Top GPS on Mobile Phones
Introduction
GPS devices on mobile, large display screens, detailed maps availability, and even real time traffic information now becoming available can make your phone a handy navigation tool. Whether in the car or for pedestrian navigation these devices can provide good value. Here we look at some phones which are very good otherwise and give you good GPS navigation features.
Mobile Phones and GPS Navigation
Without trying to strictly rank these devices in top5/10/whatever, we look at some top contenders and the features they offer. These devices are certainly the pioneers indicating what is coming. Capability wise they close to each other, so we lumped them all together in the top class.
HTC Dream is the first phone with Google’s Android OS. It has Google Maps, Street View, etc. to make it a GPS navigation contender. Satellite imagery adds to the comfort of mapping and navigating. Android is easy to use. Potential applications should come from a large Android adopter community. It has full QWERTY keyboard.
Nokia N96 is another one in this series. It includes a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS. The Nokia Maps application is preinstalled
on the handset, which enables users to search for addresses and locate POIs. Nokia Map is currently version 2.0 and is a Google Map contender in phones. A trial turn by turn navigation service is available. 2.8 inch screen, 16 GB memory, 24 GB memory card slot and DVB-H capability are other highlights.
HTC Touch HD has, once again, the Google mapping tools. Large, high resolution screen, Windows mobile convenience. Telstra’s Whereis Navigator Traffic provides the real time traffic information to make navigation easy. Other conveniences include a phone application that learns the user operating style as you keep using it. HTC makes it easy to customize menus and wall papers. The phone has a large display and is nicely designed. Practically all the area of the device face is the display. It also has a virtual keyboard that can change orientation depending on how you are holding it.
And last but, obviously not the least is the cult item, the iPhone 3G. AS far as GPS navigation goes, this offers Google maps. Google Street View comes with the mapping features too. There is a TrafficAU iPhone App available from CLO Software that makes traffic information available to it. Add to that the much talked about touch screen and the easy navigation of the menu, etc. and you have a good package!
