future we can give you really vague directions from the large area where you might be to somewhere else, kinda"

not exactly flying cars here, people.
Click to expand...

You must have a very bad GPS system. It's perfect here, our Tom Tom 910 even has our driveway marked out (it's a hidden private road, must have got it from a helicopter/satellite) and finds our location in a couple of seconds from when it's switched on.
 
Haha!

I just installed it on my blackberry pearl. Works like a charm, on a device half the size of an iPhone, that does twice as much, for half the price.

Ahead of the curve my butt.
 
You are very right. When talking about cell phones. However, Clive was talking about Google being able to use this for To: From: directions on a computer connected via Cable/DSL/Dial-up/Etc. This would mean you could pull up Google maps on your desktop and get directions to somewhere without typing in your current location.

I had thought Google Earth had this for a while, but I don't remember.

operator207 said:
If they are pulling this IP from your wireless, chances are it will be a 192.168.x.x o4 a 10.X IP. Which will give squat for a location.

If they are pulling the IP you get from your EDGE connection, its not going to be accurate. Its going to be where that IP was allocated. Last time I looked into this, the IP I acquired from ATT was "Allocated" in New York, or someplace up north. I live in Dallas TX. Now thats a big jump, forget 10 blocks. ;)

The best solution with the tools we have on the iPhone, would be to triangulate via cell towers, signal strength, movement of you from tower to tower, etc. its not as accurate as GPS, but will be much better than IP address allocation location.

Assuming your wifi connection gives you the IP of 192.168.0.31 (DHCP acquired IP from my wireless AP):

>whois 192.168.0.31

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

Ya, thats not gonna work.

Assuming you get an IP from ATT 10.120.125.238 (IP I acquired from turning off wifi, and checking mail on iPhone via ATT's EDGE service):

>whois 10.120.125.238

OrgName: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
OrgID: IANA
Address: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
City: Marina del Rey
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 90292-6695
Country: US

Ya, still not gonna work.

Your gonna need to do this via towers, and their lat|long, the signal strength, and the other towers your phone can see.

See what I mean?
Click to expand...
 
superleccy said:
The technology to do this has been around for ages, but I had always assumed it required co-operation from the network provider.

If Google find a way to do this without the explicit support of the network provider, then there's gonna be a lot of annoyed networks out there.

Go Google! :D

SL
Click to expand...

Lat lon of cell towers is public records, me and some friends were working on a triangulation algorithm months ago, I got the math bit done, but it never came to fruition. It's a relatively simple formula, basic geometry when you've figured out the range of ping times for a known distance. No explicit permission necessary. Each cell tower has a known ID as well, there's already an iPhone app that will tell you that.
 
knewsom said:
I just installed it on my blackberry pearl. Works like a charm, on a device half the size of an iPhone, that does twice as much, for half the price.

Ahead of the curve my butt.
Click to expand...

Chime in to flame. Good times. Go troll somewhere else. K, thx, good talk.
 
not flamin'.

...at least not in that sense. Just trying to light a fire under the rears of anyone from Apple who might be reading.

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Apple. I'm tying this on my Mac right now, and I'd never own a PC unless I HAD to. They had a GREAT opportunity to make something incredibly ground breaking with the iPhone, and in the arena of design, sure, it's prettier than any other phone out there. But as far as what it DOES, it's not exactly groundbreaking, let alone ahead of the curve.

This is the sort of thing that is GOOD for Apple, and especially good for users of its products.

As for me? Well, as soon as there's an iPhone with some serious memory, or at least user expandable/swappable memory (CF, SD, etc), and some third party development going on, and they don't cost an arm and a leg:rolleyes:, I'll probably get one. But in the meantime, I'm going to stick with my $150 unlocked blackberry pearl with interchangeable memory cards, swappable sim cards, plenty of multimedia functionality, and a TON of 3rd party apps and games.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back