Personal GPS in a Mobile Phone

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."

Comments

when you sleep, where do your fingers go...

[Syncroswitch]

Note to posters, a gps does not track you, it tracks the BYRD. to give your location to big brother it must send a signal, such as having your call triangulated, or (evil) it could call out and snitch on you... If they keep combining all the gadgets, Ill only have one multipurpose gadget, thats like geekdom in a thong. NO ONE SHOULD WANT THAT

Lots of phones already have GPS

[Controlio]

All sorts of phones do GPS, my Sanyo 4900 I bought months ago has GPS. Most of all cell phones released in the past 6 months (in the U.S.) do, because its a part of the new E911 initiative. When you dial 911, your phone passes your GPS info to the cell tower, and the cell tower sends you to the local police for the city you're in. They designed the new phones this way so the state police phones don't get bombarded with calls from all over the state... since most of the time they just forward you to a local police department anyways.

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

[seinman]

The difference is that US GPS phones don't have the GPS decoders in them. They just recieve raw data from the satellites, relay it to the tower, where computers at your provider figure out your location and pass it on to 911. There is no way to decode that data within the phone. Apparently, that's what sets this new phone apart from what we already have.

Benefon..

[vjouppi]

The Benefon Esc! has been out for quite some time now (around a year, IIRC).

http://www.benefon.com/products/esc/index.htm

Of course from Finland, where the best mobile phones come from. :^)

Garmin has a nice one

[w42w42]

Garmin has a GPS Phone, 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.