Opinions Needed

[NeaAppleGeek]

I am a huge Apple fan and have been for years. I have been really stoked about the iPhone since January. However, the lack of a GPS is somewhat bothersome to me. I denfinitely want a GPS and a multi purpose phone. On this forum I saw that someone mentioned the Nokia N95, so I looked at it. It seems really cool and now I am a little torn with my decision. If the iPhone was going to be getting the GPS feature I am sure, I would get it and wait on the app to become available. The point to my thread is that I would like to get a feeling from you all 1) if you feel there will ever be a GPS app on the 1G iPhone 2) how long do you think it will be?

Thanks for you help in advance.

 

[wjp09]

If its not in now I don't see it happening. Maybe as an add-on.

 

[Spin This!]

Check back in a week and see how hackable this phone ends up being...

 

[spacerog]

GPS is cheap. It would be totally stupid to build a phone like this and not include one of the most popular new features currently available in competing products.

The problem that GPSs have as portable devices, especially in cell phones is the lack of a quality antenea. GPS is a very weak signal, weaker than most of your FM radio stations for example. Portable GPS have gobs of signal processing circuity to process those weak signals. Remember in the early days of GPS how big the portable units were and they always had these weird foldable anteneas?

Cell phones don't have all that extra space for signal processing electronics. As a consquence they need a good antenea to be useful.

My theory is that GPS is built into the iPhone but to use it you will need an external antenea. I don't have data to back this up other than rumours but I can't see building a phone like this and NOT including GPS. It just doesn't make sense especially with the tight integration of Google maps.

- SR

 

[Spin This!]

Cell phones don't have all that extra space for signal processing electronics. As a consquence they need a good antenea to be useful.

I'm assuming in a laptop computer gps (say one of the bluetooth ones), the computer does all the processing of the signal. Depending on what the iPhone has for processors (read: how powerful), this may be possible to do that processing internally.

 

[TrippalHealicks]

There are several bluetooth-enabled GPS receivers out there, too. I'm sure they could make them work with Googlemaps or whatever other APP they wanted to, very easily.

 

[wjp09]

They need to save something for the iPhone v2