What surprised me most is that Garmin is based in the Cayman Islands.
I believe that's where their corporate headquarters is, not their engineering headquarters. That's been public knowledge for a long time.
Sorry, but I'll pass on their nuviphone. I have an iphone that has worked remarkably well. Besides the iphone, there are a lot of smartphones already on the market, so the nuviphone is entering a pretty crowded field. I don't really see what the nuviphone will add, except for a better implementation of GPS. That doesn't excite me too much.
I agree... trying to be the next iphone will fail. Why not harness the overwhelming dominance of the iPhone market share?
Simply put out the gamin technology on the iPhone... millions are waiting for such the app... just come out with a nice clean app and put it for cheaper than tomtom and with lifetime traffic since it should be able to pull that info, and make it work without a required cel connection. I have plenty of garmin GPS devices, but would want to just use my iphone (with no cel service). Or to even kill tomtom even more simply let people buy the maps they want at $.99 ea (like for california only etc) so local drivers dont need to spend much and then have packages much like the garmin map updates for the active traveler.
(tomtom app is overpriced , limited and receiving lots of bad reviews)
My 2 cents too, say you take your iphone into a real rural area... you should still be able to navigate by car/bike/walk etc on maps you either buy or predownload... the gps should still work even without any cel/wifi signal and be able to track your trip... then get more details of the trip once you return within cel/wifi signal area
My 2 cents too, say you take your iphone into a real rural area... you should still be able to navigate by car/bike/walk etc on maps you either buy or predownload... the gps should still work even without any cel/wifi signal and be able to track your trip... then get more details of the trip once you return within cel/wifi signal area
I found this forum doing research on current iPhone nav/gps apps. My iPhone 3G S will NEVER be able to do true GPS and I'm ok w/ that...
I've looked at this off and on for some time now and I'm sure I'm right...Apple's spec lists no microwave antenna or satellite receiver of any kind (lol) for the iPhone.
I used to do 3G UMTS R&D at Nortel years ago so I know all about 3G "GPS" and it has nothing to do w/ true satellite GPS (which is microwave not radio). Rather, cell GPS uses the omni-directional antennae at the top of cell towers as reference points combined w/ very complex algorithms and radio micro bursts to give you your position. GPS was actually built into 2.5G (Edge) but was only used for law inforcement and 911 responses (no user allowable options unless you had a special code and even then it was just lat/long coordinates).
What you are proposing would be wonderful but it's a common misconception that cellular "GPS" has the same capabilities as satellite GPS. In fact, this may indeed have something to do w/ why Garmin decided to go the way they did w/ their own phone...because the iPhone does NOT do true GPS. I'm not sure and I don't care to even look up the gPhone...
I say that Garmin should do BOTH. Have an iPhone app like the competition AND make your own phone w/ built in sat receiver (I'm assuming they did that because if they didn't then they are just sad).
