(Credit:
TomTom)
A hundred-dollar makeover can turn your iPhone into a GPS device.
GPS specialist TomTom announced Monday that its new $99.99 iPhone app is now up for sale at the iTunes store.
TomTom for the iPhone comes with features typically found in standard GPS units, including voice directions and full maps of the U.S. and Canada. Maps for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are available at varying prices.
The app uses a new technology called IQ Routes, said the company. Instead of suggesting the quickest route based on travel time, IQ Routes taps into the actual experiences of other TomTom drivers to determine the fastest route to take. TomTom said this technology lets people reach their destinations quicker up to 35 percent of the time.
In addition, the software can suggest alternative routes if a turn is missed or a road is blocked, the company said.
"With TomTom for iPhone, millions of iPhone users can now benefit from the same easy-to-use and intuitive interface, turn-by-turn spoken navigation and unique routing technology that our 30 million portable navigation device users rely on every day," said Corinne Vigreux, managing director of TomTom.
The company will also offer a car kit, so that drivers can attach their iPhones to the front window or dash.
(Credit:
TomTom)
The new app runs on the iPhone 3G or 3GS and requires iPhone OS 3.0. Compatibility with the iPod Touch and older iPhone models should come soon, said TomTom.
TomTom first announced its new iPhone app at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on June 8 (see video demo).
TomTom's new app will battle for a spot on your dashboard with several other iPhone navigation products--AT&T's $9.99-per-month Navigator, the similarly priced Gokivo app from Networks in Motion, and Navigon's MobileNavigator, now on sale for a flat fee of $69.99 until August 31.
The new iPhone 2.1 firmware will apparently improve the iPhone 3G's GPS performance.
(Credit: CNET Networks)A new firmware update for Apple's iPhone 3G is said to include improvements for its GPS functions, but it's not clear whether that software will do anything to correct the iPhone's reception issues.
GearLive reported Thursday that Apple has provided a beta version of the firmware, which is being called iPhone OS 2.1 beta 1, to developers in its program. The new software is said to provide additional features for developers who want to use the iPhone's built-in GPS chip.
If that's the case, it would alleviate some of the concerns raised by David Pogue in his review of the iPhone 3G about the GPS capabilities, that the iPhone couldn't be used for turn-by-turn navigation. But while that would be a nice improvement, that's not the main concern on the mind of iPhone 3G users.
Posters in the growing thread on Apple's discussion board complaining about iPhone 3G signal issues were excited by the possibility that the new firmware update might correct their problems. Apple has not acknowledged any issue with the iPhone 3G's ability to maintain a connection to worldwide 3G networks, but complaints have been pouring in about a higher-than-usual frequency of dropped calls and weak signals in areas that accommodate other 3G phones without problems.
As of this moment, it doesn't appear that anyone has uncovered any networking-related fix in the new firmware, but it hasn't been live for very long. If anything pops up, we'll let you know.
Google Maps could give you a much more accurate fix on your location with GPS.
(Credit: Apple)It's pretty much a given that the next-generation iPhone will be faster, but it might be able to find its way home as well.
GigaOm is reporting that Broadcom is Apple's supplier for GPS chips that are inside the next iPhone, expected to arrive with a 3G cellular networking chip within a few weeks. GPS is an increasingly common feature inside smartphones, and is much more accurate than the cell-tower and Wi-Fi positioning system that Apple rolled out in January.
Rumors of GPS capabilities inside the forthcoming iPhone trickled out earlier this month, in the form of possible geotagging code noticed inside the iPhone software development kit. GigaOm notes a report from Popular Mechanics that reveals GPS manufacturers are shaking in their boots over the prospect of a GPS-enabled iPhone.
And if it comes to pass, expect to see a whole bunch of location-based services arrive along with the formal release of the SDK, expected in late June. Om Malik notes that Google Maps is an extremely popular iPhone application already, and the addition of GPS would make that service even more compelling.
The back of the iPhone might be turning black with the arrival of the 3G model.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Apple might have decided to make a few cosmetic changes to the next-generation iPhone.
As Lawrence Peter might say, it's deja vu all over again as we await the arrival of the 3G iPhone. Engadget has the latest, claiming they've been in touch with a tester who says Apple plans to ditch the aluminum exterior in favor of a "glossy black" plastic-like material and, more significantly, add a GPS chip.
I'm not sure what to make of the decision to drop the metal look until I can see the actual product, mock-up images notwithstanding. But the addition of a GPS chip would be a solid move, and probably unlock some interesting applications that could take advantage of GPS and the accelerometer inside the iPhone.
Two other minor changes, according to Engadget, will be that the new iPhone's headphone jack will be flush with the exterior, and not recessed like the original unit. And the new model will apparently be slightly thicker, although no metric was provided to shed light on exactly what "slightly" means.
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