Smart Phone GPS

Smartphones, by definition, are smart cell phones, and they offer their users a lot of features: they can make calls, they can send/receive e-mail, surf the Web, be connected with their friends, family and work colleagues, they have multimedia centers on the mobile device, what could they want more? A smartphone is like a Swiss Army Knife for professionals.
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New tools are added to smartphones, and people seem to like them more and more daily. For example, more and more people use the built-in GPS and find it very useful, because it helps them to find specific locations and the best thing is that the number of the GPS-equipped models is continuously growing. Cell phone carriers understand its utility and they started to create special services for GPS devices, like Verizon's VZ Navigator, Sprint's Sprint Navigation and AT&T's TeleNav GPS Navigator.

GPS capabilities started to show their utility, and now they are not seen anymore like a luxury show-off. It really helps smartphone users to get real-time position tracking, they get text and voice guidance for reaching destinations, and a lot of points of interest. There are also trade-offs, not only advantages: the small screens are not suitable for car usage, and the GPS radio will affect battery life, in a negative direction, of course, but the voice prompts and helps you to avoid these problems, by announcing you when the battery is almost over.

GPS manufacturers are trying to enter mobile devices market, and they created a navigator-phone which offers part of a smartphone's features, but its design is focused on the GPS feature, and it somehow is a novelty, but it cannot be compared with the smartphones available on the market.

There are a lot of smartphones which have GPS capabilities, but if you already have one which cannot help you with this feature, you can add it this functionality with a Bluetooth receiver. Taking into account that a standalone GPS device is not anymore the only way to get navigation guidance, you can think of smartphones or cell phones which have GPS support, and if they do not have it, you can add software or accessories to transform your mobile phone into a navigation device.


If you have a Bluetooth enabled smartphone, you can pair it with a receiver, and this is how you will get real-time tracking on your mobile device. A lot of receivers come with mapping software, but you should check on the manufacturer's website on in the device's manual to see if it is compatible with the phone. If you don't need to deal with external gadgets, you can just get a car kit, which is a standalone GPS, with maps preloaded on an SD card.

With the solutions offered by network carriers you can get turn by turn driving directions and colored maps; moreover you can search for local businesses or interest points, and in some cases you can get the traffic updates so you can take the shortest and less crowded road to your destination. These solutions from the big carriers require a subscription fee, and as an alternative, you can use Google Maps for Mobile to get the same features (it is free, but you need a data plan for maps and traffic information).

Here are some good smartphones, GPS enabled, and for each of them a short description about how GPS works on them.


BlackBerry has released the latest device with a large touchscreen which can switch immediately between vertical and horizontal views. This large screen is perfect for GPS applications and it works better with business applications that its predecessors.


T-Mobile G1 is the first mobile device which runs the Android OS, and it includes a GPS receiver (built-in) and it has also location-based applications, like Loopt.


Palm Pre provides the standard locating information and the directions, and it is also linked to Pre's universal searching feature, which includes Wikipedia, Google, and Google Maps. Sprint Navigation is installed on the phone when you purchase it, and this application includes: driving directions (turn by turn), business finder with more than 10 million points of interest, traffic alerts and fuel prices, but full nationwide color maps too.

In the Apple AppStore, there are more than 400 navigation dedicated applications available for iPhone 3G, and it remains the champion in services and applications too. Just to mention some applications, I would name Snocatore, GPS Lite and Groundspeak for geocaching.


The only winner in all this competition is the customer, which has only benefits from this war between the smartphones manufacturers, because the features which are added in this competition between the companies only help the users and they make their smartphone user life easier.